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The film arose out of a pretty standard lesson based on an article in the School Magazine. It was piece on the battle of the Somme in World War I, written in commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the battle. In addition to the comprehension and guided reading, we used the article to explore the imagery used by the writer – the kinds of similes and metaphors employed by the writer, reason behind those images, and their emotional effect. At the end of the unit, I asked the students to write letters as if they were soldiers in the trenches, combining the facts from the article with their own images to convey their direct experience. That was the heart of the entire session – imagine you are really there. What’s it like? What are you feeling? How can you egt those images and experiences across to your loved ones in a vivid way? What would you say to them? What connection would you be trying to make?
The results were impressive, and I have to say with some embarrassment that they were much better that I was anticipating, especially from certain quarters for whom my expectations were low! The students thoroughly embraced the spirit of the undertaking, producing quite moving, touching and highly visual letters home. Prime stuff for movie making.
We were already in the midst of doing our Kid Witness News program for the year, Heat It Up: Global Warming (boy, did we ever hit on the right topic for that year!), so I suggested the film idea to them, but for later in the year.
Heat It Up was duly dispatched at the end of Term 2 (it won the competition), and so I again broached the idea of doing something with the letters.
A core group of very enthusiastic students was quickly gathered, as it was decided to make this a “lunchtime” project. We’d already done our “class” movie project.
The first step involved a brainstorming session of ideas built from the wonderful content of the two letters. A structure had to be thought of – how will the ideas be presented to the audience? Who’s writing them? What do we see? My job at that point is to just record all the ideas and ask questions as the proxy audience: how do I know that? What’s happening now? What does this mean?
From that emerged an indirect narrative. We would see the two soldiers writing their letters home, and the visual would tell us that the two letters and their contents are interrelated, and that it was a single story being told. It was also suggested very early one that we see the recipient of each letter and their reactions. Once again, by brainstorming and dissecting the ideas, the “home” story emerged – another layer of the narrative where were see the consequences of the war for the loved ones left behind.
From this a screenplay was written. There is a free word template for non-commercial use available on the net (www.livingspirit.com) and I more-or-less demanded that the script be written using the correct format. Why not? It’s just another text type after all. Student were very familiar with the terms “long shot”, “close up”, “dissolve” and the like from their work with KWN, and they were both very comfortable and decisive with their selection of shots for the script. The final product was a fully professional-looking script that Spielberg could have picked up and shot. The outstanding screenplay – the best kid-written script I’ve ever seen – became the basis for shooting, with the structure lending itself to thorough shooting sessions.
With the screenplay locked, sets, props and costumes could be worked on. As nominal Producer, I took on the responsibility of organising a lot of this. I bought some old army coats from a brilliant disposal store that has outfitted many a Glenwood production. I even tried to get some Tommy helmets on Ebay, but they were too expensive. Ultimately one of the students hit on a brilliant idea of using some out, broken field markers (hemispheres) with cardboard brims – all spray painted green. They looked great! Our Somme trench was paper mache on MDF – well over two metres tall. I thought the army might help us out and build us a real one as a PR exercise – just a pile of sandbags would have done, but three calls (by the kids) yielded no response. I also found some toy bullets, a train-set trench and an old World War I tank model kit – meticulously assembled and painted by our “crew”.
For the “home” scenes, I contacted Liverpool Council who kindly let us “borrow” Collingwood House (build 1810). Our principal brought in an old, authentic era photo album, and ideas for the home costumes were liberally plucked. The sepia tone of the old photographs also provided suitable inspiration for the “look” of the scenes.
Shooting began in August of 2006, beginning at Collingwood House. It was truly thrilling to see the kids – actors and crew – coming together and throwing ideas and opinions back and forth to lift the scenes from the printed page. The lighting was wonderful, a combination of the wonderful ambience already present in the house, and the copious use of backlighting and reflected light in the kids’ set ups (I admit it – when I teach lighting I emphasis backlighting and reflected light. Why would I teach the lighting schemes I like?).
Magic Time, though, was truly the trench scenes. The aura of collaboration was palpable – a true coming-together of energies and single intent: to make a good, special and important movie. The absolute sincerity of the performances, especially from the leads, was something terribly impressive. There was so sense of self, no embarrassment, no shirking from the emotions that would be felt by the characters, and their openness was utterly supported and enhanced by the attitude of the crew. This was later transferred in toto to the battlefield scenes.
There was a lot of fun to be had in creating the special effects. Our explosions were created using a plywood board with a hole cut out of it. Across this was stretched a tacked down balloon membrane. The membrane is pulled down, filled with crud (talcum powder, bark, dirt), and let go. Boom – a wonderful explosion which is later enhanced by slowing it down and turning into scratchy black-and-white.
The editing was done on an eMac equipped with Final Cut Pro. With this edit program, a multitude of effects are available. After trawling through some samplers, the students settled on a juxtaposition of sepia for the home scene and grainy, scratched black-and-white for the war scenes. Most of the editing was completed at the beginning of the 2006 Christmas holidays, which shows unimpeachable professionalism and dedication!
The film was duly dispatched to Tropfest – the biggest and most competitive short-film festival in the world. Though shortlisted, it did not make the finals or even Best of the Rest – I don’t think I’m sticking my neck out by saying it would certainly have been the best film there relative to the age of the film makers!
At this writing, The Sorrow of War won the Short Sited Film Festival - Youth (Illawarra), and is entered in the Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) awards. None of that is important. It’s important to make a good film. We did that.
People probably get pretty bored when I tell
them of The Moment. It was during the shooting
of The Sorrow of War’s trench scene. I was on
the making-Of camera when the director was reading the script aloud to the actor. The actor had to emote to the words which he would later dub onto the soundtrack – the words of a letter he was writing to his loved one back home. As I was shooting, I think I had something akin to an out-of-body experience, or perhaps it would be better to compare it to a lucid dream – you know, one of those dreams you have when you know you’re dreaming. As I was filming, I suddenly realised I was in a very special and magical instant in the creative process. I looked at Aashita, the director, and listened to her superbly sensitive reading of the dialogue. With my camera still one her, a stole a glnace at the actor, Michael, as his face flowed through the emotions that the words were beckoning, I looked at the crew, Marian on lighting, Sakeena on camera, and the other actors waiting for their scene to come later in the night, their attention now fixed the performances. This was it! This was the moment – the apex of the collaborative process than brought this film into being. It was the perfect pedagogical version of a planetary alignment. All the forces had come together and were now focused on enriching this moment in time to the limit, and recording it for all to see. I just had to step out of myself for a moment and say “Wow – look at this! This is what it’s all about.” It was a great moment and one to treasure – and by golly I got it all on tape. To me, it’s the ultimate Special Feature on the DVD.
