Last week we introduced you to the Children of World War II project. If you missed that blog, go and have a read of it here. This week, Alistair Nisbet explains how the project evolved…
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Eighty years on, the children from our four schools had a lot to learn. In stepped a wonderful team of volunteers at Nothe Fort with a series of evacuee experience days which put the children back into the 1940s for a day… in an air raid shelter, a wartime classroom, kitchen and shop to give them a vivid flavour of what life would have been like.
Transport for school trips is difficult and expensive but thankfully St John’s is in walking distance along the promenade and the St Nicholas children in their WW2 outfits and cardboard ‘gas mask’ boxes, could come on the train from Upwey, starting their evacuee experience before they had even arrived.
That left us just the Bovington class and a smaller group of year eight pupils from Puddletown to bring down to Weymouth by bus.
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Next came four days in school with the two project directors introducing all 100 children to the project and to scriptwriting – telling stories through dialogue.
“Get into groups, choose a scene, name your characters, and improvise ten lines of dialogue before lunch. One of you can record the others reading them through and we’ll play them back to the class later.”
Project co-director Sharon Hayden who trained with film director Mike Lee taught the children how to act out a storyline and improvise the dialogue to bring it to life.
Then smaller groups of children spent a day with Alastair or Sharon plus one of our two scriptwriters Ed Viney or Emily Macbean for a second script day in each school. The eight roughly scripted episodes were honed into mini dramas around the lives of four families in the years from Summer 1940 to the eve of D-Day. Actors for each episode were cast and finally, we were ready to rehearse and record.
Each school hosted two days when we converted a classroom, music room or other space into a studio for the day. Final year Music Tech undergraduate Sean Kirby joined us to record all the dramas and co-director Alastair Nisbet recorded a day of singing in each school with Music Director Kathie Prince and piano accompanist Freya Murray. A selection of child-friendly songs would punctuate the drama. These included the Potato Pete song, Bomb Get in the Shelter, Maybe it’s Because I’m a Londoner and Shine on Victory Moon.
Introductions to each episode by 95 year old Jean and actor Rod Drew were recorded and we were ready for post production.
Music and sound effects were added – Spitfires, German Heinkels on a raid, doors opening, footsteps, vintage buses and more, from the BBC sound library.
Now all we had to do was get the episodes out there to an audience.
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Next week – Part 3, Getting it out there
Can’t wait to listen? Click here for episode 4 on the dedicated web player: https://screen-play.co.uk/urlplay/?songid=4 or click here for the project on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3JNttwT