Let me speak to you of Craven Arms. Despite sounding like a pub, Craven Arms is a village in Shropshire, a village I visited this weekend for the first time in twelve years. The reason for the recent visit matters not; rather it’s the visits of 1998 on which I wish to ramble. For back then, in the mists of time, I had my first contact with the professional film industry in the form of a course called Lonesome Takeaway.
Allow me to set the scene. It’s been about six months since I finished Sixth Form. I’ve spent most of the summer sleeping and wondering what to do with my life. Finally I get a job, inputting data for Worcester Heat Systems, but it’s so brain-numbing I quit after just two weeks. I will shortly begin another, only slightly less brain-numbing job at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, but for now I have two weeks of practical film-making workshops and a four-day short film shoot to look forward to.
On the first day I missed my connection at Hereford and arrived in Craven Arms an hour late, but I was soon immersed in the course, eagerly drinking in the information that the experienced workshop leaders – all working freelancers – were generously supplying. Everything from three point lighting to keeping actors comfortable between takes was covered, and when it came to dishing out roles for the shoot, I jumped at the opportunity to be in the camera department. Along with Jessica Lamerton (who I still work with regularly on corporate training videos), I spent hours learning to load 16mm Arri magazines, in preparation for two days as clapper loader, before Jess and I swapped rolls and I took over as focus puller.
I look back on it as a turning point in my life. Often have I told the story of how the director of photography, Des Seal, advised me not to go to university, but to build up a CV by working unpaid on shoots – the best advice I’ve ever been given. Months later, catching a lift to the film’s premiere with its producer, Jane Jackson, I would elicit an invitation to send her my showreel (full of the amateur films I had made with schoolfriends on my Video-8 camera, such as the original Dark Side of the Earth) which would quickly lead to paying work, allowing me to part ways with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and become a freelance filmmaker, as I’d dreamed of being since I first held a camcorder.
So thank you to those people who ran Lonesome Takeaway, who probably made little or no money from it and certainly didn’t need another credit on their CV.
That’s all for now, but tune in again soon to hear the real – and unexpected – reason why Screen West Midlands rejected Dark Side for development funding.