SHAKESPEARE @ 400

2016 is the anniversary of Shakespeare's death, He was born 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, and subsequently died there in 1616 on April 23rd.

At the academy where I teach film to young students, they had been working on abridged versions of three of the bard's plays, but for a variety of issues they missed their deadline in June to put on the performances. So we are now tackling film versions.

What never fails to amaze me is the difficulty they have in understanding the vast differences between film and stage. Most of the students seem to think that it is just a case of setting up a camera on a tripod and filming what they have come up with. But that's not a film. That's footage of a stage performance.

My friend Andrew describes it well; "a stage performance is to an audience firmly rooted in their seats, in one location. But creating a film liberates us from this constraint". So now we can place the camera anywhere, in the same space, or even in a vastly different space.

We are planning to film in March next year, albeit the 400th anniversary will have passed. The logistics will be challenging too, as they always are with young students. But there is an opportunity to have some of them attempt their first outside location shoot, as up to now we have filmed solely in the school where the academy takes place. Apart from the obvious production challenges this presents, there is also the factor of weather.

So to make life a little easier, we are going to set the films in modern times, allowing them to wrap up warm in modern day clothes. It also allows us to bring a number of scenes into modern times as well, which should prove to be a lot of fun.

The youngest students are making A Midsummer Nights Dream, though a wildly adapted version to suit their age group. The group between 9 and 12 will tackle Romeo & Juliet, referencing the modern day 1996 version, starring Leonardo Di'Caprio. Already the girl who plays Juliet is stressing out, asking me on a weekly basis if she will have to kiss anyone!

Finally the teenagers, in line with their desire to create films dark and miserable, will make MacBeth.

 For this film I have chosen an exterior location of 17th century, Lady Stairs Close, in the centre of Edinburgh city, for them to set the exterior scenes.

A good number of years Andrew performed a version of MacBeth around the streets of Edinburgh, and used the Close as one of the locations, which has influenced me for this production, as has the 2015 version starring Michael Fassbender.

We'll have fun with it too in adapting it to modern times. Just one example, is changing the elaborate 16th century banquet to a round of fish and chips.

Hopefully I'll be able to enthuse them enough that they "get" the concept of making a film of Shakespeare, which is going to require them to dramatically change their current stage ideas.

"Fair is foul and fouls is fair", which probably will sum up the Scottish weather on the day!

THRILL THE WORLD

Occasionally my filming work takes me far afield, and other times it can end up literally on my door step.

In 2006 in a community hall in Toronto, Canada, a group of enthusiasts created a "flashmob" dance routine to the music of Michael Jackson's Thriller, mainly as a fundraiser for charity. A flashmob is when a group of people, having choreographed a synchronised dance to music, appear suddenly at a large venue, say a railway station, or city square. Gradually the numbers grow in front of a surprised general public, until a large ensemble are dancing furiously. At the end they quietly disperse, and it was as if it never happened.

Encouraged by the popularity of this particular dance to this particular music, the original group decided to go for a world record attempt, to simultaneously perform the routine in as many different countries around the world as they could. They called the event Thrill The World. They achieved success in 2008, with 13 countries and 1500 people taking part. It is now an annual event with over 120 countries participating and approaching 10,000 people.

My Saturday film students have all been learning the dance routine over the past few weeks, and we are half way through shooting. In the edit all three age groups will be edited together to create one seamless piece, with all the students in homemade zombie costumes. But it has to have an opening and a closing section aside from the dancing, essentially the beginning and end of what the students know as beginning, middle and end of every movie ever made.

I knew I wanted a spooky looking sequence, and at first I was searching for a derelict mansion or the likes. Gradually I came round to searching for a castle, when it dawned on me that just a short distance from my house, is the ruin of Craigmillar Castle, an appropriate spooky-looking structure surrounded by woods, most of which were in their vibrant autumn colours.

 

The medieval castle is best known for its association with Mary Queen of Scots. She had fallen ill after giving birth to her son, the future James VI, and in late November 1566 she arrived at the castle to convalesce for a month. But it was while she was there that an evil pact was made, with or without her knowledge, to dispose of her husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.

It was fitting that almost exactly 450 years to the day, I found myself skirting its well preserved ramparts, looking for that evil-looking shot. Here's a still taken from the film:

On 29 October we will screen the finished Thriller video. Who knows, we may well appear somewhere with our own flashmob sometime soon.

TRULY SCRUMPTIOUS

As you probably know, I'm into film. The theatre has never drawn me very much, except for the big productions such as Les Miserable, Phantom of the Opera etc. But since the early part of this year I have been carrying out some freelance work for The Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland's largest stage and soon to host Miss Saigon.

Good to have the connections and I always get a kick out of going in through the stage door. Because of my work for them I regularly get offered free tickets to current shows, with the compromise that I can't choose the performance or seating.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is running at the theatre at the moment, and who doesn't know the songs. As an aside I didn't know that it was originally a children's book written by none other than Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. Anyway, in familiar form free tickets were offered to me, albeit on a Friday afternoon. But this was a bit special, as two of the 10-year old girls who are members of the academy I teach at, had landed parts. As the show tours the country they bring in local children from wherever it is being staged, and these two girls were part of twelve chosen.

 

Very recently one of the films to win a Best Film in its category, Samantha Glamorous, had as its lead a girl called Stella. She has only been with the academy for a year and it was all new to her. Yet here she was, a little over 12 months later, on stage with comedian/actors Jason Manford and Phill Jupitus, together with singer/actress Claire Sweeney and Charlotte Wakefield.

I had to wait a while for the two girls Vaila and Stella to make an appearance, but not only did both girls do incredibly well for their first professional performance, but Stella had landed lines too!

It added a whole different dimension sitting there in the audience. And I had landed great seats, just three rows from the very front and bang in the middle!

At one point the show was stopped, not far from the end, and they brought the safety curtain down for a few minutes. I later found out that Chitty herself had overheated.

It was a packed theatre and I felt very proud of the girls performances. Maybe I had a little influence on their confidence over the past few months, but this experience will have been enormously beneficial for them.

Will they remember me when they're famous?

TIEING UP A LOOSE END

It's now just past one year exactly since I had to go through neurosurgery for a subdural haematoma, and though some would disagree, I'm back to being normal again. So much so that the past two to three months have seen me coming back up to the level of cycling I was at before.

On Sunday I was at a bit of a loose end, looking out of the window at a sunny day with calm winds. I had planned to do some work indoors but I couldn't waste this opportunity to get out on my bike, but where to go? Out came Google maps and I pondered the various options from my house. I decided on a trip east, to the town of Haddington and back, which is about 35 round trip, with a mixture of off-road cycle track along disused railroad tracks and quiet back roads.

I have cycled most of this route before with Pauline, but today I was on my own. I'm not known for my perfect navigation, and I had left without a map, relying on the cycle signposts being abundant.

Virtually all the way to Haddington, apart from the last few miles, it is all off-road. At times the surface deteriorated into mud, but nothing that stopped the bike moving. My favourite surface is a fine ground quarry dust, and when it's dry it's a great surface to barrel along on. The first part of my route follows the River Esk as it twists its way out of the town of Musselburgh, then onto Whitecraig to join cycle route 196. Within a short distance it becomes the Pencaitland Railway Walk, littered with information boards of a time long since passed, when railways played a bigger role for communities. One even told of how easy it had become, thanks to the railways, for emigrating families to travel to Edinburgh to start their sea journey to Australia.

After about five miles I passed the little village of Ormiston. On it's derelict railway platform the local community had created a "recycled garden". They grew all manner of what you would expect, except that the raised beds, sheds and fences were all made from recycled materials that would otherwise have ended up in landfill.

Each of the many people who had created a small plot, proudly displayed their name on a little sign.

Within just a couple of hours I reached the southern edge of Haddington and the River Tyne. So far I felt as if I had been accompanied by a Robin all the way, such was the unbroken melody of song I had heard. This was the end of Route 196 and the start of route 76 back to Edinburgh. Though it showed a distance of 22 miles I knew that was to the centre and my return journey would fall five miles short of this.

The first four miles was on a paved cycle route of exceptional quality, called the Haddington Longniddry Railway Walk. On this route the information boards were in the style of old railway signals, and they swung up for you to read information about the wildlife and so on, that you could expect to encounter. I thought it was a clever creation, as it not only was a tip-of-the-hat to the past, but it also protected the signs from the elements, thereby making them last longer.

Once at Longniddry it was very straight forward to get home, though back onto main roads, down to the edge of the Firth of Forth and along the coast back to Portobello.

And I never once got lost.

PIE

If you've been reading my blog for a while you may recall last year at this time I came upon a secret stash of wild blackberries. I returned again this year only to find that the crop was not that great. Many of the blackberries had not ripened and had simply withered away. I can only assume it is because of this extended warm period we have been experiencing. However, there was almost enough to fill a pie!

On the way home I stopped by the local community orchard and picked half a dozen small apples to add to the quantity of blackberries.

Now I had enough for a pie!

I went for a gluten free option. 12oz of gluten-free flour and 6 ounces of Stork marj were added to a bowl and rubbed through my fingers until a fine breadcrumbs texture was achieved. Using a tiny amount of water at a time, I worked the mixture until it formed into one lump of dough. I let it chill for half an hour in the fridge before rolling it out and lining a pie tin. The tricky part was getting it into the tray, as gluten-free pastry just breaks up if you try to lift it. Third time lucky. Then I "baked it blind", by putting greaseproof paper over the base and placing the empty shell case in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Once cooled, in went the chopped apples, a little caster sugar, the blackberries, a little more sugar, then the lid went on. Back in the oven for another 30 minutes.

The orchard was started a few years ago by the same organisation that runs the local community market on the first Saturday of every month. The area used to be known locally as the donkey field, as a retired donkey used to live there. It had long since passed, and the field, which is on a slope down to Brunstane Burn, had become badly overgrown. Taking control of the field from the council, the area was cleared, and since 2010 around 90 fruiting trees have been planted, including apples, pears, plums and cherries, focusing on unusual and old varieties. Currant and gooseberries bushes have also been planted, and together with a little more landscaping a hive of bees was introduced three years ago.

They say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Well, I can't share it with you, but trust me, it is yummy. Or should I say was, as it was consumed within hours of leaving the oven!

ON THE TILT

In the mid 1800s the 6th Duke of Atholl, George Murray, resident in Blair Castle in the village of Blair Atholl, attempted to close probably the best glen in Scotland, Glen Tilt, running for 14 miles in a south westerly direction from the Cairngorms.

But thanks to the Scottish Rights of Way Society at the time he was unsuccessful. Just as well, as last weekend Pauline and I set off for a couple of days in that very area.

Normally we use trains to get to our outdoor destinations, but the train company in Scotland is so out of tune that we are rarely able to get our bicycles on the trains due to a lack of available space. Undeterred, we loaded the bikes into my van and headed for Pitlochry, 13 miles south of Blair Atholl and the start of Glen Tilt.

There was the familiar smell of autumn in the air as we set out from Pitlochry, and the temperature was perfect with blue skies overhead. Surprisingly though for this time of year the trees were showing no sign of turning into their autumn hues. Having left the van in Pitlochry, we pootled along on quiet little back roads  the dozen or so miles north west to Blair Atholl. Halfway we passed by the site of the Battle of Killecrankie. In 1689 the Jacobites were victorious over government troops, albeit with great losses on both sides of around 2,000 men.

Soon we were entering Blair Atholl on its southern edge, past Blair Castle and out north east for Glen Tilt. The majority of the route is good quality track, and so the going is easy and fairly quick. The first few miles wind through woods, with the River Tilt always on our right, cascading its way down to join the River Garry.

By the time we stopped for lunch we were already passed the halfway point. The sun shone as we sat and enjoyed our snacks in its warmth beside a small burn, flanked by native Rowan trees, heavy with their bright red berries.

The good quality track now started to deteriorate as we reached the end of the V-shaped glen. A narrow path continues on to the Cairngorm, but we were leaving it here to turn due east.

Right at this point here is an ornate suspension bridge easing the crossing of a fast, wide river coming down off the hills. Though attractive it looks completely out of place, and is known as the Bedford Bridge.

In 1879 an 18 year old lad called Francis John Bedford drowned at this spot. Having fought off the Duke's attempt to close the glen, the Scottish Rights of Way, together with contributions from friends, paid for a bridge to be built to commemorate this boys life, and exactly 130 years ago since it was built, we now used this magnificent structure to safely cross the river.

It was only mid afternoon when we decided to camp. The second section of our route would take us over to the next glen, and as far as we could deduce from the map there would not be many places to camp.

Tents set up and supper on the stove, we were joined by several hundred unwelcome visitors. Midges! They can ruin a camp. By mid September they are usually gone, but the weather has been so unseasonably warm this year that they are still out in force. Unwillingly to allow them to feast on us, we retired to our tents to eat our supper, read and listen to the river bubbling past as the light slowly faded.

On a chilly morning with the moon still visible low in the sky, we were faced with a tough challenge to the start of our second days route. A small hill with a very steep path stood in our way, and with the bikes fully loaded with kit we struggled to push them up the narrow path, at times almost losing balance to teeter over the edge. Pauline of course is more sensible than me, and did the climb in two stages, first the bike, then the kit. I on the other hand took the lazy option, and did it altogether.

It was around 2km before we cycled again, once the narrow footpath reached Fealar Lodge, said to be the highest, permanently inhabited dwelling in Scotland. From here the track we joined was of good quality and the going was fast. Mostly it is downhill and a lot of fun to allow gravity to do its job, with my hands always ready on the brakes of course, as the road twists it's way following the natural course of a river.

It was a striking glen, with large areas of forest regeneration in progress. At one point the track climbs very steeply but you are rewarded with a long fast downhill after. We stopped briefly for snacks before heading down the last few miles of the 12 mile run to join the main road. Turning west it was only 10 miles back to our start point of Pitlochry, with the last half being all downhill. As if that wasn't reward enough there was coffee and cake too.

On the way home Pauline asked me what my favourite part was. It's always hard to pick one above all others, but it dawned on me that it was at that moment. Not because it was over and we were on our way home, but because of the great feeling the Scottish hills leave you with, refreshed and relaxed.

AND THE WINNER IS . . .

If you are a regular reader of my blog then you'll know that almost every Saturday of the year I teach youngsters how to make movies. They range in age from 6 to 18 and so far there are 152 students in total. Quite a handful but great fun.

I pretty much judge myself how to teach them and  we have a very flexible remit, the bottom line being that I need to improve their ability to act on camera and increase their confidence in front of camera. Throughout the year we achieve this through practical projects, usually just a few weeks long, but last year we embarked on six, high production value short films which we then entered into a film festival.

We started back in September 2015 on a blank sheet of paper. By Christmas they had developed scripts, cast parts and shot a few minutes of screen time. When we returned after the Christmas holidays it was full on production time. Normally I only get 50 minutes with each group, which isn't a lot of time to set up, rehearse, shoot and put everything away, so in January and into February we allocate a 3 hour slot to each group, morning and afternoon, over a three week period, to shoot extensive scenes. The scheduling is a headache, which I do for them in between weeks. By the start of March we were rerecording dialogue, ADR, and at the start of May we had the finished, polished films. It was my responsibility to edit the films, and to ease the pressure I edited the footage each week so that toward then end it was polishing and creating sound effects etc.

Well, we entered the films by the deadline at the start of June and heard nothing else. Until last week.

Astonishingly 252 films had been entered into the festival from the whole of the UK. There were three categories with three age groups and a total of 24 prizes in total. We knew we had produced the very best we could, but that was a big field to compete against.

Out of the six films we submitted, we won best film in three age groups, one in each category! Over 90 academies are operating in the UK, and the academy in Edinburgh won the most prizes. Needless to say I am very pleased and also very proud of the kids.

Here's a link (click on the picture) to one of the kids films on Vimeo, made by one of our teenage groups, called The Door:

 

Now we are faced with a new challenge. How to get almost 80 kids to London on a Sunday in November for the red carpet event at the Odeon Leicester Square.

Be careful what you wish for, as they say.