ORIGINALLY POSTED July 2014
When something big happens a mile or so up the road from your house you feel somehow honor bound to take a look. Well, I do. So did my late Dad , and indeed his Dad, my ‘Gramp’ . If there was a ‘happening’ nearby, maybe a fire or a road accident, a new development or even (in our case) a big raft of tree felling in the nearby woods, it drew them like moths to a flame.
The ‘happening’ this week, the flame drawing this moth, might, or might not, be something that hundreds of millions , right the way round the world, will see within a year. Thats pretty big, in the scheme of thing. Dad and Gramp would have taken a look. Even if the rest of the family would have called them ‘silly buggers’ as we tend to do around here.
Rumour has it the latest STAR WARS is being filmed. And it’s only a mile or so from my home at a local tourist attraction known as Puzzelwood. It’s not being openly admitted but there is the mother-and-father of film units currently set up in their car park and adjoining fields. It’s big. Massive.
We get a few film units operating round here. DR WHO, MERLIN, ATLANTIS and even the kids programme TREE FU TOM have been filmed within the shaded mysterious confines of Puzzelwood in the past decade. Last year JACK THE GIANT KILLER was the first ‘Hollywood’ production (that we know of) to use the place. Ewan McGreggor apparently stayed in a local guest house while the crew descended on the site of the ancient Roman iron mines that lie beneath the tangled shrubbery and weave a network of miniature canyons hanging with moss ivy and in spring, wreaking of wild garlic.
This week the crew that pitched up seemed like Manchester Utd compared to Ewan’s village football team. The rows of white campers, mobile make-up rooms, wardrobe trucks and catering vans try to hide behind a temporary blue fence while the action itself is more successfully screened from prying eyes by the topography of the site.
There be film people in them thar woods! Hundreds of em!
The BBC had a reporter outside the gate yesterday and the news that this ‘might’ be STAR WARS is all over the internet today. But when I took an hour off work to fulfil my family tradition of chronic nosiness there was just a single ‘paparazzi’ with a long lensed Nikon, and me. And both of us were on the grass verge by the fence looking at the bustle and the game of cat and mouse being played out between the security people and the world at large. That the world at large was mostly ignoring them leant a relaxed humour to the whole matter.
As I strode towards the gate a yellow hi-viz jacketed security guard smiled and greeted me with the observation “Wow, them’s snazzy braces!” in a strong sing-song south Wales accent. My 2 inch wide chequered-flag patterned trouser-retainers had caught his attention after first establishing that I was not packing a Nikon SLR with a 1200mm lens, and so must, as a result , be fairly innocuous and little threat to the security of the site.
The ‘pap’ smiled and we exchanged a few greetings. “Have you got anything?” I asked . He smiled ruefully “Nah. been here three days already.” The security guard asked where I was from and once we established I was just a rubber-necking local he was even more satisfied that I was harmless.
“Are they taking on extras?” I asked “No” he said. Shame. I could have used the cash and it would have got me ‘in’ . Clearly no-one was getting ‘in’ . Cars that arrived with smoked glass windows were checked through an opening ‘gate’ in the blue fence and a CCTV was conspicuous by it’s presence, filming everything and everyone that got near the gate.
The security guard’s radio crackled , he smiled at the ‘pap’ and stood in front of his camera “You gotta get a shot of my best side” he grinned. “Is someone coming out?” asked the ‘Pap’ , he nodded and grinned again. It was all in the game. Whoever it was (we never actually saw anyone), they were back under cover very soon and the guard moved off to chat with the crew of a Police dog unit that had pulled up “Just to have a nose and blag a free latte!” he reckoned .
The ‘Pap’ said he was enjoying the whole thing even if he hadn’t actually , as far as he knew, snapped anyone of remote interest. Every now and them his long lens fixed on someone going into a truck. click-click-click went the camera and maybe a third ‘best boy’ or assistant ‘grip’ or anyone of those hundreds of names you see at the end of a big movie had been caught on camera. Once we saw someone in a long hooded cloak, like a medieval friar. “I think those are stunt men” he said “and the cloaks are over the top of the costumes to hide them” . He reckoned all the vehicles against the fence had ‘stunt…’ this or that on their doors. “Looks like some big fight sequence. Maybe all stunt doubles and none stars here at all!”
The cheerful security man returned. “Nice job you’ve got today” I said, the sun being out and the sky blue. “I love it!” he said “It was even better yesterday!” Yesterday it had rained and a thunderstorm had briefly turned day into night. “Nobody here at all! Bring it on!”. He looked at the camera man “I gotta stand in front of you again” he grinned and as he did so someone walked into the most ‘exposed’ door on what looked like a dressing room truck. “Mike, Mike, this is Dave – can you get something to block…” he began to say as the radios crackled but they were already replying “There’s a yellow truck about to….” just as a yellow truck appeared to close off the view to that door. Our security man laughed “I can see it! It’s here…no hang on..he’s gone to far! Back up a bit” The truck did. Too far again. Shock ! Horror, we could see that door again. “No forward you dummy!” he said with a chuckle “Stop! Thats it. Sorted” He smiled at us “Can’t get the staff…” and within ten seconds the carefully located-relocated and re-relocated truck moved off. And out came a other hooded ‘friar’ . Heads shook, the camera went click-click-click and the game continued.
“I’m just going this way” said the ‘Pap’ as I was chatting the guard keyed his radio’ “Professional photographer on the move” he declared then called after him “I said that out of respect, like!” and laughed . Then he ushered me to follow him “Come on we’re a family now, let’s not leave him on his own”. Ten yards along we stopped. The camera mono-pod was now planted in a bramble patch. The guard smiled “Oh look at that he’s playing clever and making me step into that lot!” . He may as well not have bothered there was little to see except a knot of people with passes round their necks pointing in our direction and seemingly working out where to put in yet another blue fence panel.
“This is the most beautful place in the country” said the guard looking across at the woods “I’m not kiddin’, it is! I’m Welsh and I’ve been all over, but this is so beautiful I’m bringing the kids up here for a visit when this is all over.”
When the guard moved back to the gate for another passing Police car I asked the Pap if he’d tried the back way into the woods. “I’ve been all the way round” he said “Can’t get anywhere near. I even brought my bike just in case.” I asked him is it was the film we all though it was? “They won’t say but I heard some radio traffic and they mentioned a name…” I didn’t catch who he said, or maybe it wasn’t familiar and so didn’t stick in my memory ” … and he’s definitely in it.”
“It” being STAR WARS . Episode…what are we on? Seven is it? I lost count a long time ago. I liked the first two, thought the third was rather childish and the later episodes and prequals truly yawn inducing. But STAR WARS is more than just a film to those of a certain generation. I saw the first one aged 11 and there was a magic to it back then. Now it’s on my doorstep and only a mile away from the cinema where I say awestruck at the antics of Luke Skywalker in 1977.
“I did a Dr Who shoot a while back” said the guard “I never met so many passionate, knowledgeable, obsessed…and to be honest in some cases certifiable, fans in my life . I’m a bit surprised there aren’t more people here today to be honest with you” At which point he had to tell his boss “Professional photographer on the move again” and sauntered off after the Pap who it seemed was going on a more serious walkabout. No. He was just stretching his aching legs. Maybe he was just toying with the guard to relieve the boredom. “I did a location shoot on a beach once” he said “All public access and it was like a scrum with people crowding round and the security couldn’t legally stop them! Must have been such a pain for the crew…”
A Mercedes with smoked glass drove past and turned in to the gateway, the blue panel was drawn back the faces behind it peered out as if guarding Checkpoint Charlie at the height of the Cold War. They looked serious. Out on the road side it was a game. And at that point it was time for lunch and my nosy nature had been satisfied. Even if I had seem little more than a car park and a lot of hi-viz jackets it was curiously gratifying. “I was there” as Max Boyce the Welsh comic used to say. It was enough. I headed off home.
I have to say I admired the jovial guard who was doing a brilliant job, keeping everything friendly and still thoroughly airtight. There was no flexing of muscles, no threatening, he was smiley and polite. If he asked you nicely to stand here or there you would, and we did. It was textbook stuff. Good luck to him he really does the job with style and as a result he seemed to enjoy every minute.
The ‘paparazzi’ was a kindred spirit. I spent many an hour stood around at Silverstone with a camera poised to photograph something that might happen while the F1 cars were testing there a decade or so ago. It’s a soul-destroyingly boring job if you let it get to you, but this guy had relaxed into the role and was enjoying the cat-and-mouse banter and the fact he was being paid to stand out there in the sun on a lovely day in a lovely setting. “I’m not going to do anything daft and risk a kicking” he said “But I have got my step ladder in the car!”.
By Friday the whole lot will be gone. The tourists will be back and maybe the Puzzelwood will become a magnet for STAR WARS groupies in the way Dingle in Ireland still draws people in just because the great David Lean and his crew filmed RYAN’S DAUGHTER there way back in 1969!
But maybe this isn’t even STAR WARS after all…? (I bet it is!)
UPDATE - IT WAS!
