We introduced a new extra curricular activity in the form of a Film Unit, which offers pupils the chance to make their own films under the guidance of a team of professionals headed by the celebrated documentarist and former pupil at the school, Michael Grigsby.
The Unit was formed in September 2003 to coincide with the opening of a new arts centre at the school which provided greatly improved facilities for music, drama and art.
Two members of staff there, Jeremy Taylor and Kris Spencer, had planned to introduce film-making when the new drama facilities became available, and were clear their new group should be called a Film “Unit”, rather than a club, in recognition of the pioneering documentary work of groups such as the GPO and Crown Film Units. They also wanted the activity to serve the school community by offering to make films about aspects of school life. However, the ambition and scope of their project increased greatly after a chance meeting with Michael Grigsby in the summer of 2003 that saw Grigsby agree to return to the school he left as a boy in 1955, to teach and inspire a new generation of film makers. Nearly 50 boys applied to join the Unit, but practical considerations meant places had to be restricted to approximately half that number, so boys were selected after being asked to submit ideas for a one-minute film or soundscape.
Headmaster Mark Turner backed the project enthusiastically, and work began with a series of workshops in the Autumn term, in which Grigsby introduced boys to the development of documentary through films such as “Night Mail”, “Drifters”, “Man with a Movie Camera” and “Listen to Britain” alongside some of Grigsby’s own films such as “A Life Apart”, “The Score”, “Lockerbie: a Night Remembered” and “Living On the Edge”. They watched some Iranian films, too, including “Kandahar”, “The Apple” and “The Day I Became a Woman”, before Larry Sider, Head of Post Production at the National Film School, visited Abingdon in December to lead a session on editing. The boys then pitched ideas for their own short documentary films, and six were chosen for production, with members of the Unit organising themselves into teams containing a director, cameraman and sound engineer. Equipment was ordered during the Christmas holidays, and training exercises began in January this year. Grigsby brought in specialists Jonas Mortensen (Camera), Mikkel Eriksen (Sound) and Nikolaj Larsen (Editor) to lead these sessions, and the boys learned quickly, as they had to, for they had been presented with a unique opportunity. Michael Grigsby’s retrospective season at the National Film Theatre was scheduled for June, and would include an evening devoted to the origins of his film-making career as a boy at Abingdon in the 1950s. Patrick Russell, curator of the BFI’s non-fiction collection, and the man responsible for the Grigsby programme at the NFT, was keen to show some of the new films alongside an extract from Grigsby’s first film, “No Tumbled House”, an affectionate, witty and irreverent portrait of the school made in 1955. So, research, filming and editing of the boys’ first exercises in film all had to be completed by late April. There was also the small matter of a few exams.
As they learned the practical skills of filming, sound recording and editing, the boys were encouraged by Grigsby to adopt some of the values that have characterised his work during thirty- five years or more of compassionate and fiercely independent film-making. For example, they were reminded of the importance of allowing the audience time and space in which to think and form their own judgements, instead of belabouring them with ‘the message’ in the manner of most of today’s television, where authoritative voices, extreme camera angles and frantic editing paces have become the norm. Above all, Grigsby conveyed to his charges his own sense of the quiet dignity of ordinary people’s lives, and the duty of the film-maker to offer “a voice to the voiceless”. The Abingdon Film Unit boys have responded enthusiastically. Their six short films show a determined attempt to look at the world around them, with subjects including Oxford’s homeless population, the benefits of horse riding for an autistic boy, the old world skills of a pair of local cobblers, two contrasting views of re-development in Reading, impressions of the morning journey to work in Abingdon and a reminder of what it’s like to be a newcomer in a large institution.
This outward looking approach is perhaps the most exciting and educationally valuable aspect of the whole enterprise, and one that Grigsby and his colleagues are keen to develop in the next stage of the Abingdon Film Unit’s activities. In addition to making films that serve their immediate school community, there are plans to develop links with local state schools through the Oxfordshire State Independent Schools Partnership Scheme, and to pursue opportunities for dialogue with schools and film-makers in other countries via film festivals and the web. Staff and tutors have been heartened by the boys’ enthusiasm for a more demanding and responsible approach to the making of films and television programmes. They have worked hard, not only when making their films, but in juggling their normal academic commitments to complete them. Some have even expressed a desire to make careers in film and television, and for these, recent news from the BBC of a renewed commitment to responsible documentary and arts programmes must be a welcome and heartening development.
Jeremy Taylor
Director of Drama
Abingdon School
Park Road,
Abingdon,
Oxon,
OX14 1DE
Tel 01235 849002
e-mail: jeremy.taylor@abingdon.org.uk
