Behind the Scenes: Hiraeth It's My Shout: Short Films from Wales


Behind the Scenes: Hiraeth

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Hiraeth was filmed in West Wales, around Pembrey Country Park

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and the town of Kidwelly.

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It's one of the six short dramas that It's My Shout,

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a training scheme, is making for BBC Wales.

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For director Nerys Wyn Davies,

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the title is important.

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I think the word itself explains that.

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It's Hiraeth. It's not explainable, it's not translatable.

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I think, as Welsh people, there's something in us all, I think,

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that, when we go away, we do want to go home.

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I actually directed for It's My Shout eight years ago

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and I haven't really done much since then.

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I've done an episode of Pobol Y Cwm,

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but I've had this, kind of, feeling that's, sort of, eating away at me,

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"You need to go and direct again!"

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The producer of the film relishes the challenge.

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Daniel Harris moved away from Wales for many years.

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He is also captured by the title of the film.

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Moving back to Wales and,

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kind of, producing this film right away,

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I did definitely have a sense of hiraeth, coming back home

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and the beauty of Wales and being out on a beautiful place

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like Pembrey Beach on a day like today.

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It's fantastic to be back. It's such a beautiful country.

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Pembrey Country Park has an eight-mile-long beach.

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Locally called Cefn Sidan,

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the stretch of sand is one of the longest in Wales.

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The beach we filmed on the first day of filming

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and the weather was beautiful,

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the beach was beautiful, everything about it was fantastic.

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There were different elements to it.

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Really, from my point of view,

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just taking advantage of the whole expanse

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and every shot was beautiful.

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The problem faced in Pembrey was capturing such a spectacular expanse.

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The interior scenes provided a very different challenge,

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with over 40 people in a confined space.

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Then, filming in the pub, we had lots of supporting artists there,

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a confined space,

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lots of people in one room, actually,

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which can make things quite difficult,

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with people talking across each other and so on,

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so just, yeah, two very different challenges.

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The pub was all about the dialogue,

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the beach was all about capturing the grandeur.

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It needed some specialist equipment called a drone,

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which is often used in feature films.

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When I first read the script and I was interested in Hiraeth,

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in my mind I'd imagined a drone,

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but I never thought I'd be actually working with a drone.

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We decided it'd be great

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if we could use a drone for those shots on the beach.

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Producer Dan also runs a company providing drones

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for the film and television industry.

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It's specialised equipment, as the drones are essentially mini aircraft,

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which have to be operated by experts.

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Air traffic control had to be informed

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when they filmed on the beach.

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A drone - most people call them a drone -

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an unmanned aerial vehicle, a UAV, is basically a small helicopter,

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a remote-controlled helicopter that has a camera attached.

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A real nice, crisp image, it's quite a wide lens,

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you've got quite a wide field of view.

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The boys will be setting that up,

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so one of them will fly the helicopter and manage the flight

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and then the other person manages the camera movements.

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The bird sends back the information to them on the ground,

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so they can see exactly what they need to see.

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The director can see it, the DOP can see it,

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so they can make sure that the visuals that the drone,

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the UAV, is getting is up to standard,

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is the shot they want and is going to work for the film.

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For Nerys, the director,

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the drone provided all the shots she needed for the climax to the film.

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It meant that she could convey what the writer wanted in writing Hiraeth.

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As you've seen in the film...

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..I think it makes it look really, really special.

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The writer spoke to us, "Where is home?"

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I think it's something really, really deep, isn't it?

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Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, and all that.

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