garden stories

Jo,the Head Gardener,came back from a week long holiday in Spain to find her pidgeon hole over-spilling with post. Everything arrived at once. Seven boxes of bulbs,an armful of vegetable seeds and what looked like three small tea bags were in fact some very expensive Dyers Knotweed, which at £21 would be a royal cuppa by any stretch. Also taking up space in the pidgeon hole was a second hand book we'd bought on Amazon,called 'Special Effects-A Guide for Super-8 Filmmakers'. Printed in 1980,our copy had come from the Indiana Free Library in Pennsylvania. Our interest in filmmaking has been bubbling away since June 2007, and we have now amassed about 25 hours of footage using a DV camcorder. Although amateur and homespun, it is a serious endeavour and through sheer force of will shall be edited and released. We have our sights set on the Cambridge Film Festival! It is closest in comparison to the French film 'Etre et Avoir' and the Oxford based film about boxing 'Blue Blood'. We are going with the working title 'Garden Stories' and have focused on the spirit of a community, the people who work in the garden and at the college and the lives that pass through it. As the film nears the end of its shooting phase the emphasis now is on making sure we have all the interviews that we want and tying in any missing scenes. One scene that is outstanding is the arrival of an alien space craft!, hence the purchase of two super-8 cameras and some old film stock. What, I hear you ask, have U.F.O's got to do with gardening? Well if it has anything to do with the spirit of this garden, then weird visitations from outer space must play a crucial role. The low budget film 'Dark Star'(1974), which was apparently made in someone's garage, is without a doubt part of the inspiration and motivation for this segment of 'Garden Stories'. And where will we shoot our close encounter? In the Bothy, of course!