Son of Rambow

Purchasing Information

News Details

Posted By: Kirk Siddals - 17/03/2008 16:16:52

CERT:         12A TBC                         
RUNNING TIME:     97 MINS
RELEASE DATE:     4 APRIL 08

SON OF RAMBOW

A cheeky, coming-of-age comedy set in suburban England in 1982, Son of Rambow is a heart-rending and hilarious adventure, which follows  two little boys with a big video camera and even bigger ambitions as they attempt to make a home movie “Son of Rambow”, in homage to their larger than life movie hero Rambo.


SHORT SYNOPSIS

Ten year-old Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) has lead a very sheltered life. His strict religious and moral upbringing has excluded the adolescent joys of music, movies or television. Instead he gets his excitement by expressing himself through drawings and illustrations.

Until he finds himself caught up in the extraordinary world of Lee Carter (Will Poulter), the school terror and maker of bizarre home videos. Lee Carter exposes Will to a pirate copy of Rambo: First Blood and from that pivotal life-changing moment on Will becomes so obsessed by superstar Sylvester Stallone’s iconic Vietnam War hero he’s easily convinced to be the stuntman in Lee Carter’s latest action masterpiece.

Against family orders Will’s imaginative brain begins to flower in the world of experimental filmmaking and his innocent ambitions lead to a true bond with Lee Carter. They even start to make a popular name for themselves at school as movie moguls.
But when cool French exchange student Didier Revol, (Jules Sitruk) arrives on the scene searching for stardom their unique friendship and precious film are pushed to breaking point.

SON OF RAMBOW premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2007 and has since played to equally great critical acclaim and audience success at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Seattle International Film Festival and The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival

Optimum Releasing presents a Hammer & Tongs, Celluloid Dreams, Reason Pictures production of SON OF RAMBOW starring newcomers Bill Milner and Will Poulter, Neil Dudgeon (Coming Down The Mountain), Jessica Hynes (Confetti), Ed Westwick (Breaking and Entering), Jules Sitruk (Viper in the Fist) and British comedy institution Eric Sykes. Shot in eight weeks on locations around suburban London, the cheeky coming of age comedy is written and directed by Garth Jennings (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). The producer is Nick Goldsmith (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).


SON OF RAMBOW
LONGER SYNOPSIS

SON OF RAMBOW is the name of the home movie made by two little boys with a big video camera and even bigger ambitions. Set on a long hot English summer in the early 1980s, it’s a cheeky coming of age comedy about friendship, faith and the tough business of growing up.

We see the story through the eyes of ten year-old Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), the eldest son of a fatherless Plymouth Brethren family. The Brethren regard themselves as God’s ‘chosen ones’ and their strict moral code means Will has never been allowed to mix with the other ‘worldlies’, listen to music, watch television or go to the cinema. Instead he gets his excitement by expressing himself through drawings, inventing exercise book flicker cartoons and adding colourful illustrations to each page of his Bible.  Until, that is, he finds himself caught up in the extraordinary world of Lee Carter (Will Poulter), the school terror and maker of bizarrely madcap home movies he wants to enter in the BBC TV Screen Test programme competition.

Pretending to take sole punishment from the headmaster for an accident caused by them both in the school corridors, Lee Carter easily manipulates scared Will into becoming his slave. At first Lee Carter just wants to blackmail Will for the odd favour and possession of his dad’s old watch. But he soon realizes Will could be the drudge he needs to help him fulfil his ambition of becoming an action filmmaker. It’s at Lee Carter’s house, attached to the elderly care home family business, that Will becomes exposed to a pirate copy of Rambo: First Blood.

From that galvanising, life-changing moment on Will’s sheltered mind is blown wide open and he’s easily convinced to be the stuntman in Lee Carter’s latest diabolical home movie. Will’s imaginative little brain is not only given the chance to flourish in the world of micro-budget filmmaking. It is also very handy when it comes to dreaming up elaborate schemes to keep his partnership with Lee Carter a secret from his family, mother Mary (Jessica Hynes) and Grandma (Anna Wng), and close Brethren member Joshua (Neil Dudgeon).

Will and Lee Carter’s complete disregard for the consequences of their covert operations and their innocent aspirations mean that the process of making their film is a glorious rollercoaster ride. One that eventually leads to a true bond; neither has ever had a best friend before. They start to make a name for themselves at school as moviemakers. But when popularity descends on them in the super-cool form of the Pied Piper-esque French exchange student Didier Revol (Jules Sitruk), their unique friendship and precious film are pushed, quite literally, to breaking point.

For when one of their epic stunts goes wrong it puts Lee Carter in hospital with a broken leg, feeling betrayed by his close companion. However, Will is determined to finish their movie in the most totally unexpected way. But will Lee Carter’s brother Lawrence (Ed Westwick) act his cameo part as well as Will plays the bold and courageous SON OF RAMBOW?



THE MAKING OF THE SON OF RAMBOW

SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAMBOW

Space Dust in the sweet shops, Smelly Rubbers at school, celebrity dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse’s catchphrase ‘Walkies’ on TV and Boy George Top of the Pops.
 
But another major event happened in the early 1980s that would massively affect the childhood of future filmmaker, writer and director Garth Jennings. It was the release of Rambo: First Blood featuring action superstar Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, a loner Vietnam War veteran pushed too far by the society who had made him a killing machine. The blockbuster success catapulted the physically fierce, but emotionally vulnerable fighter, to global icon status and struck a universal chord in filmgoers, none more so than in Jennings.

“My friend’s older brother had got a pirate video of Rambo: First Blood”, Jennings recalls. “And it was the first time any of my school gang had seen a film with a rating higher than our age. The most shockingly risqué thing we’d seen up to that point was ‘The Kenny Everett Video Show’! Watching Rambo: First Blood absolutely cold like that was an incredible experience. We spent most of our time mucking about in Epping Forest. And here was this misunderstood hero who could sew up wounds in his own arm, stalk armies of soldiers with sticks and bend the forest into traps. To our minds Sly Stallone was the coolest guy in the universe.

Jennings adds, “How besotted were we by all things Rambo? Enough that my friends and I all became army cadets just so we could get the uniform gear! I lasted less than a year because the reality of the arduous training and the practice manoeuvres were nuts. My best friend actually became a Royal Marine. I was the wimp who went off and joined a sissy drama class instead.

This precise point in pop culture history also marked another exciting era - the advent of the home video camera. Suddenly young minds had access to a new technological advance that allowed them to record weddings, family holidays and barbecue parties. And create their own adventure stories in their back gardens using any handy friends and relatives. Jennings continues, “My dad inherited a video camera from a friend who had emigrated. It was a classic early JVC – the kind that was laughably called portable even though you were carrying the videoing equipment around in a bag and the camera was a whole separate deal. I remember we thought the battery was amazing because it lasted for a whole half hour!

“Dad was useless with anything to do with technology so I immediately commandeered the thing and started making little films with my friends. A sequel to Rambo: First Blood was obviously our first priority. It never occurred to us what a silly idea it was in reality, that my arthritic granddad playing a getaway tank driver was a daft bit of continuity. He never grumbled though. Or that we couldn’t get the dog out of the car for the kidnap scene, so we left him there and blithely carried on anyway”

He adds, “The main thing was we were in the middle of a thrilling kidnapping.  Everything was possible, we were all pulling together, and we had no fear. We were happy to do our own stunts, and you became very resourceful, coming up with all these weird and wonderful solutions for your story and your special effects. Mainly it was about recording the fighting and playing it back later for a laugh”.

And for the possibility of winning a major prize reveals Jennings. “There was this terrific BBC TV children’s quiz show we loved to watch. Screen Test presented by Brian Trueman was a panel game where contestants were shown a series of film clips. Each was followed by questions about the content of the clip or more generally about the film from which it came. Stuff like, was Baloo the Bear holding the pineapple in his right or left hand. Aside from the quiz, the programme also featured a young filmmakers' competition. Viewers were invited to send in films they had made themselves to be judged by anonymous experts. The prize at stake was a selection of camera gear and other equipment. It was mainly Super 8 movies that were being sent in and we had this fantasy of submitting our crazed video action epics. We never got round to it though. Sheer laziness. I often wonder what would have happened if we had”.

THE GENESIS OF THE SCRIPT

It turned out Garth Jennings didn’t need any help from Screen Test. After leaving St. Martin’s School of Art he joined forces with two close college friends, Nick Goldsmith and Dominic Leung, and officially set up the Hammer & Tongs production company in 1996. The trio soon became creative visionaries behind some of the best music videos (for Blur, Fatboy Slim, R.E.M and Supergrass) and commercials (including BT Broadband) of the past decade.

“It was 2000 and we’d had a number of successful years behind us”, observes Jennings. I was sitting down with Nick one day and started talking to him about the amateur movies I used to make as a kid. I mentioned Rambo: First Blood and how ludicrous our methods were trying to copy Stallone’s stunts on video.  Nick also felt a connection to the icons and trends of the period I was talking about.

Nick Goldsmith remembers the initial conversation well. “I wasn’t making home videos like Garth. But I was going into the woods at the back of my Elstree home and blowing up my Action Man figures. Rambo: First Blood didn’t have the same impact on me either yet I could instantly grasp what Garth was actually tapping into, the way everyone’s childhood is a rose-tinted remembrance of recklessness and fearless acts, of playing make-believe, of simply growing up. Using the home video device was a lovely way of bringing those universal experiences to the fore”

Literally the day after Garth had the basic idea we had a meeting at Film 4 with CEO Paul Webster. He got very excited by the prospect and gave us seed money to develop the project. Soon after Film 4 was downsized so they were never to become a financial backing option”.

“The first thing we did”, explains Nick Goldsmith, “Was work on a treatment outline and story structure. We spent a lot of time doing that together in order to sort out any potential problems. Garth went away and wrote a draft we then went through forensically to see what was or wasn’t working.

Garth Jennings delivered a first draft screenplay but soon realized it wasn’t dynamic enough to make the full grade. He explains, “It was obvious my own childhood was far too much fun. It didn’t capture that crucial moment of overwhelming, sea-changing discovery. No one would have believed that aftershock coming from a character based on myself. In an early draft of the script we had a character based on my next-door neighbours’ son. They were Plymouth Brethren. They didn’t watch television, listen to radio or read fiction books – they cut themselves off from all the things that might prove corrupting influences”.

He continues, “So if I moved the story next door, and if this young boy who has never watched television in his life, if the first thing he ever sees is Rambo: First Blood, suddenly it becomes interesting. It captured the wide-eyed impact in the most exaggerated but believable way. You would instantly understand why ten year-old Will Proudfoot would be so swept away by this visceral film and why he would want to emulate the larger-than-life character at its centre”.

Jennings adds, “One of my relatives teaches at an exclusive Plymouth Brethren school and I got most of my research from him and a few ex members of the faith. I never knew what went on inside my neighbours’ house past the fact they preached in town every Saturday. As much as Will Proudfoot was the right conduit for the drama I wanted to be as truthful to the Plymouth Brethren community and spirit as I possibly could”.

In stark contrast to Will Proudfoot is the second main character in SON OF RAMBOW - Lee Carter. Jennings declares, “He’s based on a best friend I had, with a few character traits from other good mates thrown into the mix. Because of his absent parents Lee Carter is always getting into trouble and is something of an outcast. But an ambitious one who when not filming pirate copies of Rambo: First Blood in the local Rex cinema is making his own insect snuff movies – blowing up creatures – which he thinks will win him Screen Test awards. That is until he gets Will to be his willing slave and realizes he can put him at any risk doing ridiculous stunts in an action video. Will always calls Lee Carter by his full name because I felt that made him even more an enraptured wide-eyed innocent abroad”.

The Pied Piper-esque Didier Revol character is an amalgam of the sophisticated French Exchange students Jennings thought were so exotic during his Epping school days. “These students arrived from nowhere and they seemed so glamorous: the boys with little moustaches and blouson jackets, the girls attractive and more available. They had great chewing gum too! Didier is a self-obsessed peacock of ludicrous proportions.

Nick Goldsmith interjects, “Before we settled on the Will Proudfoot/Lee Carter core dynamic, we must have had at least four different scripts with four completely different storylines. One was Garth’s Goonies, another centred on the Didier character, and Will and Lee Carter were at various times friends from the start or mortal enemies throughout entirely. It has become a blur exactly who suggested what, when, but Garth did all the physical writing and dialogue while I helped him problem solve. It’s why he has sole credit as the writer”.

However the focal point of Will Proudfoot and Lee Carter’s fantasy world could only be Rambo: First Blood and its star Sylvester Stallone as Jennings found out. He explains, “Because of the inherent copyright problems involved in using Rambo: First Blood we tried writing the script with a generic made-up action hero instead. It didn’t work. Then we tried with characters played by such action contemporaries as Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger. That didn’t work either”

He continues, “There is just something about the Rambo figure and his alter ego Stallone that gave a vital force to the scenario. Of course you can’t call your film SON OF RAMBOW without problems. It turned out the rights issues weren’t as difficult as I thought to surmount, just long and drawn out”.

Even so an early decision was made to add a W to the SON OF RAMBOW title, “Because using Rambo was always going to be an issue and we were very well aware of that”, says Nick Goldsmith. “The additional W made it quite clear to audiences it wasn’t any kind of official Rambo sequel at all and it added a little extra humour “.

That process was greatly helped when Jennings grabbed the bull by the horns and contacted Sylvester Stallone himself. “It was great writing a letter, 'Dear Mr. Stallone,'" he chuckles. “I asked for his blessing and permission to use his likeness in the key video movie clips. I assured him my movie wasn’t meant to be snide or a send-up. That it was about my affection for his character and how much it meant to me growing up. He signed all the approval forms and I couldn’t have been more honoured or delighted. It was very exciting to see his signature even though it was very unimpressive, just a squiggle”.
 


FROM SCRIPT TO PRE-PRODUCTION

“We were still developing SON OF RAMBOW and had even turned our thoughts to possible casting when the totally unexpected happened,” recollects Garth Jennings. “The script for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy literally came through the post with a note attached asking if we were interested in making it. We were. After a marvelous two years in outer space we opened up the SON OF RAMBOW script, convinced that we weren’t going to like it any more. That with fresh eyes it would disintegrate into a meaningless vanity project. But the great thing was we loved it even more and, in the course of our Hitchhiker’s experiences, we’d learnt a lot about script editing and other things we could apply to polish it up and get it ready to go”


He continues, “Naively I also thought that the success of Hitchhiker’s in numerous countries would help us raise the finance for SON OF RAMBOW. Wrong. Had we put a robot with a giant head in it somewhere we would have been laughing. But now we were the guys who did weird science fiction movies.

“It was a strange time”, sighs Nick Goldsmith in agreement. “People liked Garth, they liked me, they liked the fact Hitchhiker’s was Number One in many countries and they thought the script was terrific. But no one knew what to do with it or whom it was for exactly and how great it could be. The times we tried to make people understand it was for every adult who was still a kid at heart. No one seemed to be able to get their heads around what we saw as a really commercial venture”.

In a major pitch offensive the Hammer & Tongs team produced a book outlining their thoughts, influences and ideas for the proposed film. Complete with a faked newspaper rave review for the ‘finished’ SON OF RAMBOW, copious script extracts, illustrations drawn by Jennings, early 80s adverts for video cameras, stills from Rambo and posters for Harold and Maude, My Life as a Dog, Amelie and E.T. (to put across the emotional resonance aimed for), this lavish prospectus got mailed to anyone who might be interested.

Eighteen months later just as Jennings and Goldsmith were about to reassess the situation in the depressing light of absolutely nothing happening, there was a knock at the front door of the Hammer & Tongs canal barge HQ in North London. “And in walked Hengameh Panahi from Celluloid Dreams in France”, recalls Jennings. “She said she had loved the script and asked how we intended to make it. Luckily I could show her lots of already drawn storyboards and she went away and raised the £4 million budget we needed. Finally our story was off the ground”.

CASTING WILL PROUDFOOT AND LEE CARTER

“From the moment we began writing the script we knew the casting of the two lead boys was a crucial element”, says Garth Jennings. “We were looking on a continual basis throughout every draft, every rewrite, every change in script emphasis. We wanted total newcomers, kids who hadn’t been trained to be tiny professional actors. Kids who were natural, who wouldn’t worry about looking not cool in the crying scenes or try being overly funny with the dialogue.

It was in the last week of an extensive London wide audition process that Jennings and Nick Goldsmith knew they had found their perfect Will Proudfoot. “Bill Milner walked in and he was instantly perfect”, remembers Jennings. “He ambled in, clearly wondering why he was there and what he should be doing. He read the lines with a natural ease, I looked at Nick, he looked at me, and it was all I could do to stop myself yelling, you’ve got the part”

“It was a similar situation with Will Poulter”, continues Jennings. “He was very quiet and did the scene very well. I assumed he was Cockney and was astonished when I called him back to read again that he had, in fact, a well spoken accent. Both boys are from well-grounded families and that was a major plus point too. I knew they would have the proper support while filming in what would be an alien environment”.


THE SONS OF RAMBOW

For schoolboys Bill Milner and Will Poulter, the SON OF RAMBOW adventure began with a casting call at their respective drama groups.  “Nobody normally came to give auditions”, says Bill Milner who was 11 years old when he got the role of Will Proudfoot. “I didn’t expect to get anything out of it so I was surprised when I got called back and had to pop along to meet casting director Susie Figgis. All acting had meant to me up to that point was a way of keeping in touch with my friends who took the same classes. I’d done improvisational exercises, some Shakespeare, ‘The Witches’ and ‘Bugsy Malone’ but it was nerve-wracking meeting director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith to talk about the Will Proudfoot part. Oh, I thought, I have to take it seriously now”.

Will Poulter, 13 years old at the time, recalls the exact moment he heard about the film, “I was in English class”, he laughs, “And suddenly this note was pressed up against the window by my drama teacher urgently mouthing ‘Audition, Audition’ through the glass. I got past Round One and met Susie Figgis at her house to talk about the role. Then I met Garth and Nick at their Hammer & Tongs canal-side office and they were very nice to me. I didn’t think much of it actually, it all passed in a haze. Then my mum got the call saying I had the part of Lee Carter. I went from not believing her to ecstatic in about ten seconds”.

“I got the Will Proudfoot role before Will Poulter had been cast as Lee Carter”, points out Milner. “The first time I met Will was when he was auditioning for Garth and Nick and they asked me to come along to see how we’d get along, if the chemistry between us was right for the film. We got on well instantly and became great mates. We still see each other most weekends and have been on holiday together”.

Poulter adds, “Our characters in the film reflect what happened in real life to a great extent. As Will and Lee Carter’s friendship developed so did Bill’s and mine. Everything you see in the film is pretty much how it was for us. We were having as much fun together off the set riding BMX bikes and playing football as we were on”.

Poulter continues, “Although the script is based on Garth’s childhood memories I’m certainly not playing him. No one directly represents the adolescent Garth. The Lee Carter character is a mix of a lot of his friends at the time. I’d have felt more nervous than I did had I been playing Garth as a kid.  I don’t think I would have done it half so well. It was more freeing being able to play Lee Carter as a composite more than just a single influence”.

He adds, “Nor am I playing myself exactly. My school friends are going to have a real laugh when they see the movie because Lee Carter isn’t much like me. I expect to get a lot of stick from them. I think my teachers will look at me differently too after continually being ejected from class in the film. I hope they still want to teach me after all the mayhem I cause! Underneath Lee Carter’s tough exterior is a really nice person. I think it’s that bit of the whole experience my mum hopes has rubbed off on me”.

“I’m not too much like Will Proudfoot either”, remarks Milner. “He’s an illustrator and I am a little artistic, and I do like watching the occasional action movie, but that’s about it regarding any similarities. I was glad about that because it gave me the chance to behave like someone else, to act as differently as I could. If Will Proudfoot had been like me it wouldn’t have felt like I was acting at all. And where would be the fun in that?”

He continues, “Garth told me I didn’t have to watch Rambo: First Blood if I didn’t want to. But I felt I had to really to understand why my character would be so amazed and intrigued by it. When I did eventually see it I thought it was an okay action movie”.

Poluter reflects, “I’m more a Bourne Ultimatum fan myself than a Rambo: First Blood one. I’m not tied down to genres in my love of movies. Another favourite has to be The Shawshank Redemption”.

THE SUPPORTING CAST

“Casting the adult roles was a piece of cake”, reports Garth Jennings. “I had never met Neil Dudgeon (Joshua) before but he came in to audition, nailed the Plymouth Brethren character who is clearly holding a torch for Mary perfectly and was immediately hired. Jessica Hynes (Mary) I’d seen in the television sit-com Spaced (under her stage name of Jessica Stevenson) and had really liked her in that. She had that Plymouth Brethren face, very Germanic. As soon as Ed Westwick (Lawrence) walked in, every handsome, arrogant box was ticked and he was more than happy to play second fiddle to two kids.

Will Poulter learnt a lot from Breaking and Entering actor Ed Westwick he admits. “Lee Carter and Lawrence’s relationship is a very weird one. Lee Carter does all he can for his stand-offish brother and gets absolutely nothing back in return apart from aggravation and orders to make more pirate video copies. I have an older brother and we’re very close so it was a strange relationship for me to act. Luckily Ed was an experienced actor and had done some big movies. I looked up to him and he taught me a great deal just by observing him in action”.  

For the role of elderly care home patient Frank, who Will Proudfoot and Lee Carter casually use as a video extra, Jennings chose British comedy legend Eric Sykes. “Eric comes from that generation of comedians who have an inbuilt quality of pathos”, he points out. “Frank was the only character I felt deserved to be someone well known to the British public. And I chose ex-Eastender Anna Wing to play Grandma. At 93 years-old she was the most talkative member of the cast, the irony being she doesn’t have one single line of dialogue throughout the whole film”.

Jules Sitruk (Didier Revol) was cast from French auditions states Jennings. “All the kids who turned up were fantastic, they brought their own cigarettes, knew how to smoke and looked terrific. Jules was the perfect Didier, just who we had in our heads. It was after hiring him I found out he was the only one of the group who had ever acted before. In fact he was the Daniel Radcliffe of Paris having starred in many films and TV shows since he was a child”.

Then there was the question of who could double for Sylvester Stallone. Jennings explains, “While we used actual Rambo: First Blood footage in the dream sequence certain scenes had to be filmed to augment those with Will Proudfoot’s additional flights of fancy. I did ask Stallone himself if he’d do it. No response. So we hired look-alike Atila Omirali. When Sly finally saw the completed film that was one of his main comments. ‘Who was that guy playing me?’”

THE FILMING OF SON OF RAMBOW

Principal photography for SON OF RAMBOW began July 31st, 2006. Locations ranged between Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where Ashlyns Comprehensive became Will Proudfoot and Lee Carter’s school, a power station in Ramsgate, Kent, and Black Park near Pinewood Studios, London. “We filmed for forty days”, says Garth Jennings. “Which amounted to eight weeks in total because I like five-day weeks. I have a family I like spending time with, I wanted Bill Milner and Will Poulter to have their weekends off, and I find the crew are more focused on that kinder schedule”.

Jennings adds, “We used about 150 actual pupils from Ashlyns for the student body. All of them were background apart from Zofia Brooks who we asked to play Tina, Didier’s Number One fan. The rest of Didier’s hangers-on were all properly cast. The pupils happily gave up their holidays to go back to school and proved the best extras. They never looked down the cameras lens and loved the crew lunches”.

Because Bill Milner and Will Poulter had both come from a stage drama background, each learnt the entire SON OF RAMBOW script off by heart. “Shows how naïve we were”, laughs Poulter. “After spending a week trying to cram it I was surprised when Garth said it didn’t work that way and I’d only get a page at a time”.

Bill Milner continues, “I’ve never had any trouble learning lines. If I had a particularly wordy scene I’d learn it all just to get it out of the way. But if it was only, say, four lines I’d go over it the night before and then again on the way to the set just to keep it in my head. The scene by the lake where Will and Lee Carter truly bond for the first time, I fixed in my mind early on. You see their new friendship in action when Will nearly drowns and I knew it was going to be important. It turned out to be my favourite scene”.

Poulter’s too. “It’s just such a nice moment between the two boys and where their friendship solidifies”.

During the lake scene, shot in Pinewood’s famous Black Park, producer Nick Goldsmith was close by the two boys in his wetsuit. He explains, “I used to be a scuba diving instructor so I decided to make myself useful as the safety advisor for this complicated sequence. I felt very protective towards our stars anyway and I knew they would be more reassured by my presence in the water than anyone else. I was there in case any rescue operation needed carrying out, which thankfully it wasn’t. A producer usually stands idly by on set unless there’s a problem, this way I felt even more involved’”.

Both boys also agree on their least favourite scene. “It was at the power station where I fall into an oil pit”, explains Milner. “The oil was toothpaste thickener that had been dyed black. It was a freezing day, very windy and I just kept getting colder and colder. It was no fun at all and I got quite upset”.  

Poulter continues, ”It was my big emotional scene where I break down and cry about my brother being the only one who cares about me. I walked away from the set for a little while so I could psych myself up into an emotional state. It actually came quite naturally when the cameras rolled because we were both so cold and miserable and I was very aware that the sooner I got it right the sooner we could all go home and get warm”.

More fun for Milner was playing a mini version of Rambo in a rubber muscle suit. He smiles, “I had to go to the special effects studio and get my body cast in plaster, which was great fun. I had a good look around too so I could see how most special effects in films were done. All the muscle suit shots were done in a studio and I had to go outside to cool down because it was a bit sweaty in there”.

“We weren’t allowed to do any of our stunts in the film obviously”, sighs Poulter. “Only silly things like jumping down stairs, which was a shame. Both Bill and I watched each stunt being done because it was a fascinating learning experience. I thought I’d take notice of what every department was doing just in case SON OF RAMBOW turns out to be my one and only film”.
 
“One of my hardest ‘stunts’ turned out to be the flying dog sequence for the home movie’, remembers Milner. “There was this huge crane which had the dog-kite attached to it and I had to be dragged along a field by it. Normally you’d go with it, but I had to pull against it and keep bumping forward. It was exciting to do but not what I was expecting. And it was quite tiring”.

Garth Jennings couldn’t have been nicer either according to his main co-stars. “Garth always gave us a flavour of the scene we were about to do”, points out Milner. “Then he’d give us helpful hints on what parts to build on. I was never confused, I always felt comfortable and nothing was made too complicated although we’d have to hit marks when we said things”.

Poulter adds, “I liked the fact Garth had each character’s back story worked out. Mainly because they were drawn from his life I suppose. He could tell us both where we were in the emotional scheme of things. That proved quite important on our first day filming when we shot the scene shoplifting from the supermarket. In the story Will and Lee Carter are already firm friends, but Bill and I had only just started working together. And there were all these weird products on the shelves from the 1980s I’d never seen before”.

Neither Milner nor Poulter missed many official school days at the start of their new terms and both agree the filming was an unforgettable experience. “I had the best time of my life”, enthuses Poulter. “I couldn’t have asked for a better holiday. The only real problem was the whole name confusion of Bill playing Will and Will being my first name. The times they’d ask for Will on set and I’d be halfway there when they relayed back they meant the Will character. Often when the crew shouted out Will we’d both turn around too. It was a bit of a nightmare”.

The key to directing Bill and Will was simple according to Garth Jennings. “We got rid of all video playback on set, there were no monitors to make them self-conscious and we made sure there was no undue hanging around. I was very specific with them – run to this mark, look worried, throw the ball and say the line. They treated each scene like a test they had to pass. And they knew when they had got it wrong because they would ask for another take themselves”.

Nick Goldsmith points to another reason why having no video playback assist was a good idea: “Not only did the kids not stop to watch themselves, it made everyone be a bit more on the ball. At first our slimmed down departments complained it was an added inconvenience. You had one go at a take and you couldn’t check it by rewinding. This way was much more enjoyably hands-on and it felt a better community experience”.

Jennings adds, “I can honestly say it was the smoothest shoot possible. There were no problems at all. At the beginning we may have done six takes with the kids, by the final week it was down to about two maximum. The stunts had been well worked out because key safety issues had to be followed. The last shot we did was with Bill and Will in a water tank for the drowning sequence. The water was warm, they had a great time doing it and it couldn’t have been a better end of shooting experience for the two of them”.

Nick Goldsmith comments, “There was initial talk of filming on location in South Africa.  We knew