“WATERS END”

A Dream in the Making

David Reynolds was born in 1943 at Queensbury, Middlesex just North West of London. As a young man he spent all his “pocket money” going to the local cinemas to see the latest western, biblical epic or “Carry On” films-sometimes three times a week. He became fascinated with the “magic” of movie making and was eager to go into the film industry as a career when he left school.

However, his parents, knowing how precarious the “film world” was advised him to go into Local Government as a traffic engineer – much more of a stable profession - which he dutifully did for 33 years. His love of movies, however, never diminished and he was fortunate at Cheltenham Town Council to look after the “needs” of Film Production companies who were shooting in the lovely Regency Cotswold town, which had similar streets and architecture to London, but much more controllable.

He was mixing with the crew & stars like Michael Caine and Nigel Havers, being involved in their film “The Whistle Blower” (1987). He even appeared as an extra and this adventure convinced David that he wanted to be part of the movie business, somehow.

Picture courtesy of The Gloucestershire Echo

A graphic design / website company: Media Wave www.media-wave.co.uk wanted 200+ shots of GWR steam railway scenes, and also of The Cotswolds, to add to their website. It was while David was taking shots of the old trains and stations, which had been lovingly restored to the 60’s period that a germ of a story outline came into his mind.

Having taken early retirement in 1995 and always been a keen photographer in the video and digital formats, he found himself on a photo-shoot at the GWR Gloucestershire-Warwickshire Steam Railway
www.gwsr.com which runs from Cheltenham Racecourse to Toddington.

That was the initial story plot-outline back in the summer of 2003 which eventually became “Waters End”, after many rewrites, especially as additional locations and actors became available. Fortunately, both David & his wife (Maralyn, who plays Mary) had lots of connections in the local film making and drama world. They were very fortunate to get both Tim Green & Kevin Bennett involved from Compass Video (Cheltenham) www.compassvideo.co.uk who are great creative technicians and also added their flair to the production: Flat-Broke Films was born!

With a small budget donated by “friends & family” and all the locations agreed “at no cost” on the understanding that they would receive maximum publicity with the release of the short film, the cast including Lord Nigel Jones (his first film acting role and seen driving a late 50s Alvis sports saloon) and crew, started filming at Nature In Art Museum on a very cold but dry February morning.

Juggling with the availability of actors, and confusingly filming “out of sequence”, the last location shots were “in the can” on a hot summer’s morning in August at Greet railway tunnel entrance.