VILLAGE DAY - Continued

    All I wanted to do was produce a film!
   So I had a script, I had cast and crew, and all the problems that go with producing a film, and it soon became clear that I would have to stamp my authority on every aspect of the film. But what I had not expected to happen was for the feminist league, within Six of One, to raise its head asking how many women would be working on the film? How many acting, how many behind the cameras? Would there be a female No.2? It didn't matter to me one jot who was who, male female, black or white, of whatever ethnic background, just as long as the job they said they could do, they actually got on with it. But worse was yet to come......
    On the question of funding, it was during a pre-production meeting that I received a telephone call from a person who said she had £600 of her own money to put towards the films funding, which at first I thought was most generous. But the thing was, there were strings attached. This person said that all the cast members should have new Village costumes for the film, many of whom already had their own costumes which they wore at Prisoner Conventions, and at a quick calculation new costumes would cost in the region of £1,200, which was double what this person was going to put into the film. And which meant that I would have to find the other £600. Plus I was to have to meet on neutral ground with this person, this to discus the films script development, and the development of the film's production. I was to make a woman the director of the film. And what's more I was to tell no-one about this. I had the feeling that this person was to control the films production by pulling my strings, thus controlling the films production through me!! But I did speak to my wife, and three other people about this, and they all gave me the same advice, which I had already decided upon, which was not to accept the money. I soon penned a letter thanking this person for her kind offer, but I felt that I was no in a position to accept it.
   Once the project was underway, I was very keen to keep to the parameters set by POLYGRAM who owned the copyright to 'the Prisoner' at that time. However for one co-ordinator of Six of One this was not enough. then quite out of the blue, I received a letter from a co-ordinator of Six of One, one RL, who had written a very long letter telling me what I couldn't do concerning the film.  Letter after letter passed bewteen us, detailing endless lists of things that he said I must not do, and I was getting infuriated by this man's attitude. After all I was making a film for Six of One: The Prisoner Appreciation Society, and not for my own personal gain. RL continued to tell me what I could not do in further letters just as though 'the Prisoner' was his own personal property. So in the end I took no further notice and did what I wanted to do, but keeping to POLYGRAMS parameters. There I was doing my best to produce something for the society, but being blocked at every turn by one of it's co-odinators. I felt more and more that 'Village day' was my film, and the work I was doing getting further and further away from being a Six of One film project.

    All the above sounds very negative, and it is. What's more once I had solved one problem another occured soon after. It was a case of one step forward and two steps back!

 Music Composition

    Originally my plan had been to use the soundtrack to 'the Prisoner,' and hoped that would be possible. Failing that I had a Music Director who was more than capable of composing some original music for the film. However, having heard nothing from my music Director I tried to contact him on several occasions, but without success. At a Prisoner Convention, I was told that I had sacked my Music Director. I said I haven't spoken to him, that I'd like to very much. The effect being the Music Director had actually sacked himself from the film project!

   So I had no music for the film. No theme, no incidental music. If I could not solve this problem, the film was sunk! And then quite out of the blue I was contacted by a musician Bruce Stringer from Australia, and he asked if he could compose the theme music for the film. I told him he could compose all the music for the film if he wished to.

    I didn't know what music I wanted for the film, but I would know when I heard it, and that went for the film theme music. Bruce had sent me a few tapes of the music he had composed in the past, and I was well impressed. In time Bruce composed some music and sent them all the way from Australia for me to listen to them, and I would make notes, and suggestions on how I wanted the music changed, until we arrived at what I wanted. We wrote to each other, passing tapes between us, and at times we spoke on the telephone. One time I was at work, and my boss called me in saying that there was a telephone call from Australia, my Music Director, she was impressed. And after the call my boss wanted to know what I was up to, and word soon spread about my film project within the company.

   So there we were, Bruce stringer and I 12,000 miles apart with letters and audio tapes going back and forth, not having ever met, and Bruce asking nothing for his work. Bruce Stringer was a godsend, and he did a brilliant job with the films sountrack.

    Since I've been listening to the 3cd soundtrack to the Prisoner, I have realised just how close the composition of the soundtrack to Village Day actually came to that of the Prisoner series. Of course the music is completely different, I mean the music in its composition. For example for Village Day there are 3 separate and entirely different tracks of Drums in tempo. There are Trumpets, Whistles and Sweet Whistles, not forgetting Mysterious Village - Bells / Mysterious Village - Air / Mysterious Village - Organ  / Mysterious Village - Gothic incidental music of which are variations on a theme, some of which remained unused for Village Day as was the case of some the incidental music composed for the Prisoner.

    So if once upon a time the track and their composition was something of a surprise to me, now after listening to the Prisoner cd soundtrack, I can compare the two, as the 3 Prisoner cd's contain such tracks as;

Drum FX-1 Low Timp - Slow

Drum More Menace

Small timp - slow

Small Timp - More Menace

Large Timp - Single Beats

    And of course there variations on a theme as in Pop Goes The Weasle {"Pop-Weasle"-Piano}

"Pop" Two {"Pop-weasle"-Piano, Block, Etc}

"Pop" Three {"Pop-Weasle" - Piano, Cymbal Etc} Not to mention two variations of "Boys And Girls Come Out To Play", which are but a small example of the 235 tracks on the 3 cd's.

  So all in all I am most gratified to see that the music composed for my Art house film 'Village Day,' and the way in which it was composed, is very much in keeping with that of the music composed for the Prisoner.

    Just as a footnote, Bruce Stringer Music director for 'Village Day' could not have used the soundtrack music for 'the Prisoner' as inspiration, because back in 1997-98 there was no-way he could have heard any of the unused soundtrack music for the original series, as they were not publically available at that time.

    For location filming, I intended to use some of 'the Prisoner' London locations, and a long and lonely road in Berkshire near Bracknell. There was a ready made interior of No.6's cottage in an attic in Wallasey on Merseyside.

  I had a number of people working in Properties, making, and aquirering all manner of props Village badges - Village telephones, including that large over-sized curved red telephone used by No.2 in 'the Prisoner.' A home made telescope was required for a scene in the film, but where to get such a device? Well No.6 had to improvise and make a "home made" telescope, and "they" said it wouldn't work! The telescope was made out of two different spectacle lenses, two cardboard tubes, and held together by masking tape. Improbable, but not impossible. As this very same form of telescope was actually made by British prisoners in Colditz castle during WWII, so that they could watch the female occupants in house nearby.

     Copies of a specially printed Tally Ho newspaper. A bust of Pratick McGoohan-No.6, based on the one seen in 'The General.' And drawings and a model were made of the interior of a full-size interior of No.2's office were drawn up. This set was to be constructed on a sound stage in Wallasey, which we will come to in a later blog.

   Next time;

  The Portmeirion shoot. We started filming on the Saturday morning at 7pm of the 1998 Prisoner Convention, and working each day, on and off, we did not finish filming until 5pm the following Friday!

 Be seeing you