It’s a wrap

This summer has seen me having fun filming with Geoff Kerr and his crew in and around Grassington.
After the success of Geoff’s film Down the Wharfe recorded a few years ago, he is now working on a documentary entitled The Settlement.  The new film will trace the history of Grassington from medieval times through to the present; quite a mammoth undertaking.

I’m honoured to have been asked to help bring to life the story of Tom Lee, Grassington’s famous murderer.  Tom and his suspect companions did away with the local  doctor, Richard Petty, on the way home from a cockfight in Kettlewell in 1766.  The carefully researched excerpt about hatching the plot, carrying out the evil deed, disposing of the body and the subsequent arrest and hanging of Tom will take up a mere five minutes of the final documentary, but filming it took a number of days.

 

As I’ve learned before from working with TV crews, one minute of footage generally seems to takes an hour of filming and a day of editing as a minimum.  It’s time consuming and requires oodles of patience.

Geoff is a former member of Penny Plain Theatre Company  and so his old thespian friends, including yours truly, were his first choice for playing the motley eighteenth century villains.  Having already played Tom’s wife Jane Lee in a comedy version of the tale back in 2006, I landed the same role in this more serious and sinister depiction of what really happened.

My rustic kitchen was Geoff’s first idea for the location of the first scene of the story.  Though delighted that he’d thought it suitable I quickly pointed out the anachronisms that even I couldn’t hide with vintage dressing; central heating pipes and gas cooker tops.  The angles were tough too, so I suggested we try the Grassington Folk Museum instead.  It turned out to be a perfect location and so one morning in mid-June we filmed two scenes there.   Tom (played by Andrew Jackson) and his friends plotting the murder and a later scene – when Tom was already under arrest – where Jane threatens Tom’s young apprentice (played by Tom Powell); “You just keep your mouth shut, John Burnap, or you’ll be the sorrier for it”.

The next filming session was during the middle of the heatwave and found us all gathered in Grass Wood one Friday.  Jane Lee wasn’t present for the actual murder, so I was spared dressing up in eighteenth century costume on this occasion, but was instead drafted in to look after the horses.  Neither Andrew or Mark Bamforth had ever ridden and yet were required to do so now, for the first time, on film.  Thanks go to Kilnsey Trekking Centre for the loan of Felix, who was an absolute ‘schoolmaster’; perfect in every way.  So much so that I was desperate to take him home at the end of the day, especially as Mark (who happens to be my partner) had taken to the riding really well and I thought  it Felix would be a perfect companion for my pony, Magic.  A girl can always dream.

The other horse, Flint, belonged to Michael Darwin who was cast as Dr Petty, not because he had any previous acting experience, but because he is a horseman…and was required to fall off said horse for his dramatic demise.  He rose to the challenge admirably and a crash mat was provided for good measure.

It was a long seven hour day and the horses were incredibly well behaved given the sweltering conditions and the flies.  They put up with standing around for long periods, different riders getting on and off, and going over the same short stretch of ground over and over again as we filmed each take from several angles.

Professional make-up artist Lorraine Paylor was on-hand to create Dr Petty’s head injury and the attack was co-ordinated by professional stunt-woman Carolyn Dean.  We’ve no shortage of talent in Grassington.

 

 

A couple of weeks later and we all met again on a Friday evening to film the disposal of Dr. Petty’s body.  Lorraine was on-hand again to give Michael a deathly pallor and then he was dragged around a meadow and into the reeds at my (well, Jane’s) instruction.

From there we headed down into Grass Woods and filmed the long-suffering Michael being thrown into the river.  Well, at least that’s what it will look like.  With Carolyn on hand for stunt advice again and once more with the aid of a discreetly placed crash mat and some clever camera angles he was thrown over the edge and a few large stones were hurled into the river for a convincing splash.