ARTS STAG’S WORLD OF ROCK
A FILM MAKER’S POINT OF VIEW
It’s always difficult writing a monthly column compared to a weekly one as a lot can change in a month, especially with this pandemic still here. When you read this it will be early January and I should be writing “How did your Christmas go, and did you see any good bands, etc.?” However, as I’m writing this on 4th December to meet the magazine’s deadline, who knows what this government has got planned and just one announcement can scupper things. Singer Laurence Parry and I went down to Porthcawl’s John Street bandstand to see the Xmas lights turned on but sadly it was cancelled. I think they forgot to put batteries in them! We made a video about it and put it on Facebook and it cheered a few people up. I hope my good friend and fellow columnist Anthony Hontoir gets better soon after his bike accident. Anthony, who writes his monthly Film Maker’s Point of View, has made some great local history DVDs which can be purchased from his Downwood Films website. I trust next month I will have more local music news but keep the calls coming. Stag Marks 07549 728356 Photo: Stag Marks
In October and November I made two trips up to Scotland as part of a film crew working on Carl Richards’s lighthouse documentary. We were joined there by sound recordist Paddy Copland and on the first trip we went far north to Fraserburgh, near Paddy’s home city of Aberdeen, to film at the Northern Lighthouse Board’s Museum of Scottish Lights, and for the second trip we filmed an interview with Mike Bullock, the NLB’s chief executive at their Edinburgh headquarters. We based ourselves on both occasions at The Hawes Inn, a delightful hotel in South Queensferry, right under the Forth railway bridge, that magnificent example of Victorian civil engineering, completed in 1890, which appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 masterpiece, “The 39 Steps”, and whilst there, I couldn’t resist the temptation to take a walk along a footpath at the water’s edge to find the exact spot where Hitchcock’s camera had been set up to take the shots of the bridge. Nowadays, the two Forth road bridges appear in the background, which, notwithstanding their own importance in linking both sides of the Firth of Forth, slightly spoil the view! Anthony Hontoir, Downwood Films 07510 934299 Picture: (l to r) Paddy Copland, Anthony Hontoir, Fiona Holmes (NLB Communications Officer) and Carl Richards
Deadline date for the February issue is: SATURDAY 15TH JANUARY
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