Nothing But Flowers

Conceived, shot and edited within one month - Nothing But Flowers had people cheering and clapping (even before the film finished) at the Evanton Film Festival. It was a real thrill.
We have, though, David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) to thank for some of the content because it was inspired by the Talking Heads song "(Nothing But) Flowers". Check out the song here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOEIRI5HSuQ

How did it come about? Well, I was talking to Scott Burke (my writing partner) one day in October 2007 and Scott started on a ramble about conservation from the point of view of someone who didn't like the idea of going back to nature (like in the song by Byrne) and he mentioned the 'Nothing but flowers' song. I said "brilliant idea for a short spoof documentary", though I hadn't heard the song at that time. I looked it up on YouTube and have been in love with the song ever since.

Scott made an audio file talking of his ideas for the film and emailed it to me. I then formatted it into a script and added my own bits and pieces. At that point I knew we had a really good, funny wee short in the making.

So we had one day in November (Sunday 4th to be precise) to get this baby filmed. We had done all the preproduction work like finding actors, locations and crew and source a cart. I didn't go to see it - I had a description of it over the phone.

So, on the day of filming we went to pick up the cart and Steve Padget took his trailer. One snag - the handles went straight down to the ground as supports rather than, err, handles, which would be horizontal. Steve said, "No problem I'll take it home and sort that out." I was thinking - no way is this going to be ready for the shoot - we were already running late. True to his word he did the handles and was at Culloden woods near Inverness by 12 noon - What a Star!

Gordon MacKay (who plays Professor Blurt) also went the extra mile (or 5) and picked up a couple of actresses in distress, and a tie for the main actor. . .

The main actor was of course Scott Burke as Dick Tietahs. Dick had debuted in a short we did earlier that year called "4 Minutes". He is an obnoxious, outragously selfish male shauvanist pig. Not only that he's not very nice and doesn't have many friends. A lot of fun to film :)

So there we were on the 4th (fortunately a very pleasant dry day) with a clean fresh script, it was 12.30pm and we had till 4pm to film everything before we lost the light! Blimey.

Everyone - fortunately - was focused and actors turned up on time, including Moray Firth Radio's very own Tich McCooey who was a great sport and did everything (and more) that we asked of him.

Special effects were minimal so that wasn't an issue. Blood, liver and dead rabbit on demand - good 'clean' fun.

The only slight hiccup was when we decided to film outside Tesco's on the retail park.. We were told by two Tesco's assistants that we wouldn't be allowed. I had a quiet word with them explaining that we'd decided on the spur of the moment to do this film and that it didn't show Tesco's in a bad light. Thankfully they agreed to let us go ahead. Phew.

It's now on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO6dA53Cpts Please post a comment and rate it. We might put the deleted scenes and outtakes on a different file. The YouTube version is 2.5 minutes shorter than the original.

The reaction at the film fest was icing on the cake - toally unexpected. So, dare we consider making a feature film along the same lines?... Watch this screen.............