The ParaPod AVBGH "Yeah But..." 2

Hello there

For the second of our four consecutive Codnor posts, I'd like to welcome one and all to another edition of “Yeah But…”, where I have opened the floodgates for folk to ask questions about The ParaPod AVBGH.

More specifically, things in the film that may seem not quite right.  Last time out we had questions about why Barry was filming at East Drive when I went off to get a pot of tea (see, when I put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad, huh?), and this time round I shall obviously be addressing questions pertaining to the Codnor section of the film, given that I’ve been showing you some bits and bobs from that location this month.

I think there were more questions about it than this, but here’s the two I remembered to save in this document a while ago.  I think they were all addressing the same thing, but do nudge me if there was anything different that I missed. Apologies to anybody else who mentioned it, but hopefully this will still cover you.

First off, Dylan Spicer said:

How come more hasn't been made of the cup flying down the stairs near the end of the film? I agree Barry's 'sighting' is the the big moment of the movie, but I've not seen much discussion about that moment, either during the film or after. I'm certainly not saying it was a ghost throwing it down the stairs, but does Barry seem a little underwhelmed? Has it ever been discussed in more detail anywhere?

And there were some queries from Rachel Peachey in a similar vein…

What I want to know is was the mug (or whatever it was) that came flying down the steps when the door was opened set up, or was that a genuine surprise? I have also been wondering why The Ancient Ram is described as being in Gloucester when it is in Wootten-Under-Edge? Is that just for the international release?

On the Ancient Ram question, my answer would be that I don’t know.  Simon did those titles and I would presume that the fact we always spoke about the Ram as being in Gloucester would be why that’s made it through.  Is it not in Gloucester still?  Like, is Wootten-Under-Edge not in Gloucester? Maybe “Gloucestershire” would have been better. It was certainly just a shorthand to give a general area, but I will be sure to haul Simon over the coals at the next AGM.  He’ll probably say “Well, you never said any different and you had final sign-off…” but I’ll just ignore that and shout at him more.  Probably shout over him, which - top tip - is a brilliant way of winning an argument.

Onto Codnor Castle though, and the question of the mug/cup/whatever-it-was-I-only-ever-saw-it-in-pieces...

So, we first need to clear up some finer details on this, and address the deceptions in the movie.  I had been to Codnor before.  I had been on the recce when we were checking it for a possible filming location, and if you have been around here long enough, it was the day I did a video after being shouted at by a neighbour of the castle. Which I’m not going to think about too much because it still makes me cross when I recall how aggressive and threatening it was.

I had also been there that afternoon to set up the filming. That's me going up the steps in the image above, and it's still daylight.

Obviously, with thousands of pounds being spent that day alone, we couldn’t just rock up, as this was the climax of the film.  All the equipment needed getting, and I had to book it and sign it off the budget, as well as sorting the insurance for everyone (so that’s another sneaky white lie in the film). So there was no way I could have possibly been truly in the dark about anything in this film.  If there had been a full crew then maybe, but – as you will have gathered – I was either doing or organising everything behind the scenes.

Now, Barry had not divulged what his plan was, but it wasn’t too difficult to work out the gist of it, if not the specifics. This is how I managed to have a selection of plans for things I could do, and why there is a video of the storyboards where I explained to the crew what to do if I took that path.  It is eerily similar to the end result, and shows that Karl and Nick - who were on the cameras at Codnor - are exceptional at taking direction. That perhaps comes from the fact that they do a lot of live sports coverage, but I have not a bad word to say about either of those life-savers. Barry was not aware that I had counter plans, so his reaction to all that happened at Codnor is entirely authentic. I’ll show you a cut of that storyboard video when I find it.

There are clues in the film.  The TV that Barry has upstairs at Codnor is my spare TV (although there’s no reason why you should know that), and the metal table that it stands on has been in loads of my previous patreon posts.  It was originally bought for a Peacock & Gamble show, and I’ve had it since.  I love it. In fact, I sprayed that tombstone on it the other day. If you look carefully at it in the film, you will see that it has paint spray over it from previous patreon projects. I am astounded that nobody ever spotted this.  Call yourself fans…

On the day of the filming Barry was unavailable (if memory serves he was doing something for the magazine he writes for), so in the afternoon myself and the crew set up the kit.  Simon stood out in a field and did some shooting of the moon as the sky went from light to dark, and Karl and Nick lit up the castle itself.  The castle doesn’t normally have lights on it, they were our lights, and they also set up the live feed from the attic to wherever the remote camera went. I also walked Karl and Nick from the farmhouse to the castle, and pointed out the shots.

What I knew ahead of time, was that at some point that evening, I was suddenly running out of that house to the castle, and they needed to know what they were doing when I did.  So, for example, I told Nick not to follow me beyond the doorway area but to make sure he got coverage of me running away.  I told them to essentially guide Barry to the castle (which they did by Karl walking backwards so Barry instinctively walked towards the camera).  I told Nick to hold back when Karl got Barry up the steps, so that he could get a wide shot of Barry walking between the two battlements.  It was all pretty rigid.

If you need any proof that Barry was unaware, I will say once again that it's not exactly how I would have had it. If I had been there directing it, rather than trying to get my breath back in the remains of a castle, I would have slowed it all down.  I remain amazed that Dodds walked so determinedly to that castle when the situation was happening in the moment for him.  I mean, it took three goes to get him to walk down a hall in a school in the dark…

I left Codnor before Barry got there (he knows all this btw), and returned a couple of hours later, which is what we have in the film.  So, I have no idea what Barry got up to in that interim time.  Probably balancing mugs on ledges if I know him…

You might think this is all leading up to me saying that I set up the mug.  However, I did not. The reason I am giving you full disclosure on having been there ahead of time is to authenticate that I am revealing what happened.  Although there is my own argument that I applied to the Enfield girls, that once there is a confirmed deceit it makes everything else suspect.  Can't do owt about that though. All I can do is explain what I know.

On the matter of the mug, I saw what you saw in the film.  It is also in one shot, so we know there was nobody up there.  The door is bolted from the outside, so it would have had to have been more than one person complicit in it. I’m always accounted for from the moment I walked into the house, and whilst I appreciate there could have been someone up there for hours, I can assure you that I couldn’t afford to lose a crew member for that. This movie was always “all hands on deck”.

Although, there are caveats of regret.

The main one is, when we go into the long room in the attic, you see us both look behind that pillar but the camera doesn’t go with us.  So, there could be an argument that anybody who had been up there could have hidden behind there.  This though, would rely on Dodds not giving the game away.  I would say that he wouldn’t have done anyway, but you have to understand that he was very shook up by that mug.  When he says “is this messing about?” he needs to know immediately if it had been set up.  I suspect there would have been a good chance of him saying “Ahhhh, right, out” if there had been somebody behind that pillar.  The actual reason the camera doesn’t follow us to the end is because we had set a light behind that pillar to look like moonlight coming through the window behind it.

The other option for me setting it up, would have relied on balance and gravity, which is pretty risky for a one-shot climax of a movie.  I didn’t do that, and – all joking aside – I’m not convinced Barry did either.  Same as I said in the vaults, he’s just not that good an actor to pull off that reaction if he knew what was going to happen.  I do believe that mug fell though.  I can’t guarantee it was ‘set up’ to fall, but fall it did.  Dodds maintains it was thrown, so if he is correct then I have no explanation for that (it fell).

Something to take into account is the fact that the window at the end of the long room has no glass in it at all.  So when that door is opened, it would pull air through from outside.  That’s actually what I think happened.  It’s plausible a mug was left upstairs when they were setting up the TV etc, and may have been precarious (not intentionally). It would have had a fair way to drop from up there, which would give it the momentum to smash hard.

This was brought up at pretty much every Q&A after the screenings, and Barry would always take a vote in the audience as to who thought is was thrown and who thought it fell.  Predictably to everyone (except Barry), this went in favour of my explanation every evening.  I don’t present that as confirmation that I’m correct though.  As I say, they only saw what I saw. We could all be wrong, and Barry could be right.

Which I am sure he will take as a win.

Tomorrow I’m going to show you some of the set-up pics (I was going to put them in this post but there’s far too many), then on Thursday I will be showing you some of the video footage of the afternoon set-up, behind the scenes from the night shoot (including a bit where we did the pick-up of Barry reaching into the hole for his head torch).  There is also a little bit from the original recce.  I appreciate you are probably desperate to see how the tombstone is developing, but let’s stick with Codnor for a bit.

There’s a much longer cut of the recce which I will be showing you soonish, but I’ve got to edit it first. It’s pretty long at the moment.

Many thanks for the questions, there’s still some others to write about in time, and if you have a “yeah but” to submit, I promise I’ll answer it.

Hope you are doing well and happy

Much love to you

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx