2025 01 Spring with bleed - Flipbook - Page 9
called Oazarzate and we did the Dervish advance and several other
big scenes like that. There was a quite a funny incident on the
dervish advance because for the master shot they had 6 or 8
cameras on it. They'd engaged the Moroccan Camel Corps and a
whole lot of guys from the Moroccan army, and then there were all
the British stuntmen with loads of horses. there was a trick they
would always use for an explosion. They would put down a metal
plate and then put pieces of cork and cement dust and a charge
and it would all go off in sequence. The only thing was that they
overdid the cement dust. So all this lot came charging forward, and
what they were trying to do is get them in amongst the charges
when they went off. But they didn9t tell the guys riding the camels,
because they didn9t want them to shy away, and make it look
inauthentic. But all that happened was the whole lot was obliterated
in cement dust and the shot was lost! There was hell to pay over that
because the whole thing had to be rejigged and restructured. And
all the riders were forewarned, so it didn't look anywhere near as
good the second time around!
Ohh and they did a gunboat scene 3 that was quite cleverly done
because we were nowhere near any water, but they mocked up the
gunboat with smoke coming out of the stack and no river. But
Attenborough shot it in such a way that you had no idea there was
no river. That was quite clever.
And you worked on the original Dad's Army 昀椀lm. That's something.
Yes, I did standby on Dad's Army. That was a really funny olm. There
were some real characters. John Laurie, who
played Fraser. He made no secret of the fact that
he was a respected Shakespearean actor and
he9s got quite a strong Scottish accent, and he
he'd say `what is this crap?9 Between John Le
Mesurier and Arthur Lowe there wasn't
animosity, but there was this kind of... it was
almost as if it was an extension of their
characters in the olm, and that was quite
amusing.
One of the worst things that happened to us was
when we did some location down on the
Thames near Bray. It was a scene with Bernard
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