Lights, Camera, Action! Scotland's Home Movies

For over 100 years, the people of Scotland have been filming

themselves.

This is pure entertainment.

Oh, fantastic. Let loose in a toy department.

Across generations, home movies have recorded the ordinary,

as well as the great moments of life,

from our first steps, to our furthest travels.

Today we take for granted the ability

to record our lives on tiny digital cameras and mobile phones,

but in this series we look back to the golden age of home movies,

shot on cine film by our parents,

grandparents and great-grandparents.

And some of them took home movie-making to a whole new level.

These unsung heroes of Scottish cinema

pushed the boundaries of what was achievable with little more

than a camera, a roll of film, and a vivid imagination.

They're astounding performances for people who are not trained actors.

In this episode, we discover another kind of home movie-making,

an inventive and creative culture

that produced some astonishing results.

In 1980, the BBC's Omnibus series

made a programme about people who made films as a hobby.

It featured Edinburgh-based Ian Rintoul,

a movie buff who had converted his attic into a cinema

and his garage into a mini film studio.

At the time, Ian was working on his most ambitious project to date,

an epic reconstruction of the Battle of Pearl Harbor.

29 Seconds To Zero, was shot almost entirely

in Edinburgh using miniature models and ingenious special effects.

Now in his 80s, Ian still has his attic cinema

and his lifelong passion for the movies.

I had started in the cinema

when I was a boy as an apprentice projectionist.

Film has this magical quality

and I think the film thing got into me.

Ian's day job was as a buyer for the Jenner's department store,

but his film-making hobby grew more and more consuming.

Reconstructing the Battle of Pearl Harbor would be a challenge

for any major film studio with a cast and crew of hundreds of people.

Back in the '70s,

Ian was filming in his average sized back garden.

Of course, one of the difficulties

is trying to make a film in Scotland about the South Pacific.

And, I think, first of all,

although the garden looks very bleak at the moment,

you have to really shoot this in the summer time

and hopefully you'll get some sun.

I collected all the potted plants from friends and people I knew,

farms and so forth.

I thought this would help to create some effect of the South Seas.

We also, of course, used the garden quite a lot for outside work

in regard to flying planes against the sky.

We also flew some wires from the top of the roof

down to the foot of the garden

and we'd fly the planes down on these lines.

Hidden within Ian's attic are further movie magic secrets.

Film was so expensive.

I didn't spend a lot of time shooting stuff

showing how the scenes were done,

but I have got one or two clips I'll put on for you.

This is a small model plane, used in 29 Seconds To Zero,

being held up for filming.

And these are model planes we put on a plate of glass to be shot through

to real sky and the other plane is brought in in front,

and, you know, I tried, as hard as possible

to replicate the proper cockpit.

And I was going through all the car scrapyards,

you know, to get bits and pieces.

And everybody likes to see this shot, as he finishes the take.

Editing's the key to success.

Sometimes, if you keep a model shot on

just that little bit too long,

people spot, even a second or two over,

people think that doesn't look real,

but if they only see it for two seconds,

they don't... They kind of think,

well, that's a plane, or that's a propeller, and you know,

it's keeping the shots short that make the successful film.

Another of Ian's films was this dramatic tale

of the Loch Ness Monster

escaping from capture and rampaging through Edinburgh.

These are some outtakes from the Loch Ness Monster movie

and it looks like an enormous truck

but it's actually, quite small in a sense.

Working with Ian on these zero budget epics

was his young assistant Steven Begg.

From humble beginnings in Ian's garage,

Steven went on to have a Bafta-winning career

as a special effects supervisor.

This is Steven with one of his models

from the James Bond film Skyfall.

40 years ago and without a blockbuster

multi-million pound budget,

Ian's painstaking model work took months to complete.

The average person has no idea how difficult it is to make a film

and I have to say that having young Steven Begg with me

was a great sort of... He was coming up with ideas for

things that I probably wouldn't have thought of.

I mean, I do envy, you know, people that are making films now

because it's just so easy.

And don't forget, I was doing a full time job as well

and bringing up a family

trying to struggle to make these epics, you know?

So, altogether, it was a busy life, you know?

Ian's achievements are extraordinary

given the many constraints of making films as a hobby.

But he wasn't the first person to have such a busy life

moonlighting as a movie director.

People have been producing home-made cinematic wonders,

since domestic film cameras first became available.

This is some of the early work of Frank Marshall,

a pioneer of the Scottish amateur film making scene.

Very quickly Frank's home movies developed into short,

highly accomplished films.

Peter and Roy are two of Frank's grandchildren.

Their mother Muriel and Uncle Nairn appear in many of the early films.

A Frank Marshall movie was very much a family affair.

My grandfather, he came up with the stories

and then persuaded the family to take part in it,

and I think that's quite exciting, you know, to be involved

in a film, cos that was the age of the film I guess, age of the cinema.

In some of Frank's later films, Peter and Roy became the stars.

-This is your one.

-Surprise In Store, yes, yes.

Surprise In Store is a comic tale of what happens, when four young

children sneak into an empty toy shop after closing time.

That's us looking at the stuff. Oh, look at the stuff, it's fantastic.

Then I remember us being told by my grandpa to go underneath it.

I remember that very clearly.

Oh, fantastic.

Let loose in a toy department, with no-one about. Just brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant.

We filmed this over three weekends, in the autumn.

No-one really believed it,

because it was completely incomprehensible that we'd

spend our Sundays in a department store playing with all the toys.

The best bit in this one is where Frank and I are playing

with the Scalextric because there's no acting required.

Looked like we were engrossed because we were.

Look at that, total focus.

Magic. Such good fun.

Seeing as we were involved in it all

we didn't really think it was unusual.

It was just that grandpa was making another film,

thought up another story and we were going to be in it. Ha!

Early Birds. This will be you, Peter.

Don't fence me in.

Early Birds stars Peter as himself escaping from his cot,

as his parents and elder brother sleep on.

-Ohhhh! Clunk!

-HE LAUGHS

Peter negotiates the steep stairs to perform an early morning

raid on the biscuit tin.

This business of getting ready to go down

and then changing your mind, come back up.

They were steep.

Oh, my goodness!

Oh, heck!

This looks seriously dangerous.

-Goodness gracious!

-LAUGHTER

Brilliant.

Oh, brilliant, biscuits.

This is fantastic.

What's going on here.

During his lifetime, Frank Marshall produced over 120 films.

Many featuring his trademark mischievous sense of fun.

I'm busy having my biscuits.

No, you're not having....

Leave me alone!

-Dragged away.

-Up the stairs, that's it.

Help me.

Give you a shove.

Ohhh!

Clear up. Pretend nothing happened.

Now he's going to have a biscuit to celebrate.

Oh no, caught in the act.

I think we're incredibly lucky,

to have this as part of our family history.

It's quite extraordinary.

As Hollywood was enjoying its golden age through the 1940s and '50s,

the possibilities for do-it-yourself movie-making were also opening up.

Maverick and passionate film-makers began to

emerge from some of the most unlikely places.

This is the small industrial town of Wishaw in the late 1940s.

And this is a film made by one of Scotland's most unusual

and remarkable filmmakers.

Enrico Cocozza.

As a boy, Tom Hinshelwood met Enrico through the film club

he ran for local school kids.

The Wishaw of Tom's childhood is now forever preserved in Enrico's films.

This is the introduction to a film, Chick's Day, it shows

the exterior of the Belhaven Cafe,

and the railings outside it were...

became a meeting place for young, young people going out at night.

Unemployed men or retired men hung about there as well.

There was a bookies across the road,

and they spent their day there, betting horses.

That was really, quite normal life all over Wishaw, at that time.

They were just beginning to get into solving the housing

problem which Wishaw had had since, for 100 years you could say.

'Chick they called me though I was born Charlie.

'And I never knew my faither.'

Chick's Day is the stark and sometimes violent

story of a young man, who commits a robbery to pay off a gambling debt.

'When she opened that door, we didnae know what to dae,

'but wan thing was sure,

'we had to do it quick.'

It's generally accepted that Chick's Day was many,

many years ahead of its time.

What was commonly called "a kitchen sink drama".

Enrico made the film almost a decade before the term "kitchen sink"

came into use.

But it wasn't all gritty social realism.

Enrico's obsession was cinema, in all its forms.

From surreal horror.

To comedy.

And melodrama.

'Why are you smiling?

Smiling? Because I'm happy, so completely happy.

'We have the gift of love.'

# Nessun dorma, nessun... #

Enrico's Italian family ran the Belhaven Cafe in the centre

of Wishaw.

Using local people as his cast and crew, Enrico funded his addiction

to film-making through his job as a lecturer at Strathclyde University.

Roberta Doyle was one of his students.

He was a teacher of thousands and thousands and thousands of us,

in Scotland who have benefited from him as a tutor,

and it was quite obvious from the first second you were in class

that he was an extraordinary teacher, and role model and

humorist, and intellectual.

I would defy anybody who was taught by Rico not to think, that he

was a really profound influence on them and that the first

impression they had of him, as being an extraordinary man was

the impression that they would carry on having, for their whole lives.

Another of Enrico's films was Corky!

The comic tale of a young boy's adventures in Wishaw,

in the mid-1950s.

'And here I am, folks, the star of the film.

'I'll away o'er and see if Joan, that's my pin-up, is oot yet.

'Oh, that's her brother's bike. I'll have a wee shot while naebody is looking.

'Brrp brrrp, brrp brrrp. Brrp brrrp.

'Oh, jings, here she comes.'

'I'll put on my shy act.

'Whit are you daeing here? Eh....

'Eh... I... Um...'

LAUGHTER

I think this one in particular of the performances,

that Coco managed to elicit from non-professional actors,

neighbours of his and friends of his and the children of friends of his.

I mean they're, they're astounding performances for people

who are not trained actors.

He adored Wishaw.

He was unbelievably proud of being from Wishaw and, and I think

a lot of his films are testament to the pride that he took because he's

filmed Wishaw absolutely beautifully and, makes it look, as interesting

a community as it was, full of as interesting characters as it is.

'Oh, no, Bingo, Bango and Bongo, the bullies, they hate my guts.

'Ever since I won that game of cairds from them. Oh!

'Uh...'

HE WHISTLES

'Come on, gang. Let's do them.'

Watching these films really brings back

memories to you of the architecture of the place.

The attitude of kids and the children.

They were more out in the open air enjoying themselves rather

than sitting inside at their computers or whatever.

'Are you still winching, Cork? Sure, I'm going steady.

'Are you still taking these horrors out? Ha, ha, ha.'

There's a wee girl who seems to be a bit shy, she's not out

playing with the other kids and you see her standing up at her window.

Corky gives her a wave I think and she comes down.

'Here she comes and isn't she the most?

'My pals call her Tartanbags, but her real name is Beverly.

'Oh, Beverly, you look so heavenly!'

The voice-over, that comes in in part of the film,

and it's very familiar if you knew the times and the area.

The words he uses like "winching," it's really realistic of the period.

'There's my gal again, but what's this?

'They two bullies waiting to attack her or something?

'Aw, naw, fellas, no' the day! Please! Let her alane.

'Oh, they've got her. What'll they dae to her?

'They'll pull her hair oot. She'll be bald, she'll have to marry Yul Brynner. Oh!'

Enrico was a really inspirational tutor or teacher,

and, it really encouraged a lot of people that I ran about with,

to have a lifelong love of films.

As camera equipment developed through the '50s and '60s,

more and more people fell in love with moviemaking.

In towns and cities all over Scotland, Cine Clubs were

formed, with hundreds of members eager to tell their stories.

In Aberdeen, Alan Stott was one of the founding members

of the District Cine Club

and remembers well what making films during the '60s was all about.

This is pure entertainment.

FANFARE

'We all take motion pictures for granted and seldom realise the care

'and patience required for even a short film. Tonight...'

I didn't realise that was my voice. That's me doing the commentary.

'Much of the quality of the projected image depends on the

'drying of the film, which must be done in a dust-free atmosphere.'

It was just a whole, a total spoof, the whole thing was a spoof.

'..ruin an entire day's work. One of the most skilled jobs in a film

'studio is that of the film cutter

'whose job it is to assemble the film into a coherent whole.'

It may be a spoof, but this film shows how physical

and laborious making movies on cine film used to be.

So, Alan joined his friend Ron Miller

and a small group of other enthusiasts, and together

they took non-professional film-making to a whole new level.

EXPLOSION

'Alan!'

DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS

Their ambitious feature-length action films featured epic

stunts, explosions, and a creative approach to health and safety.

-ALAN:

-We had a requirement to film in a submarine,

and to submerge a submarine, with two or three boys on deck.

So, we phoned up the Navy, and said, "Can we do this?"

They said, "Yes, when do you want to do it?"

And that was it.

-ALAN:

-Absolutely no problem, the Navy were delighted.

First rate public relations, put it down to.

Could you do it now? Not on your Nellie.

You wouldn't be allowed to do that now.

Health and safety would be all over them.

But it was things like that we got involved in and,

and, they were great fun.

But it wasn't just dramas

and comedies being made by the cine clubs of Scotland.

Home-made documentaries covering an endlessly diverse

range of topics, have captured Scottish life for over 100 years.

From shipping in Aberdeen harbour,

to the early days of Glasgow's public transport.

From waterskiing on Loch Earn, to skateboarding in Kelvingrove Park.

Free to choose his or her subject matter,

the non-professional film-maker made films about things

they loved doing, or were passionately involved in.

In 1981, Alison Coleman,

a pharmacist from Lanarkshire, made a documentary about the

arrival of a group of Vietnamese refugees into her small village.

-ALISON:

-It is hard to believe these children,

happily playing together,

were once considered to be a threat to a communist regime.

Their only crime, being born to a Vietnamese mother

and a Chinese father.

They were given a simple choice, to leave Vietnam or spend the rest of

their lives in a concentration camp.

At the time, the influx of over 10,000 so-called boat people

into Britain was major headline news.

But through her community work, Alison had the inside story,

and with her husband operating the camera,

she spent a year recording a more intimate portrayal.

# I'm only a poor little sparrow No colourful feathers had I

# But I can't even sing When nesting in spring

# And the turnips don't grow very high... #

Oh, I forgot it. I forgotten, stop!

We spoke to one of the Vietnamese men featured in Alison's film.

He didn't want to be filmed for personal reasons,

but recorded this letter in his own voice.

'I was one of the people that came to Scotland almost 35 years ago.

'My story began when a group of 40 people,

'of which there was a dozen children,

'got on a small wooden fishing boat and set out to sea.

'We did not know where we were going, and we were all very sad.

'After sailing for four days, the boat got into trouble,

'and water started creeping in.

'We were very fortunate, who knows what might have happened,

'if a British oil tanker hadn't been passing and stopped to rescue us.

'We were sent to a refugee camp in Singapore,

'and then some of us were lucky to be granted resettlement in Scotland.'

-ALISON:

-For those coming to Scotland, the long journey to

freedom nears an end as the plane touches down at Edinburgh airport.

'The minibus took us out the airport and through many long

'and winding roads, leading to Carnwath College in Lanarkshire.'

Hello, welcome to Scotland.

'We were fed and watered, we were taught English.

'We were entertained, when we felt sad and homesick.'

Happy New Year, everybody. Lang may your lum reek.

MUSIC: Rivers Of Babylon by Boney M

# ..there we sat down

# Yeah we wept, when we remembered Zion... #

'We were given accommodation, and all the help to rebuild our lives.

'They did all they could to make us feel at home,

'and importantly, they helped us to stand on our feet again.'

Although the music and look of Alison's film

is dated in the '80s, the story is just as topical today.

-ALISON:

-On the surface, this whole operation would appear to have been

pretty clear sailing. But in actual fact, many problems arose

and only someone like Rufus Reade,

the project leader at Carnwath, can tell us about these problems.

Well, the Vietnamese have come at a time of high unemployment,

recession, general cutbacks in local authorities' expenditure

and so there is little chance of work for them.

The shortage of houses in many areas gives rise to understandable resentment.

Alison felt compelled to tell the story.

She filmed for several months alongside a busy day job and

with no agenda other than to record what was happening in her community.

Sadly, Alison passed away during the making of our programme,

but her film lives on.

'I have watched Alison's film many times,

'and the more I watch, the more I think how marvellous

'the Scottish people were, given the social and economic challenges of the time.

'With their kindness and enormous generosity, I have my life again.'

The films of people like Alison and her husband capture

moments in our collective history, that might otherwise be forgotten.

Bye!

Many of these films can be watched at the Scottish Screen Archive.

But many more lay undiscovered in attics and cupboards,

just waiting to be brought back to life.

MUSIC: Joy by Apollo 100