Durham PS: When Hollywood came to Crook:

By Stephen Bell

Well to be honest it was not quite Hollywood but last Sunday gave me 1^st hand experience of how a film production company operates on location.

My story starts with an invitation from a work colleague, namely Paul Hodgson. Paul has suffered from the age of 10 months with a form of meningitis, which has impacted on his life in a massive way, including not being able to speak until he was 10, and being confined to a wheelchair. Paul however has always strived to get on, and has faced his problems head on in a positive and admirable way. Paul's passion in life is football and in particular his beloved Darlington FC. About 10 years ago Paul wrote a book called Flippers Side (Darlo till I die) which quickly sold out to great reviews. The story is a mix of Pauls life intertwined with Darlington’s promotion back into the football league in 1990. Promotion was sealed with a last gasp winning goal from Gary Coatsworth against Welling United.

Paul then decided to write a movie script based on the book and with help from some of his friends looked around for funding to finance a movie production. Their travels even took them to the Cannes film festival in France to try and drum up some interest. There was some interest but nothing concrete so to speak.

However all was not lost when a local film production company from Darlington became interested in the story. Calls were made and a cast materialised including Mark Stobbart (55 degrees North), James Baxter (Emmerdale) Tracy Wilkinson (Bad Girls, Billy Elliott) and Bill Fellows (Downton Abbey) getting on board.

So where do I fit in?

Well as I said I was asked along to the shoot along with other staff members as extras for the crowd scenes. Paul also agreed to me taking along my gear to get some still shots from the day. I met Mark Stobbart who was playing the lead role as Paul, and James Baxter who was playing Ian, Paul’s lifelong friend. Dan Perry the director was great in allowing me full access to the shoot on the provision I did not get in front of their filming. Some of Darlington’s playing staff turned up to play the footballers parts including Neil Wainwright who travelled over from Morecambe and Michael Smith who had the enviable role of playing Gary Coatsworth the scorer of the winning goal. What was a bit special was that Michael himself was diagnosed a couple of years ago with the same meningitis disease which for a while threatened both his career and his life.

Then who should appear but both the local BBC reporters and the Tyne Tees reporters too. Both conducted interviews with Paul as I snapped away unobtrusively. They hung around for a good hour filming for their relative evening news schedules that day. The story appeared that evening on both channels with yours truly making a small cameo appearance as did my work colleagues although Paul quite rightly won the starring role Oscar.

Anyway loads of “takes” were shot from various positions on the pitch, the crowd played their part in creating a terrific football atmosphere and I snapped away to my heart’s content. Was I enjoying myself? Not half. Then came a shout from Dan the director, Steve can you give us a hand? Stephen Bell then became the lighting technician for the close up panning shots taken from the rolling dolly. So what does a lighting director do then? He holds the reflector!!!! Not the most glamorous role but it was still great fun and created some banter from my work colleagues.

After the shoot everyone made their way to the clubhouse for a buffet and a couple of lubricants. The cast hung around and Director Dan asked if I could send him the images I took so they could use them for publicity. You bet I can.

So what’s next then?

The plan is to edit everything together and get the final trailer out to various contacts and venues including the Edinburgh Film Festival, and a return trip to Cannes. This is to try and secure more funding to eventually go ahead and shoot the whole of the movie. So who knows, maybe Hollywood might not be a pipe dream after all....fingers crossed XXX

My thanks go out to everyone who allowed me to have such a cracking day .