Still looking for Bonnie Prince Charlie

Inspired by my visit to the battle of Culloden Museum I travelled on to Fort William, which has another Museum with many of the personal belongings of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Once inside the Museum, it is a treasure trove of items left behind by Charlie in the houses along  his escape route to the Isle of Skye. The fact he had to leave such valuable belongings shows the extent of the his pursuit by the Hanoverian redcoat army.

Here a scarf made of light Italian material that showed he was not prepared for the cold conditions of Scottish Highland weather.

Here also is a fragment of a kilt reputedly to have been worn by Charlie. Note it is a far cry from the garish red design promoted by the Sobieski Stuart brothers almost a hundred years later, in their scam to create a Scottish tartan tradition that was not authentic.

The detailed nature of Charlie's belongings even includes the buckles on his shoes.

However we are brought back to the outcome of his visit to Scotland, with a battle map of Culloden. 

In the corner of the map is the list of number of dead - over 2000 along with 1200 prisoners. It says total taken is 3200.

The Museum is well worth a visit for its authentic exhibits and its well kept old world atmosphere.

Next time I will be visiting the Glenfinnan Monument.

Meanwhile Europe groans under the continuing refugee crisis with new statistics saying that this month alone some 170,000 have entered according to this Reuters article here

On the Bonnie Prince Charlie Trail

This week one could not fail to comment on the European Refugee Crisis but I reserve that for an after blog Opinion below. It provides one simple fact, which I believe puts the whole thing into perspective.

In the meantime, I have been on the Bonnie Prince Charlie trail continuing the research, which has up till now been hard to find. I took a trip to the site and Museum of the battle of Culloden with the help of some American site seers attending and participating in the World Piping Championships. (Below me in the photo.)

Culloden Moor and Museum

It takes about two and a half hours to drive to Culloden from Glasgow on the modern M9 Motorway. It was interesting to see that the present M9 follows the path of General Wades Old Military road which was made to help quash the first Jacobite risings of 1715. Wade pointed out to his bosses that to defeat the rebelling Highlanders, the roads must be improved and so he set about building 4 main roads in the Highlands, which were used to great effect 30 years later in the second Jacobite rising by Charles Edward Stuart.

In a swift right turn off the M90/A9 just before Inverness the battle of Culloden site can found nestling on some low lying marshy fields. Today after a refurbishment in 2009, the Museum now hosts a Visitor Centre, Restaurant and fully equipped audio visual experience. The displays and particularly the film are well worth the hefty £11 to £15 entry fee.

The 360 degree film which has four screens in one room, is quite an achievement - it succeeds in creating a feeling of immersion in the battle. A clever special effect sees a cannon ball going from one wall to the other. As well as the film there is also a table top computer display of the battle which explains how the Highlands came to be defeated within a very short time span.

Once you are outside in the actual battle field it becomes obvious why the Highlanders suffered such a resounding defeat. Cumberland the Chief Major in Command of the Government forces researched new tactics against the Highlanders, who only deployed one strategy - the Highland charge of men right into the line of fire. But it was n't the musket balls that defeated them it was a new deployment of the bayonet in which the Redcoats pieced their opponents on the right hand side of them.When the Highlanders were charging face on, the Redcoats used the right hand bayonet attack in a synchronised line of men. It resulted in the killing of 700 Highlanders within 2 minutes of the start of the battle,  The introduction of musket fire after the first assault then lead to over 1500 Scottish Highlanders being killed. Bonnie Prince Charlie was taken off the field by Irish/French Guard and whisked away avoiding any of the Old Wade Military Roads. He made it to the Scottish coastal island of Skye, then onto France, where he spent most of his time reflecting on what might have been.

It was a catastrophe for the Highland Clans because many of their leaders were killed and their economy was laid waste. The massacre began the first wave of 'clearances' - a swift killing of whole families and burning out of properties. The Redcoats swept through the villages and towns of the Highlands routing out any Jacobite supporters.

It was a moment of reflection for me when I came across the burial site of the Fraser Clan, where a stone marks their resting place. My second name Fraser, was given to me to reflect our family's connection to many Fraser cousins from the coast, near Ullapool.  My Surname Sutherland as a clan was more connected to the Government side, but due to a quarrel with the Duke of Sutherland my Sutherland ancestors found themselves 'cleared' from their jobs at  the Dunroblin Castle, the seat of the Duke of Sutherland, They were all moved on and their properties were burnt out leaving only one black ruined croft near Achiltiltbuie. It had been burnt out so many times, the stones are still vitrified. Successive generations of my Sutherland relatives left Scotland to go to the USA, Canada and Argentina. Firstly they left Scotland after the 1745 and then again  in the 1880's and 1900's. There are now Sutherland cousins in New York, Portland, Oregon, Canada, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Chile and Argentina. Traditionally as well as Fraser's, our cousin ancestors were connected to the MacClaey and Mackenzie Clan who were also Sutherland's. Due to the clearances and destruction of records in many cases I have only met a few of my cousins but they do exist and are doing very well!

Pictured below is me at Culloden at the Fraser burial site.

Like the present Refugee Crisis in Europe history before this juncture, shows that when one group of human beings try to exert power and tyranny over another, the only choice for the oppressed humans is remove themselves and flee from the violence.

Week's Comment

The facts speak for themselves #Syrian Refugees #Europe

Europe has lost it's moral compass on the Refugee Crisis because it has failed to notice that all Middle Eastern refugee camps have suffered severe cuts in the food provision for Refugees. The World Food programme cut its food voucher system by 50% from January 2015 and failed to receive vital funds to provide basic subsistence requirements. The World Food Programme Video helps to explain some of the problems that caused Refugees to come to Europe at this link here

Sony EX3 Workflow Part 1

This stuff really bamboozles me, but I have to get my head round these data storage issues so I thought I would share this with you. I will be watching this one until I understand it. I think I have to watch the whole series to become a more confident data loader and keeper. Ex 3 is an old Sony camera format but it was widely used around 2009 before the Red and so many folks still have them around.

I hope you stay with this as it will help you in your film making on HD.

Cannes Film Festival 2015 - the Sweet Smell of Success

This year was a very orderly Cannes Film Festival with lots of activity in the under belly of the Marche Du Film (Commerical Film Market) for industry professionals.

I spent most of it down in the bunker where the booths of the worlds most active sales agents and distributors hang out. Having attended over 15 years of Cannes Film Festivals I can almost sense its tone from the smell of the Cannes street when you touch down in La Croisette in the white hot heat of the summer. This year the heat blast, smelt of the usual spicy food, engine oil, sweat and expensive perfume. In the molecules of the sweat that hits your nostrils on the street you can perceive fear or optimism. This year the smell indicated that people were in the mode of optimism that was tinged with a high streak of professionalism. The smell of wine wafting from the cafes was drowned out by strong coffee amid the flavour of the month aftershave and Eau de Cologne. The coffee and perfume said we are up for business despite the recession in the downturn that had had 5 years of dead DVD sales and where TV companies indicated their success by the number of pirated downloads the shows had had rather than the actual numbers of worldwide territorial sales.

One sales agent summed it up when he boosted that he had just purchased the most pirated download on the planet. He was joking, but he was making the point that the public desire had changed to downloading from illegal websites, so the money never reached the sales agent or the producer for that matter. The challenge for film maker is how to recoup in an atmosphere where the current Joe public chooses to download the TV shows and films from pirate sites rather than by purchasing them from legitimate Streaming and Video on Demand Platforms. The knock on effect is that recoup must be arranged  in a way to avoid the pirate's penchant for making film available on downloads before they are officially released.  So secrecy is the name of the game and a short lead in to theatrical releases that are available on all mediums at once, which avoids windows of opportunity for the pirate.

Distributors had grappled with the effect of You Tube and figured out that quality 3 D and 4 D was the way to beat the pirate who just could not replicate this pleasurable viewing experience. Therefore animation was really the safest option and many of the big companies were investing in Animation lead releases. The upshot of that was it was good news for the Independent film makers because hardly any of the Studios were coming out with story lead films with human narrative like for example the historical, action , drama about Bonnie Prince Charlie called The Great Getaway penned by writer Robbie Moffat. Indeed there were very few traditional historical human stories being touted this year, so a gap in the market, and we finally filled it. The good news for The Great Getaway there.

The serious discussions on La Croisette were about maximizing recoup on legitimate download sites and tuning into the new public who streamed a movie from their computer onto their home TV screens.

Already some Film festivals like Toronto have made an adjustment to their programming by accepting that there is a new stream of TV viewing habits that they have to take account of now. For the first time this year they will feature a TV section that reflects the public fan base for watching and downloading whole TV series like Game of Thrones and Outlander straight from downloads on Amazon and or direct from TV website and or ignored pirate sites. This year the Festival professionals had accepted they had to get to grips with it and embrace new viewer habits, which dictate that audiences want complicated human narratives that reflect the challenges of human history and try to grapple with the Universal stories of Love, Passion, Suffering, War, Revenge and Heartache.

Business as usual, then at Cannes 2015, of a no nonsense variety, where if the expensive aftershave was anything to go by most Executives were up for lunch dates.

Enter the Great Getaway then................

Quote from a Russian sales agent ' I love Cannes, the smell of the Red Carpet is the smell of success.

As for the flat shoes debate it was laughed off by the film professionals, who were making the deals, because there was no way they were abandoning their expensive comfortable shoes, which for them marked the sweet smell of success.

Bonnie Prince Charlie Film commences Location Scouting

We are continuing our Location scouting in Dumfries and Galloway and this week I had the great surprise of visiting a hilltop where a large wall had been built in World War 2 for the Dam-buster pilots to practise their missions. A fascinating artefact that remains as a monument to their work. At a time when V Day celebrations are occurring it seemed apt. The first of film workshops in Jacobite film fighting techniques, run by Seoras Wallace, will begin at the end of the month. In the meantime here is an article from the Telegraph, as a way of welcoming our composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who has joined the team.

Article from the Telegraph in Full below

The Queen's former composer has been tempted back to write his first film score in 40 years, for a new drama about Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who has recently retired from the post of Master of the Queen’s Music, is to write the music for a film about Bonnie Prince Charlie, which will include the biggest battle scene ever shot in Scotland.

It is the first movie music Sir Peter, who lives on Orkney, has composed since he worked on Ken Russell's 1971s films The Devils and The Boyfriend ,which between them starred Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave and Twiggy.

Sir Peter is currently working on a new children's opera for the London Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic, to be conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, based on an Orcadian sea monster.

He will also write the movie soundtrack for The Great Getaway.

The film will be set in part in Dumfries and Galloway, where the Battle of Culloden will be shot for the new £6.5m film.

It will star Peter Mullan, who previously appeared in My Name is Joe, War Horse and Neds, and Brendan Gleeson, who starred in Braveheart, Gangs of New York and the Harry Potter films.

^{Bonnie Prince Charlie}

The part of Flora MacDonald, who helped the Young Pretender escape to Skye, is rumoured to have been offered to Kristen Stewart, who played Bella Swan in the internationally successful Twilight films.

The prince has not yet been cast.

Sir Peter, who is now 80, said: "I have been offered the chance to write several film scores over the years since The Devils and The Boyfriend, but this is the first one since then that I have been inspired to accept.

"I just loved the script - its authenticity, passion and honesty. Bonnie Prince Charlie is an iconic figure surrounded by myth and to have the chance to capture his character and seminal events in music for the big screen was too good a chance to pass up."

Director Robbie Moffat met Sir Peter - known as 'Max' - in London to seal the deal.

^{Peter Mullan in Channel 4’s ‘The Fear’ (Channel 4)}

"To have one of the world's greatest composers on board is a real coup. I think Max's music is the perfect match for the film and its atmospheric and honest portryal.

"Max has a real sense of the themes of inextricably people caught up in history - of time and place - of events that have shaped today and the future. His music is made for this movie and we cannot wait to hear the results - we are sure the score will be memorable, evocative and moving."

Filming on The Great Getaway will begin in the summer with the battle scene involving more than 500 extras.

The battle will be constructed by Seoras Wallace, who shot to fame when he directed the fight scenes in Braveheart. He has worked on more than 100 major films including Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan.

The new film is the first major movie about Charles Edward Stuart since Bonnie Prince Charlie, the 1948 production starring David Niven and Margaret Leighton.

Great Getaway finds locations in Scotland

The Great Getaway Film 
Press Release

Above - Victoria Steven Wallace, Seoras Walllce, Councillor Willie Scobie, Mairi Sutherland ,Merrik, Vivien Smith picture in Stranraer the location nearby proposed 'Battle of Culloden'

Producers of the Independent British film ‘The Great Getaway’ about the flight of Bonnie Prince Charlie to the Isle of Skye are looking for their lead character of ‘The Prince’. Mairi Sutherland, Producer of The Great Getaway was surprised to discover she is competing with USA based, Sony backed, TV series with billions of dollars at its command, for the character Bonnie Prince Charlie at the same time.  She says the storylines are totally different with the Great Getaway opting for a historically accurate portrayal of the heart rending defeat of Prince Charlie at the battle of Culloden. Outlander, on the other hand features 1745, in a modern day setting with characters zipping through a time portal. She goes on to say’ It is confusing for the film industry because the budgets are different and we are now competing for crew, actors and locations. Our Charlie is the lead character – our 'proposed' budget is 7.5 million dollar, so we are not able to go for inflated American budgets for cast. We want American involvement but they must accept cuts in pay to be in genuine British films. Mairi agreed with the head of BBC Film, Christine Langan, who was quoted in the London Evening Standard about the threat of American TV series competition last week. Christine Langan said…..

‘There are 2 industries in this country. There’s obviously the ‘service’ industry that can pick up a lot of Hollywood work and foreign investment. And then there’s the British film industry that is telling British stories with a British voice and that is almost a different industry. They feed into each other. A lot of people who start in the indigenous industry go on to make films that bestride the earth. But we have to nurture our own industry and protect it. If that goes, it goes for good. There’s a lot of value in speaking the same language as the Americans, but we have to be mindful of safeguarding our own work’. 

This comes in the week that Producer Mairi Sutherland, her Associate Producer, Seoras Wallace met with the BBC Scotland Commissioner Ewan Angus to discuss whether the BBC will support ‘The Great Getaway' financially. They will also meet with a team from Stranraer who are making a bid to take the location for the Battle of Culloden and to train local film extras.

Meanwhile, Scottish based, Victoria Steven-Wallace Casting Director for The Great Getaway agreed. She said “With so many big budget US backed productions underway in the UK which are really attracting much of the best home grown talent at top rates. I think for the producers of Great Getaway it’s very hard for them and other independent producers to compete with these big budget producers and come out smiling. Having said that, ‘It’s important that actors get work regularly and I totally and wholeheartedly support the producers of ‘The Great Getaway’ because they are endeavoring to employ local actors’ crew and production talent… I do find I’m often in hard negotiations about the price for actors all the time, but that’s my job and with such a good script written by Robbie Moffat it is an easy sell this time.

Film Director Robbie Moffat is buoyed by the public support. At the moment he is opting to cast an unknown for Bonnie Prince Charlie though he hasn't given up getting a Hollywood star. ‘I want to surround Charlie with famous actors and I'm delighted that James Cosmo has come in to support the production with a letter of interest. James Cosmo is a Bafta winner and with this kind of calibre of actor we know that we can get other great actors like Peter Mullan on board as well. We are waiting to hear about Kirsten Stuart of Twilight TV series for the part of Flora MacDonald. So it’s all good at the moment.

Robbie Moffat has directed over 21 independent feature films, but he is still to get acceptance from Hollywood who keep asking who is he? What has he done? It is galling, he says and as Christine Lagan Head of BBC films said last week competing with the  US TV series reach is ’going to be challenging for the independent sector’.

Seoras Wallace associate producer and Fight Director has also come up against similar stumbling blocks in developing his William Wallace TV series hopefully to be filmed in Scotland. In terms of The Great Getaway he said "Im fully behind the production in whatever form it finally takes as it’s an excellent script and the take on the empathy that many highlanders showed to a “Foreign” king is mind boggling. For me its grist to the mill because my profession is about setting up good believable film fights that entertains and amazes audiences. The strategy planning and execution of battles like Culloden is my vocation and instead of bringing or importing stunt people from everywhere this film production is opening a door to people who have the skills but never had the opportunity to show them. I agree with the Director in that I want to give local home based talent the opportunity to get a foot on the ladder, and I certainly know by my own experience they can do it given the opportunity.

Finally Producer Mairi Sutherland said ‘ I'm enjoying putting this film together with have the support of a the company which raises money from the UK Enterprise Investment scheme so I have no reason to say the film will not get financed on way or the other. Gone are the days when we were shunned for blowing the whistle on the 1990’s Scottish Film Production Fund that had all their Committee members applying for Lottery Funds, while also applying for the public funds they managed.  Things have changed since then, and film industry people are now supportive, instead of telling us we can’t make films they are now saying Why Not?

The prospective start date for The Great Getaway the end of June 2015 and the Producers are preparing the ground, choosing locations, in the hope it will be shot in Scotland despite an offer to shot the film in Ireland, where tax credits and Irish Film Board support is more very attractive than Scottish Creative Scotland funding. Having said that, Creative Scotland is supportive – at a meeting in January, they set the producers a challenge that if they got good actors and some Hollywood names then they could put funds into the production.

‘It’s not a matter of how, It’s just a matter of when says Robbie Moffat film director and writer of the script.

The Great Getaway - Culloden and Bonnie Prince Charlie

This blog has not seen much action for the last year, but preparations for the film 'The Great Getaway' the flight of Bonnie Prince Charlie to Skye should change the long absence of news.

The last three weeks have seen location scouting in the Stranraer area of Scotland for the suitable location for the battle of Culloden scenes of the film. The film is in its final stages of financing with many pledges of support from Scottish actors, who were involved in Scotland's last great film battle, Braveheart, which was completed outside of Scotland in Ireland. In order to prevent the film again going to Ireland, the producer team are busy laying the ground for film fighting workshops in Dumfries and Galloway to lead the way to create trained extras for the battle scene that aims to employ over 500 people for the battle alone.

To get all the information on the Producers, the script and the background, please see our information pack here

Much press has followed the continuing formation of the Film Fighting Workshops, which are being helmed by the Film Veteran Fight Arranger, Seoras Wallace, who has joined the production as Associate Producer. You can view the news from the borders tv website here

There is also a substantial article on a two page spread by the Sunday Herald newspaper here

As the main Producer on the ground, I am delighted to be receiving pledges of support from actor's Tommy Flanagan and Marc Boone, of the highly successful TV series Son of Anarchy, where their show has over 8 million viewers and fans. Tommy Flanagan received his first acting break on Braveheart and hails from Scotland. I am also encouraged by letters of interest from great actors like James Cosmo. I think with the team that is assembling behind this film its promises to be a real success one way or another. It is also a triumph in screen writing by Robbie Moffat.

I can only apologise for the absence of my blog for such a long time, but it seems that there were many obstacles put in the way of  me getting the time and space to sit down and write it.

I think with some good leads, in the pipeline this blog is not likely to remain so silent for so long this year. I leave you with the 1964 film remix of the battle of Culloden and thoughts on how much of a challenge it will be to assemble over 500 trained film fighting extras by July 2015 here

More news to follow in the coming weeks......