Heading – The Silent Morris

 

We are Boughton Monchelsea Morris and were recently approached by a small independent film production company, and asked if we could provide a performance of Morris dancing.  We were required as part of the background, during the filming of one scene in their film.

 

Whilst some of us have been filmed by local TV in the past, enough of the side thought that it would be an experience to see how a film was made so that four musicians and six dancers were able to agree to perform.

 

We were told to meet at 4pm at a remote and isolated local pub, which is situated four miles down its feeder road, set amongst desolate fields and marshland, with no other houses nearby. Amazingly we all managed to not only find the isolated pub but also arrived on time, and trouped out of the car park only to find  no film crew and the pub doors locked.

 

The setting was beautiful, quiet & peaceful, surrounded by fields, overlooking the estuary with the sound of birds calling - unfortunately the time was October, the weather was freezing and a bitterly cold wind was blowing straight off the water. Andrea eventually managed to phone the producer, who explained that they were finishing off the previous scene and were running half an hour late. Then Andrea once again came to our rescue by getting the attention of the pub staff and persuading them to agree to open the pub to us.

 

Once inside and warm, we then filled the time with a music session, which was well into its stride, when the film crew started to arrive, and we would finally learn what they required from us. The producer explained that the scene was a conversation between two ladies, that was interrupted by a green man (another actor), with Morris dancing in the background. It would last between two to three minutes. I explained that most of our dances lasted about three minutes and that we could stop when required.

 

The director then dropped his bombshell – as it was a dialogue scene, we needed to be silent. They would record our music separately (to be overdubbed later) but for the filming itself the musicians needed to mime and the dancers need to perform without music, our bell pads or even footsteps (he then said that if our boots were too noisy we might need to dance on the paving in our socks!)

 

An impromptu group meeting was arranged to explore the unique requirements and work out which of our dances we could use. Eventually we agreed that “Ring of Bells” was the most appropriate, as the two stick clashing at the start of the dance would set the rhythm, even if we could not actually clash but needed to “pull” the clash at the moment of striking.

 

We thought it wise to practise both with music and without which proved somewhat more difficult than we imagined. Whilst we had our bells on the sound engineer recorded us several times. So we lined up for a practise, and went through the dance normally for ourselves, then tried it without any type of sound, and other than speeding up, managed to  finish it. The sound engineer then recorded the musicians playing the tune with the dance performed without stick clashing (on the first take).

 

After a long wait the director then got us to do a “positioning rehearsal” and moved us about to get us in exactly the right place. To make it more amusing our dance was to get progressively closer to the two actresses (Amanda Donohoe and Lysette Anthony).

 

The director continued to provide his instructions as to what he required from us. Firstly he rotated the set by ninety degrees, so that we were side on to the actors, and set back ten yards further away from the musicians, then explained that we needed to drift sidewards during the dance sequence, so that when the actors said a specific line the dancers were at a set point just a few feet away from the camera.

 

After a few attempts to establish how we could adapt the dance, we managed to establish that we could move sufficiently during the capers to achieve the required result, and so we invented the side stepping caper to move the set towards the women.

 

By now it was getting dark and colder and we were looking forward to some of Shepherd Neame’s best. But no rest, we now went into the rehearsal or should I say rehearsals. Stand here, move there, come hither, go thither endlessly. And to cap it all we had the silent melodeons puffing away like two old men climbing Snowdon!

 

At last we get it right but we now have to do it again with the cameras and sound rolling. Well I thought we did rather well with excellent stepping but no, the director made us do take after take just to get that little bit right or to get a different camera angle. Even the simple scene of us walking away from the pub took two takes.

 

Finally we thought we can now be filmed and go back into the pub and get warm again. Four hours later, and I don’t know how many takes the scene was in the can, we finally managed to achieve that!

 

Despite if being a small ultra low budget short film, it had a crew of twenty, and now they sprang into life. Large film lights on poles were arranged, sound booms and microphones positioned, last minute touch-up of makeup applied countless times and various others were running around.

 

Whilst the lighting man was putting up the lights the camera and sound crews and us hung around; then whilst the sound man was recording the camera and lighting crew and us hung around and so on. (It was Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones who said that he had been in show business for 25 years but only spent 5 years performing – the rest was hanging around airports, backstage ...

 

When the director called, start, the sound man shouted “sound running”, someone else called the scene number, then our cue “background action” and off we started. After numerous takes we asked what was happening and they explained that they liked to provide the editor with a selection of shots and some of the takes were shot from a different camera angle.

 

All told we all agreed that it had certainly been an experience - albeit a freezing cold one – and we learnt a lot about filming techniques and we are looking forward to seeing our fleeting images in the background of “One Careless Owner”, when we get the DVD. Would we do it again if we were asked?  Only if we were wearing our thermals!

 

So please look out for the Green Man carrying a pig’s bladder, melodeon players not co-ordinating their bellows and the sound of morris bells from dancers not wearing any.