Station Zero

  The time has come to release Prairie Rascals on an unsuspecting world. Bonehill Films' Cream Tea Western has gone down well at a few local screenings, so I've decided to make it free to watch on YouTube, at least for a month or two. If you've had a chance to catch our previous film, Gwenevere , you'll know roughly what to expect - we work at an absurd speed, with a tiny budget which almost all goes on costumes and catering. But I think the story is sound, Sarah Reeve's photography is lovely, and we have some great actors.    You can see for yourself on the Bonehill Films YouTube channel. As with Gwenevere , the story was very much dictated by what we could afford and what locations were available. We've ended up with a tale of a young widow setting out to find some buried treasure before the bandits who did her husband in can get their hands on it. Her adventures eventually intertwine with those of a rich and naive young man from back east who has come to see...

It’s time to announce a new Bonehill Films production. Making Gwenevere over the past couple of years has been one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done, so we’re going to try our luck in another genre which combines wild landscapes, dressing up, and a cavalier attitude to historical accuracy. We’re making a Western. Of course, most Westerns are filmed in America, and ours will be filmed in Devon, which might seem to put us at a considerable disadvantage. But our local bit of Devon looks like this… …and I think we can turn it into America with this one simple trick: (Banjo music intensifies.) Actually, I like the audacity of pretending Dartmoor is the Old West, and we’ll be joining in a time-honoured tradition - the first ever Western was filmed in Blackburn , and I remember my grandad telling me how as a boy he watched actors dressed as cowboys and Indians making films in Brighton, probably before the Great War.  Our film will be a hard-hitting tale of wrongdoing and reveng...

Well, almost. We spent last Friday and Saturday shooting a few last scenes for our Arthurian mini-epic : long days, but luckily the weather stayed dry again, and I think we got good stuff. Even if it something goes horribly wrong in the edit and we never get it finished, the shoot has been huge fun. It’s certainly more enjoyable and better exercise for mind and body than writing books - if only there were some way it could be monetised. Laura Frances Martin came back to be Gwenevere, and Rosanna Lambert joined us to play a mystical maiden who pops up with advice for her at a low point in her story - she’s exactly the sort of character you’re not supposed to put in the last act of films as she’s a bit of a Deus Ex Machina etc, but she’s exactly the sort of character medieval poets and storytellers did put in their Arthurian Romances, which is very much the mood we’re going for. Rosanna is studying theatre at Chichester Conservatoire and we were very glad she was able to fit us in duri...

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...