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The History Boys
“We went for the higher speed stock, tested
various things and settled for the Eterna 500. It was amazing.”
continued from page 12
To Sarajevo), “it seemed the only way to me and to them to do it was make this film for a TV price – about £2 mil- lion. One of the ways of making it for that is not pay people very much and the only way to do that with this cast, which is quite large in low-budget film terms, was to be able to say to them that we would retain some ownership – so there will be some proper ‘back end’ for a change.”
And so to Cannes where, with Bennett’s authorship acting like cat- nip, the producers were fighting them off. “We had,” said Loader, “all the British broadcasters very interested. In the end, after discussions with all of them, we went with the BBC partly because they responded very quickly and positively and partly because it seems the natural home for this piece as Alan’s had a long relationship with them with his other work.”
With Fox Searchlight also swiftly on board via DNA Films as well as UK Film Council money, it was now a question of moving ahead very quickly.
“We were in Cannes the second week of May having got the cast and crew more-or-less signed up. Our dates were very fixed not only due to the availability of the cast but because
we had to film during school holidays which gave us a six-week window for shooting. Nick also had the day job running the National and was prepar- ing to get Henry IV on stage so he couldn’t do it any earlier.”
Although the play is set in Yorkshire, that was simply not do-able logistically for the film. “The mission,” said Loader, “was to try and find a sort of knocked-about urban grammar school which needed a minimum of dressing yet had the right atmosphere and was within the M25 corridor. ”
They found it by doing a sort of composite of the neighbouring Watford Boys and Watford Girls schools – which became “Cutlers’ Grammar School” for the film - fol-
lowed by a week of locations in Halifax and at the famous Fountains Abbey, where the boys have an important school outing. Decidedly no frills filmmaking.
“‘Opened out’?” said Loader.
“I think we’ve actually shortened it. The play was running close to three hours by the end of its run. Our film will be, I think, less than two hours.”
Added Hytner: “We haven’t busted a gut to open it out. Films about enclosed worlds (schools, prisons, bunkers, army bases) can work as microcosms for a much larger world. It was good to move closer into our world and get deeper under the skin of its protagonists than we were able to do on stage.”
One of the stage production’s gim- micks was, in fact, the use of black- and-white back projection to broaden the scope and add time-switching ele- ments to the action.
Said the tireless Dunn, whose more recent work includes Hitch (in the States), Stage Beauty, Piccadilly Jim and Mrs Henderson Presents: “The pro- jected images did open it out a bit on stage but I knew I had to get those right out of my head when we were doing the film. In other words, this is not a straight filmed record of the play but it’s cinematic in its own right.”
Only his fifth feature film, The History Boys is an exception to Hytner’s career rule. “It was a great treat to find myself unexpectedly behind a camera again. But if I’d had to take more than a couple of months out to shoot it,
I wouldn’t have been able to do so.
“My primary commitment is to the National Theatre and I am (as I have always been) a theatre director who sometimes gets to direct a movie – with decidedly mixed results although I think The History Boys will be at the upper end of the mix!” ■ QUENTIN FALK
The History Boys was originated on 16mm Fujicolor Eterna 500T 8673
Photo top: The History Boys line-up Russell Tovey, Sam Anderson, James Corden, Andrew Knott, Dominic Cooper, Samuel Barnett, Jamie Parker and Sacha Dhawan; above l-r: Richard Griffiths and Stephen Campbell Moore; Director Nick Hytner and DP Andrew Dunn; the boys
14 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture