Station Zero

Last year Sarah Reeve and I embarked on our third film project, Invisible Pictures . I was aiming for something smaller and quieter than Gwenevere or Prairie Rascals , and we wanted to work in black and white for a change. I also fancied adapting someone else's story rather than coming up with my own.  I'd always thought Stefan Zweig 's short story The Invisible Collection would make a good film. It's set in Germany in the 1920s (around the time it was written) but I assumed it could be updated and relocated. However, when I reread it, I realised that the runaway inflation of the Weimar era was a load-bearing element for which I could think of no good modern substitute. So we found ourselves with another period piece on our hands.  Luckily, our local steam railway, the South Devon Railway , were very helpful and let us film on one of their regular Buckfastleigh-Totnes services, and parts of Totnes served well enough for a German town. (Excellent Totnes booksellers The...

I’ve been spending the summer in the Wild West, which Sarah Reeve and I have very convincingly recreated in a field near our house. Unfortunately it hasn't been very Wild West weather, but occasionally the sun shines, and we've made the most of it. Prairie Rascals , our new Bonehill Films production, is a Western, in which Dartmoor gets to stand in for the prairies and pinewoods of Arkansas while a cast of top Devonian and Cornish actors put on their best American accents. When her no-good homesteader husband is murdered by outlaws hunting for the the gold he stole during the Civil War, Annie Harper sets off to find the treasure for herself. Annie's played by Rosanna Lambert, a local actress who appeared briefly in our film Gwenevere as a mystical maiden. She’s great, and it’s been good to give her more to do in this one. Also returning is our Gwenevere title star, actress and artist Laura Frances Martin . Gwenevere was rather a serious role, but Laura’s a tremendously fu...