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The making of My Darling John

Tears, that was the problem TEARS, but wait, I get ahead of myself... Let me outline the stages in the production of My Darling John

Inspiration for the film came from a joke circulating on the Internet. The premise appealed to me so I developed this into an outline script for discussion by our filming group Valley Films.

All agreed that it was “worth a go”.

The whole of the team got together to build character profiles, outline location requirements and a props list. Additional ideas were explored and the working script determined.

Locations
Inside shots needed to match the period and have a homely feel. The outside shots required an orchard setting, facing West (for sunset scene) and quiet. Quite a tall order in the busy South East of England.

Actress
She had to be in her twenty’s, have an expressive face with a good complexion for the close-ups, able to cry and be prepared to be filmed kissing. The fellows of the group all volunteered to do the testing of the last attribute but the wives vetoed this. Spoil sports.

Actor
He had to complement the actress.

Armed with these briefs the Production team swung into action. After a number of auditions from Local Amateur dramatics groups we came up with our ideal girl, Jena, who came with the bonus of having an orchard in quiet, rural Kent. Only problem was boy friend. A non-actor who was not too keen on having his girl kissed by strangers on screen.

Solution? He took a crash course on acting.

My bungalow was chosen for the inside shots on the following grounds: Easy parking; lots of working space; Jennifer (my wife) makes a superb cup of tea; Oh! And the furniture and ambience fitted the requirement.

Not too certain at this stage we were taking this seriously enough.

In the meantime the technical group were doing “Techie” things. Collecting cables, polishing cameras, servicing tripods etc. The Director? Well… he was doing “thinking”. That way he kept out of everyone’s hair.

On the first day of the shoot everything was going along swimmingly. The camera crew filming; sound crew recording; lighting crew throwing light on the subject; production team giving the usual encouragement and advice and the director being his normal obnoxious self, bullying all and sundry.

Then came disaster. The actress just could not get the tears to roll.

She tried thinking sad thoughts. Difficult with all us jokers around. Next we tried fake tears drops. Works on stage but unnatural in film close-ups. Someone started to peel onions but the camera crew couldn’t see through their tears and the actress was convulsed in laughter at the antics. We tried plain water but that just left streaks, no teardrops. The director favoured the direct approach. a good slap on the actresses face but the rest objected. Then inspiration, someone suggested eye-drops.

Success. A real good weepy.

During post production the Director was unhappy with the sound track. “Just not enough emotion” he mumbled. So back came the actress for a session of sound recording.

“Wont take long it’s only a short film” said the Director. 2 hours later we finished.

After extensive research we hit lucky with the music, finding a copyright free track that exactly matched the films theme.

It was a wrap!

We were gratified at the films success and flattered to have it selected as one of the entries for UNICA.

- Jeff Friend on behalf of Valley Films     August 2004

My Darling John was one of the UK offical entries to UNICA 2004, Germany.
Click here to read more about UNICA 2004 and other UK entries.


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