Saturday 25 May 2013


In December of this year, Belgian TV will begin the screening of an ambitious 10 part series called "In Vlamsee Felden" - "In Flanders Fields" - a story that follows the fortunes of a Belgian family from 1914 to 1918. It will be interesting to see if it is picked up by British TV, as our perspective on the conflict is inevitably centred on the struggles of the Commonwealth troops on the Western Front. For us, Ypres was a salient in the line, one of the dreaded postings for a Great War soldier. For the inhabitants of Brave Little Belgium, the war was nothing less than a struggle for their country's very existence. "In Vlaamsee Felden" will afford us the opportunity to see Belgium as more than a battlefield.
So it was through the magic of the Twitterscape that I idly answered a call for volunteers to help with the filming of the programme. The exact nature of the help was as yet unknown, but when I was called up by an exotic sounding creature called Tiffany I was hooked. I hardly noticed that I had begun to fill in the attached form with a series of my measurements. I was going to be an extra. As a parting shot, Tiffany told me I would need to grow a beard, and let it grow untouched until filming day. My wife was unimpressed that I seemed to spending so long on the phone with a mysterious woman. She was deeply suspicious of anything that might be being filmed in the Low Countries. But - a beard???
Having used up pretty much all of what are known as Domestic Brownie Points ( ask any married man for a definition. He'll shift uneasily in his seat and claim they don't apply to his marriage/relationship, but push him for an answer...) I crossed the Channel sporting the kind of beard that meant that I bore a stark resemblance to the caddy in "Happy Gilmour". As I travelled towards Antwerp, I wondered what kind of people I'd meet. Star-struck wannabes? Addicts queuing up for a few euros to feed their habits? Pale starving students trying to make it to the next Happy Hour? 
The people I met turned out to be nothing of the sort. Unless their acting skills were way above those required to be an extra...
All of us were inquisitive about the project, and equally uncomfortable in our newly acquired facial furniture, but we were an interestingly disparate band of brothers. There was a parish priest ( come on, it was mid week...), a trainee teacher, an ex Royal Engineer and about a terabyte's worth of IT folk. Most of them lived in Belgium, many of them English speaking Europeans in the broadest sense of the term, perhaps living the kind of European existence (free, tolerant) that world wars were fought to preserve.
We were based in the Old Judiciary buildings in Antwerp, and during the two days of filming there we did a lot of waiting. In poorly lit rooms and dusty corridors, we waited for a summons from a higher power, to be told to go one way or the other. A version of Catholic Purgatory, I muttered to our resident Anglican priest. Maybe that's exactly what it is, he replied. The twinkle in his eye suggested that he was joking, but that didn't make me feel any better. 
The extras were the responsibility of Nico, a young, energetic character who would encourage us between takes by saying that the previous 6 attempts had been "perfect". After a brief pause there came the punch line - "so we're going to do it again..." I couldn't imagine getting away with that line when I was squeezing coursework out of bored 16 year olds in my teaching days. So there would be another half dozen versions of perfection filmed before we were returned to our room to our ongoing scene from "Waiting for Godot".
Although he never showed it, there must be times when Nico doubts his calling. Organising a motley crew of inquisitive characters must have been like trying to herd cats on occasions, as various individuals whipped out I-phones to take photos of backstage scenes. The anachronistic sight of people dressed in uniforms from a hundred years ago brandishing modern technology was keeping the continuity editors on their toes, quite apart from anything else.
There was a bewildering range of jobs to be done on set. When the cameras rolled, all was in order. There was a clear focus. The director stood, arms folded, occasionally shaking his head mournfully. Scenes unfolded in all their choreographed splendour. Once we heard the call of "Stop" however, a version of Chaos descended. Intense conversations would break out among teams of technicians, people would scramble up ladders, screens would be moved a few centimetres to left or right to adjust light levels. The director would have a sharp animated exchange with his actors, who were young, but experienced enough not to fight over the point he was making. And the extras would walk back to their starting positions, winking to colleagues to acknowledge their own small but significant victory in the battle to be in shot. 
But as we reflected on things back in Purgatory, a battle may have been won, but the war itself would be decided by the post production team between now and December. Like a group of men in a damp dugout in the front line, we wondered how many of us would make it through the whole process, and how many would end up as casualties on the cutting room floor. 
We'll have to wait again - until December


Monday 13 May 2013

TV Filming

In Vlaamsee Verden (In Flanders Fields), a 10 part Belgian TV blockbuster that follows the fortunes of a family in WW 1, is in production. Single Step Tours will have a representative on the set next week in Antwerp!
Rudyard Kipling's son John (or Jack, as he was known to the family). Died in the Battle of Loos, 1915. His body was not identified until just recently, and there is still considerable doubt over the authentication. When pressed for an answer, most of those in the know will give a shrug of the shoulders. The grave is at St Mary's ADS Cemetery, just off the D39 towards Vermelles.
Whether it's him or not, it's a tragic story - a father who used his considerable influence to get his boy into the Irish Guards, despite the fact that he had failed the medical due to poor eyesight.

If any question why we died
Tell them because our fathers lied..


The Loos Memorial