Locating King's Ransom

The principal location for Kings Ransom sounded pretty straight forward; a traditional brick built terrace where an elderly couple might have lived all their married life.

As a condition of grant aid, the film was to be shot in the North East of England which has no shortage of traditional British housing in terraces. At first we thought we were spoiled for choice, but then we realised what we were looking for was not going to be so easy to find. Many of these North East terraces have been “improved” by their householders. The sash windows have gone, replaced by single panes with a top opening light. Original panelled doors have been replaced by flush doors, or doors with wrought iron door furnishings and fisheye lens windows. Being a land of football fans, satellite dishes were everywhere and there were cars parked nose-to-tail both sides of every street. Not what we were after at all.

Fortunately, we could rely on help from the Northern Screen Commission. Their job is to help incoming film makers find what they are looking for and with their assistance we decided to focus on the Lemington area, on the banks of the Tyne just West of the city.

Here the terraces had a more rural atmosphere. Quieter, running either downhill towards the river and the sun or parallel to both the river’s and the sun’s path. Good lighting contrasts and soft, almost whitewashed brickwork rather than brick red. Oh yes, and not too many cars to have to move for exterior shots. Even better, Johnston Street had not one satellite dish. Jackpot! We had found our location!

We also found a number of families who were prepared to rent their homes to us for a week, so we could film our interiors. Not easy, living with a film crew for a week. Three days after we had left, the producer called round to say a personal thank you to the families and learned that the crew was greatly missed! They had actually enjoyed the excitement and they had put up with the inconvenience because they found the whole thing interesting.

A Johnson Street resident with Thelma Barlow and Bryan Pringle

We had only one resident’s complaint in the whole of the time we occupied the street.

Our caterers, knowing we had an early start one morning fired up the catering wagon on-board diesel generator just before 7.00am to make sure the tea-urn was ready in time. (We normally had a mains hook-up at 8.00am, but we forgot to ask her in advance and she was still sound asleep! The genny purrs gently as much as anything, but one neighbour was alight sleeper and did complain, quite rightly. We made sure early starts were covered for a mains hook-up after that.

Next we needed an antique shop. Well, purveyors of fine antiques do not always respond readily to film crews swinging booms and trailing lighting cables all around their more delicate stock and many of these shops are really crowded with stock, not leaving much space for a film crew.

Again Northern Screen Commission came to our assistance with a list of known “film friendly” antique dealers. You will find the Northern Film Commission at www.nsc.org.uk and there is a detailed BBC report on their work at http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/hollywood_on_tyne/northern_screen.shtml

Fortunately in Jesmond’s Fern Avenue they had discovered The Little Theatre Antiques Centre, run by John G Bell, popularly know in the trade as “The Glass Man”. He has an international reputation for his speciality and he’s been known to travel the length and breadth of Britain for particularly collectible pieces. You will find out more about his speciality at www.theglassman.co.uk

As a home movie maker John was particularly film friendly and allowed us the full run of his shop and his personal stock which was a great relief to the props department. The shop is housed in a former theatre and cinema, so it made for a spacious set. We filmed after normal shop hours so he did not lose custom and he enjoyed the late evenings watching the antique shop scenes of the film come to life.