Station Zero

It was December 2021 when I announced my half-baked to make my own Arthurian film , inspired by all the other Arthurian films I’d been watching for this blog. Now it’s May 2023, and the project is very nearly finished. Here’s the poster for Gwenevere , with artwork by top shield designer and location catering whizz Sarah McIntyre. I’ve also cut together a short trailer for the film, which you can see here on YouTube . 

The weather has been unsettled here on Dartmoor, but somehow, in a brief and busy few days last week, we managed to shoot about 80% of our little Arthurian film . We got rained on a bit, but we had plenty of interior work to keep us busy when it got too wet outside, and the sun even shone on several scenes. The light failed quite early on the last day, so the fight scene might end up being a bit truncated, but it’s not really a film about fighting, so I’m not too worried.  The fact that we got it done at all is a testament to Sarah Reeve’s organisational skills, to our brilliant cast and crew, and to the friends and neighbours who have so generously let us use their woods, fields, and outbuildings. Laura Francis Martin, Joanna Neary, and Jonny Hibbs all turned in lovely performances with very little direction from me, and never complained about having to stand around in mud and drizzle for hours. Niall Parker loomed menacingly as the sinister Knight of the Wild Woods. Tessa Arrowsm...

There are about five months left until (weather and other variables permitting 🤞) we start shooting the low-budget Arthurian film project I embarked on last year . It was partly inspired by watching lots of bigger-budget ones , but I’ve been meaning to make a movie for ages, and the landscapes and locations I have to hand here on Dartmoor are perfectly suited to Arthuriana. (I had some very helpful advice early on from Elizabeth Jane Baldry , the director of Sir Lanval , another independent Arthurian project made round our parts.) Our film is called Gwenevere , and so far I’ve mostly been working on the script, storyboarding, and sorting out locations, while co-director  Sarah Reeve hones her lighting and cinematography skills. We’ve also been searching for a cast - it turns out finding actors and arranging to get them all together in one place is by far the biggest challenge. But I’m very pleased with the actors we have found: in the title role,  Laura Frances Mar...