In 2 parts.... Because it took so damn long.
In Septemeber 2010 as part of our Hnd course in film and media, we where paired up and tasked with adapting an Irish myth into a short film. Along with Guy and fellow Student Brian Trainer we came up with Warzone, a radical rein-visioning of the myth and focusing on the Betrayal aspect.
We where then given a list of things that where considered slightly too ambitious and should probably be cut or scaled down from the film....
So we kept them all in and scaled them up (I added another tank).
In class with help from our tutors we developed the Story and the filming process itself. While I feel we almost had to much time (i got complacent, then lazy) it did give us that little bit more time to think, then what we usually do, as in rush in and have it edited by the evening.
There where 2 real Battles for WarZone. The location and the Props
The Location Was a total Nightmare. I had assumed that a public Forest Park would be free to the use of filmmakers as well as the public so when I approached the Northern Ireland Forestry commission they handed me a bill for £5.000 up front. I phoned up to see if they had confused us with a Professional film crew and got a very angry response from the man on the other end.
With just over a week to go till filming Guy and I cruised the green belt of Belfast. The city council were very welcoming but their parks really just did look like parks. Eventually in a desperate gamble we asked the Stormont estate.
Stormont had never occurred to us as its the most politically charged place in the UK, there was no way they where going to let us have British soldiers running around in the grounds, we'd cause some sort of incident. Admittedly, we'd shot Mission to the Unknown there but this was a far bigger shoot.
Turns out, we where totally wrong. They welcomed us with open arms, provided wardens to keep passers by out of the set, a location base and Specialised parking. "Its no problem, after all its a public park". Take that Belvior! The one stipulation was we couldn't use replica guns, i was happy to work with this.
The Props was another Major concern. It was decided fairly early on to not explain what time period this was set in as getting accurate uniforms would have gone well beyond budget. However there was a constant worry at the back of my mind that we didn't have enough kit, the Trousers didn't match the Jackets the webbing belts haven't arrived, there where mo webbing braces etc.
What you saw on screen pretty much bankrupted me and i've only recently been able to stabilise my bank balance as a result.
At the end of the day, I think we got enough across, more kit would have been nicer to keep the army enthusiasts happy but it wasn't the focus of the story. we did the best we could.
Anything we couldn't get from Ebay, we made like the machine gun above. Basically a drilled pipe with plumbing bits.
One thing that I initially worried about was actors, while Guy was an easy choice for Simmonds(no offence) we needed a strong actor to play hunt after a brief casting call, we chose actor David Bell. This turned out to be a fantastic choice as David was not only a good actor that brought a lot of character to Hunt, he also had Air-softing experience which made him a believable soldier.
On a cold mid January morning we began filming, both actors were not available so i stepped in to double for Hunt while Brian directed, With Dale Morgan on Camera and James McMullan on sound. Here we filmed some of the chase, and all the machine gunner sequences. See if you can spot my shots in the film.
James agreed to be our Machine Gunner. Heres a picture of him absolutely loving it.
The gunner was going to be barely visible so there was no need to kit him out too much, Just a green jacket and a real army surplus helmet. We took this approach with the whole German army, and thus had to evoke their presence with sound as opposed to people.
A really awesome looking dog also came along and nicked all our cookies....
Day one wrapped after about 2 hours of filming, I was a tad skeptical but there wasn't much more we could do.
Day two was a far bigger day where we shot the remaining parts of the film, as Brian had shot day one, i shot day 2 and we quickly got into the character sequences with David and Guy. Both had clearly learnt the script and performed really well, as a result filming was near seamless with only 2 line flubs in the whole performance, there wasnt any flash flooding either, TAKE THAT WEATHER MAN
Around 4:30 after everyone had been suitably covered in fake Blood filming wrapped, we made a triumphant, over the top exit down Stormont mile and then ran for home.
To be continued.
