‘A Warning to the Curious’ is arguably M R James’s last great ghost story. Published in 1925, it draws on the author’s own experience of holidaying in Aldeburgh, and seems at the same to time to be a response to the traumas of the first World War. Robert Lloyd Parry looks at the cultural and historical influences on the tale in an hour long documentary for Amazon Prime.
The English seaside has never looked so menacing.
‘Wits in Felixstowe’ – A Documentary about M R James’s masterpiece Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad
Having been introduced to Robert Lloyd Parry (AKA Nunkie), through his agent Michelle Hilborne, at forestmarble. http://www.forestmarble.com we hit it off immediately with our shared passion for specialist storytelling and all things other worldly.
To date I have collaborated with Robert on four films based on tales from MR James. From the all time classic Casting the Runes to some more obscure writings such as James final, posthumous piece, A Vignette.
Celebrating the release of Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, we were originally planning to include a four minute short extra to accompany the film. However, the more research that went into looking at the history of MR James and his story the greater the documentary became, until it was its own entity.
Set in and around Cambridge King’s College and Felixstowe Lodge the documentary explores the lives of James’ friends, his relationships and social life. Looking at influences for his writing and the story behind the story this documentary really pulls the viewer into James’ world.
With the help of some very colourful locals we were given unprecedented access to the room where Professor Parkins was confronted by a ghostly apparition and access to the Cobalt’s holiday house where the story itself was written.
Robert’s engaging style of presentation pulls you in and with my camera work I feel that this documentary is a great success. To be free to choose the style of shots was wonderful from my point of view; long wistful shots over the groynes at Felixstowe, close and intimate shots in the pub where James sat, candid scenes in and around Cambridge itself lent to a stimulating and unique style of camerawork.
The only question remaining unanswered is where to next? Who fancies Scandinavia!
Wits in Felixstowe The Trailer from thomthomproductions on Amazon Prime
With the slow turgid demise of the DVD and the control freakery of the streamers we have embarked on “the third way”….
Welcome to Pay On Demand!
We have filmed, edited and uploaded a clients film,
the classic MR James “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” and set it up to premiere on all hallows night.
Vimeo has always been good to us and seems very civilised, (whereas we have had “difficulties” with ‘You Tube’).
The question is “will people pay?”, can we distract them from Facebook updates, netflix and a thousand distractions to sitting down, on a dark cold night and concentrating on the simplest form of story telling? We have a fantastic product with Whistle, and a ready made audience of keen followers of Nunkie. More excitingly we can now present this to the world. If this works then it could be a taste of things to come, Television is Dead, Long live television!
Over to the creative director of Nunkie, Robert Lloyd Parry;
On October 31st we are releasing online a much requested item: a screen version of ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.’ This is a straightforward, no frills rendition of a performance of M R James’s great tale of nocturnal terror. It was filmed on location in Hemingford Grey Manor in Cambridgeshire, in a single take, by the light of single candle. From noon on Hallowe’en it will be yours to download
We are hoping that on Hallowe’en night M R James fans all over the planet will settle down with a bowl of soup and a glass of whisky, and indulge in one of the most sublimely pleasing terrors of them all.
email just in…. Straight8 2016 has just opened! ThomThom are going to drop everything (accept the paid work!) and dig out the sacred book of “film pitches”, with a deadline of the 4 April, the turn around for a top notch award winning film is tight. This takes us right back to the beginning, raw film making on classic celluloid. Straight8 sends a sealed roll of film (in the classic super8 cartage) we film a complete short and without ever seeing or editing the film we send it back to soho for them to process it. In the classic era of straight8 nobody saw the film until the opening night, so we would watch our film on the edge of our seats in front of a live cinema audience…enjoying the excitement of seeing if we were able to create a celluloid masterpiece or if we had travelled all that way to see that we had forgotten to take our lens cap off…
We spotted that Kodak has just launched a brand new super8 camera, riding on the wave of analogue revival, and here at thomthom we are happy to be a part of it. If we are feeling brave we might even upload our back catalogue of super8 shorts.
please keep 6th May 2016 free for the cannes film festival premier!
see you on the beach in the Kodak Pavilion,
(now all we need to do is write, storyboard, produce, cast, direct, film and score the best film we can possibly make!)
sign up for the straight8 competition here
santa list this year?
a nice set of arri studio lights? no,
all we want for christmas this year is…
a film script
thom thom is finally launching its full length feature film project
stay posted here, details to follow
2016 is going to be a busy year!
we are proud to announce our latest addition to the fleet… the original Citroen DS camera car used to film by the BBC in the 70 and 80’s
so now we are looking for a “WordPress Wizard”…!
You really need to get the shot when you are crash testing a brand new formula 1 car…
not only is the car expensive, but one day somebody life will depend on the results, not just a formula 1 racing driver but soon enough in production cars
this also gives us a chance to experiment with the art of slow motion filming
new horizons
the ability to play with time
a world at 5000 frames per second, a life in the blink of an eye
thomthomproductions LLP 