BARBARA HODGSON talks to producer Dawn Furness about the chilling experience of making her new independent feature film
IF you’re making a scary movie and seeking natural performances from a young cast – some of them new to acting – then scaring them witless before the cameras start rolling is probably a good start.
That certainly wasn’t Dawn Furness’s intention but there was no doubt that her young actors were rattled well before filming started at Lindisfarne in Northumberland on ghostly horror story Rising Tide which has its premiere at Tyneside Cinema tonight.
The cheery producer, from Cramlington, describes a hair-raising journey when she escorted her teenage cast to Holy Island last October.
She recalls: “It was terrible weather conditions, with crashing hail, and getting dark,” as the group was crossing the causeway the evening before the start of filming and found their way ahead suddenly blocked.
They’d had just enough time to beat the incoming tide until a driver in front panicked and stopped his car, planning to make for the refuge.
“We were stuck, some of the kids started screaming and there was a massive lighting bolt!” says Dawn.
It was only after she got out to deliver a few sharp words that the vehicles got moving again then, when they finally arrived at the old property where they were to stay, they found the storm had wiped out the electricity.
So it was in semi-darkness that night that the filmmakers fed the cast the chilling scenario they were due to film the next day.
The idea of drip-feeding the script and storyline to the actors immediately prior to filming was intended to create a raw, naturalistic and improvised-style for what Dawn describes as a mystery horror film.
No wonder then, when playing out the story of a bunch of school-leavers on a camping trip – who become trapped on the island when the tide water fails to go down before facing a bloody showdown – the locally-recruited youngsters were well primed and turned in realistic performances.
“They’d all taken part in workshops learning improvisational techniques so they were developing a back story,” explains Dawn.
“But we kept the story from them until we were about to shoot the scenes on the island.
“They knew their relationship and what the characters had done together previously but not what they were going to do in the film the next day.”
The idea for Rising Tide, co-produced and directed by Philip Shotton and funded by Northern Film & Media, developed from an original outline Dawn had worked upon as part of a project involving New Writing North.