The premiere of the club's 'Judgement Day'

Press report November 2005

by Josephine Jones

At November’s dub meeting we were treated to the final version of our film-in-a-day called ‘Judgement Day’. Although we had watched an edited version previously we certainly noticed the difference after Gordon Sutton, our editor-in-chief had pulled it all together so magnificently.

The four teams of cameramen, directors and editors did a fine job together with Dixie Dean as our producer and we could fully appreciate the hard work that had gone on in making this film Each group edited their own material but in the end the three hours of film were reduced to fourteen minutes. We can all rightly feel proud of this film which is being entered into the North-South Competition which this year is entitled ‘Tell Me About It

The burning of Bryan and Winkie's house was so realistic and brilliantly done and we look forward to January's meeting when we will learn more of the details behind the making of the film including Margaret Firmston’s script. Congratulations go to Gordon and thanks again to Bryan for conceiving this memorable day and for his and Winkie's hospitality

Bryan, as we all know, is very creative and also conceived the idea for the remainder of the evening which was how directors need to work with the actors, which stemmed from experiences during the making of 'Judgement Day’. After watching Gordon’s amusing direction of a silent movie for a past film-in-an-evening we were presented with actors reading three scripts from three different famous films.

The first film was a scene from ‘Citizen Kane’, the 1941 blockbuster. While guest actors Peter Goodtham and Stephanie Taylor read the script aloud Gordon as director, read the directions. The next part involved the actors including the actions and repeating the scene until the director was satisfied. We then got to seethe scene on film from the original movie and I am sure a lot of us came to the same conclusion that our ‘stars’ did an excellent job.

The same steps were taken with the second film ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ which originally starred Maggie Smith and Celia Johnson. Our own stars were Marianne Homer and Stephanie Taylor with Caroline Bullock directing.

Our final film was the amusing scene of Lydia's and Bernard's wedding from ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’. This was directed by Rita Wheeler and Peter and Stephanie acted the parts together with club member Steve. I don’t think any of us will tire of watching this scene from the original film so we ended with a chuckle and on a high note.

It was an ambitious undertaking and it was obvious that Bryan had put in many hours choosing the right films, finding the sequences and making the script available for reading. It was unfortunate that Derek Walls, who as an experienced director, should have been the overall director for these sequences, was ill and could not make it.

Dick Hibberd finished the evening by saying that directors have an impossible task and need to have the power of persuasion. He added that Bryan, our chairman, certainly has it to be able to persuade everyone to make a film in a day and set his own house on fire!