THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE - The Policeman's Holiday

FINDON VALLEY GOES EALING

"The Policeman's Holiday" was a project conceived during the winter of 1954 and completed during between Easter and June of the same year. The idea was to make a story film lasting about ten minutes and show it at one of my film shows at 2 Vale Drive.

I must have been about twelve when a chance visit to the Odeon one Saturday morning found me watching the Ealing Comedy "Hue and Cry". Halliwell's describes the film as the first "Ealing Comedy" using vivid London locations as background for a sturdy comic plot where a gang of boys discover that their favourite comic is being used by crooks to pass on information. The climax takes place on the Docklands bomb sites, adjacent to the river and St. Paul's where the crooks are rounded up by thousands of boys. The film was great fun in the 1940s and remains so today. (Available on DVD for £8). I was hooked. This would be my debut as film director (?). Findon Valley and Cissbury Ring would be the setting for the ten minute version of Hue and Cry to be titled "The Policeman's Holiday".

All this would remain a dream until the spring of 1953 when the father of one of my friends lent us his Pathescope B Motocamera with a f3.5 fixed focus lens and no tripod bush. We spent spring and summer exposing six one minute chargers of black and white film at ten shillings a minute. The average wage was about six pounds a week. Today the average is, we are told, about three hundred pounds, which would make film ruinously expensive at about twenty five pounds a minute.

This earlier film has been transferred to DVD. It is pretty horrendous and one section, which was a first attempt at story telling, has been described by me as "buttock clenching". It taught me that a script was important and the only way to ensure the project would be completed.

So, in January 1954 I started to write this story loosely based on "Hue and Cry" in as much as the climax would involve hundreds of children chasing the crooks over the back of Cissbury Ring to the old war time rifle range. My powers of persuasion produced a cast of twenty souls willing to trust me not to make them look too foolish. First though a camera had to be purchased. A shop in Queens Road, Brighton displayed a Pathe Deluxe with an f2.5 focussing lens and tele-photo attachment for seventeen pounds ten shillings, a huge sum for 1954 but only just over half the price of a new camera. The first task was run a charger of film to check the camera, so we filmed a sort of trailer for the coming epic. Not a lot of this exists but there is an off centre title "Featuring That Star of Comedy Brian Meetens" plus a couple of still frames. Fifty two years has passed and our Chairman is still "that star of comedy".

Now to find a film studio. Why a film studio? Well, films are made in film studios — aren't they? Well, I thought so. Behind Lyles radio and tv shop in Findon Valley is a garage, just a little bit larger than the average, and as the three Milner boys were to be in the film they were in the best position to twist their father's arm to allow us to use it during the day. Permission granted, this became our base for 80% of the interiors.

WE BEGIN TO FILM OUR EPIC

The basic story line was boy gets job, overhears boss planning burglary. At the Youth Club he persuades his friends to help him catch the crooks.

Getting started meant breaking down all the shots into a daily shooting script to ensure that all the shots would be covered for each location. Each member of the cast received their own personal copy. Starting on Tuesday, after Easter Bank Holiday, the schedule was set out for the morning afternoon and evening up to Saturday and then Sunday morning. The first lesson I learnt was never to put the camera on the tripod until we were ready to shoot. One member of the cast started to muck about in the confined space of the garage, tripped over a tripod leg, sending the camera crashing to the ground. Following an opinion from Loaders in Worthing it was decided the camera had not been damaged and we could press on.

The garage behind the shops was the main centre of activity. The following scenes were shot there, the outer office, the inner office, the Youth Club, the Policeman's bedroom, the two phone calls received by the boys and finally the boys waiting in the bushes for the crooks to arrive. (The "film studio" was demolished in 2005). The breakfast scene and tying up the secretary were shot at 67 Limetree Avenue. Other exterior locations were the roadway behind the shops, Cissbury Avenue, Findon Road at the start of the dual carriage way, The Gallops, the corner of Central Avenue with Limetree Avenue, the Downs behind Cissbury Ring and the derelict rifle range.

Filming in confined spaces creates problems. If it isn't possible to cover the interior from the inside, then go outside and shoot through an open window. This created disaster number one — parallax. When the film returned from processing there was a windowsill visible in the bottom of the frame. Too bad, nothing could be done. Money to re-shoot was not available. It was one take only throughout the film. Disaster number two — during the inner office scene with the crooks a hair in the camera gate is visible on the right side of the picture. There was also a lesser known problem with 9.5 mm film stock. Pathescope never dated their packs. As film ages the speed rating changes and the resulting picture becomes more grainy. The faster film would lie on the dealers shelves longer than the slower more popular outdoor stock. The only way of telling the age was to become aware of how the packaging changed over the years. I was buying the film at one charger a week from my paper round money. Watching the pile grow was exciting. I learnt later, from the Amateur Cine World, the best method was to buy in bulk from the manufacturer. Fifty years on we are able to see instant replay on our camcorders. In 1954 we could only cross our fingers and hope. Instant replay would have revealed the windowsill, visible in the outer office shot. The hair in the camera gate a thing of the past and the experiments in "film noir" improved.

I set to work in the best "Ed Wood" manner to turn the garage into six different interiors and one exterior. The sliding door at one end had lengths of wallpaper pinned to the doors with curtaining material hanging between the drops of wallpaper for the offices. You will notice that as the door on the right leading to the inner office opens the roadway is just visible between the hinged section of the sliding door! The Youth Club was set up by opening the garage doors and placing the camera in the roadway. Waiting in the bushes was achieved by collecting greenery from the woods and fixing it to the doors. The effect was quite convincing. Removing the curtaining, adding a bed with bedside table complete with telephone, table lamp and picture on the wall created the policeman's bedroom.

Now to find out if the cast would turn up. One of the crooks turned up on the second day to announce that his mother was going to take him shopping and he couldn't come again. Perhaps he thought it was all a load of rubbish and he wanted out. This apart the attendance was satisfactory although a closer look while editing the video reveals that the gang of boys changes, especially during the fight at the end. Most noticeable is the missing crook. The three crooks suddenly become two. For whatever reason, number three didn't turn up for the final shoot. I could have covered it with someone standing in because in the final shots all the crooks had their backs to the camera. It was probably done by keeping the two remaining crooks on the right side of the frame and hope that the audience would think that the missing one was still there but out of sight!

The film may appear naive, but it was a project that required organisation and a great deal of persuasion to complete. I wish that more shots had been taken of Findon Valley. In 1954 there was so little traffic and the post war building boom had barely begun. I joined the RAF in 1956. Four years later all the gaps left from 1939 had been filled and it looks much as it does today. Well that's it. A few facts committed to print.

John J. Fisher

Some of you may remember these hand cranked machines, capable of handling the 300 foot 'super' spools of 9.5 mm film (ten to fifteen minutes of hand cranking!). Now I could give film shows. My long suffering parents allowed the hall to be turned into a cinema and friends had their arms twisted to attend one of the four performances. Saturdays only at 11 a.m. 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. The shows would consist of a cartoon, a short and a feature. The features were cut down versions of German classics and British Internal Pictures made at Elstree. Some were edited versions of early sound films. Titles like The White Hell of Pitz Palu, 'Q' Ships, Hitchcock's Blackmail and George Formby's No Limit were popular.

The years passed and at the age of fifteen raided my savings to purchase a second hand Pathe De Luxe 9.5 mm camera with an f2.5 focassing lens plus telephoto attachment. Here was a chance to make a Findon Valley version of Hue and Cry.

The Story

Early one morning a young lad (David Milner) is having breakfast with his parents (Wendy Cook and Craig Evans — my American pen pal) when he sees an advertisement in the local newspaper for an 'office junior'.

Following his application he arrives at the office, meets the secretary, (Lynette Sceales) and is interviewed by the boss (Steven Lillywhite).

A few weeks later three suspicious looking rogues arrive (Tony Greenway, Jack Stancombe and Richard Smith). They go through to the main office. The secretary is called in and David, his curiosity aroused, goes to the door and overhears plans for a burglary.

Jack Stancombe is on the right.

Later that day, at the local Youth Club, he persuades his friends (Brian Meetens, Peter Raby, Paddy Brennan, David Jenkins, Nicholas Marriot and Christopher Hicks) that it might be a good idea to try to catch the burglars. They set off on their bikes to wait in the bushes outside the house where the burglary will take place.

Later the crooks meet at the office. One of them arrives drunk (Richard Smith's mother said he couldn't come any more so we had to devise a way of removing him from the story). Continuity seemed important in the early stages of shooting, towards the end, less so.

The 'Film Studio' in 2004 - now demolished to make way for parking space.

The crooks leave for the 'job' in a car. By this time most of the boys are asleep. As the car arrives they wake up. The secretary is captured. (What was she doing there anyway and why did they leave the headlights on? The answer is I visualised the secretary would be silhouetted in the beam of the single dipped headlights. A touch of 'film noir'). The crooks hear a commotion, panic and leave.

Meanwhile the boys take the woman to a garage nearby, tie her up and try to make her talk. (Where is the hideout?)

Time passes and once again some of the boys are asleep. Eventually, David decides to search her handbag found lying at his feet on the garage floor. In it he finds a letter that gives the game away. (Fancy writing it down and why did she leave it in her handbag?)

Armed with this knowledge, David wakes Nicholas and tells him to wake his sister (Carol Marriott) and get her to phone their friends. Tell them to get up and go to the Cissbury Ring Rifle Range immediately.

Now things become even more far fetched. We are asked to believe that the phone will be answered by the young girl. At five in the morning? Surely her parents will be worried about her elder brother being out all night. Mum will be in the kitchen, drinking coffee and crying. The fathers will be combing the district in search parties organised by the police. (We couldn't afford the film stock for this development).

Photograph taken by John's American pen pal, Craig Evans.

The boys are now on their way to Cissbury and the young sister, (Carol Marriot) is busy phoning various friends (John Milner and Peter Milner). The local policeman (Harold Eliot) who is just about ready for bed, has to turn out again when he receives a phone call.

At the rifle range the boys plan a diversion to overpower the crooks. The policeman arrives a and tries to restore order but only succeeds in becoming involved in the fight. Finally order is restored and the policeman takes down the details in his notebook.

ALLO ALLO WOT'S GOIN ON ERE?

One evening in June, Harold Eliot and I were tidying up the loose ends, shooting the scene where the policeman leaves his house and finds he has a flat tyre. It was about 7.30 p.m. outside my home in Vale Drive and Harold was dressed as a policeman.

Suddenly a real policeman appeared cycling on the main road. His curiosity aroused, we had some explaining to do. I still can't believe such a coincidence could occur. He didn't stay long once he discovered we weren't engaged in some criminal activity.

Before the main film begins there are two film jokes. These have been left in because I appear in the first one and the second one shows David, apparently having a large rock being dropped on his head by Stuart, who is in a tree. The rock then bounces off David's head back to Stuart!