Blast

On a holiday morning in Garth Park, Bicester, a hundred-year-old secret is being awoken. Two unsuspecting boys have unleashed a terrible evil in the form of two young girls, who will chase them to the ends of the earth to retrieve a magic amulet from their clutches. The boys realise their peril and flee in terror, but one is murdered by their enemies in the chase. His friend howls in anguish at his dying side as the girls mercilessly celebrate their victory…

With vague elements of the plot in place, we headed off to film in the park, letting our story develop naturally as we went. There was a fair bit of competition brewing between us and the other group, who were filming in the youth centre canteen. They had concocted an elaborate kidnap plot story, complete with ransom-demand footage filmed on someone’s mobile phone.

Learning on the job

The workshop covered a surprising amount of technical know-how. We did long shots, close-ups, handheld camera work, recorded some sound effects, and all learnt what a McGuffin is. The group were certainly quick to pick up on the tricks of the trade. Ten minutes into the shoot, they started saying “it’s OK, we can just edit that out,” about anything that looked wrong, and asking Dave for gargantuan special effects like turning the sky red.

We were also introduced to the method of taking several shots of the same action from different vantage points, and editing them together at the computer to make the scene more interesting. Unfortunately, this did mean there was a lot of repetition. When I mentioned something about “just one short slow-mo shot,” our young cameraman quipped “oh, so it’ll only take five hours then.” For the most part, though, they didn’t seem to mind. “I don’t care how long it takes, as long as I’m enjoying myself,” one of our actors commented later in the day.

What’s striking about the workshop is the range of people it attracts. The participants in our group were spread between the ages of 11 and 16, with those at the younger end of the scale tending to be there just for the fun of being on film. Harrison, our director and the oldest member of the team, wants to write screenplays, and values the experience he will gain behind the camera. “It’s been inspiring,” he told me. “It’s good to get behind the scenes, rather than just see a finished piece.”

A hands-on experience

They all agreed that their heavy involvement from start to finish is the strongest element of the project. A few mentioned that they felt overlooked at school by the tendency for drama departments to give leading roles to year 10 and 11 students. Others simply didn’t expect to be trusted with expensive kit. “It was a lot better than I thought it was going to be,” said one actress. “I imagined we’d all just be stuck in a room, learning at computers.”

The reality was far from it. The boys in our group seemed to have a particular fondness for doing their own stunts, and devised a chase which saw them leaping and falling in the park bandstand. They joked about planning careers as stunt men, but in the very next take, they landed too soon and the girls ran in and tripped over them. As everyone fell on the floor, an attack of the giggles set in and suddenly we no longer looked like a serious film crew, but a bunch of mates messing around in the park.

Except for our teenage director, who sighed and said, “err… I think we’d better cut.”

The Summer Screen 2008 festival is running events in and around Oxfordshire until 3rd August.