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NORTH COUNTRY PICTURES
“I KNOW WHAT I WANT AND I KNOW HOW TO DO IT. WHAT I DON’T LIKE IS SOMEONE INTERFERING AND PREVENTING THE JOB BEING DONE.”
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immediately, rather try and learn the business first. Model-making and spe- cial effects were what I’d been obsessed with as a kid and the way I wanted to start out. But I had always intended to move on.”
His other obsession is what he described as “the Northern kitchen- sink tradition. I’ve always loved those old black-and-white British films made between about 1958 and 1963, like Room At The Top and
A Kind Of Loving.” And it’s
that particular obsession
that has underpinned the
kind of films he and Julie
have been making, and will
continue to make, at North
Country Pictures.
But there still seems an almost inexplicable gulf between those well-paid sci-fi assignments and the two rather ambitious, deter- minedly hand-crafted, period romantic dramas that have emerged independently in the past five years. How did he effect that transition?
“It was after Aliens, I think, that
I decided to take some time off and came back up North to try and devel- op my owns ideas and writing. At the same time, a guy I’d been with at art college, who was on industrial release at a studio in Leeds, said they needed a model-maker for a British Telecom commercial. I did that and after that kept getting offers of work locally.
“I realised that there was a market for me to tap into along the M62 corridor between Leeds and Manchester working for the big agencies and photographers. So
I set up my own visual effects/model making business catering primarily for advertising rather than drama.
“Being back in the North meant
I could also cope more easily with doing my own personal projects. Then once I met and married Julie, the idea was to move towards making films, ” added Woodcock, who now lives in Rochdale with an office in Leeds.
Between Two Women was based on an, at-the-time, unpublished novel by... you’ve guessed it, Steven Woodcock. While it was being shopped around publishers, he turned it into a screen- play and a year later, on Julie’s birth-
day, the couple decided they’d put it together as a film project.
“We went the conventional route of Channel 4, the BBC, basically all the film financiers he could find and got nowhere so we decided we’d try and raise the finance privately as many first-time filmmakers do. It would take us another three years before we finally got to make the film in 1999.”
‘the family business’ to this single- minded enterprise. Both films were also originated on 35mm Fujifilm – the first lit by Gordon Hickie, the second by Gordon MacGregor.
The Jealous God was actually shot a couple of years ago and has had to wait for release until the Woodcocks finally, after nearly 18 months, managed to put together their own distribution business.
“We had to raise money to do that, through corporate finance and it’s been a long and drawn-out process,” Woodcock admitted.
A third project, David Storey’s Flight From Camden, looks likely to be filmed next, hopefully in the autumn.
“I’d like to make at least five films like the two we’ve already made. That would make a very nice little DVD boxed set of North Country Pictures period films.”
But just in case one thinks Woodcock, now in his forties, seems permanently stranded
in the past, he confessed to another dream project. “I have a another script which is set slightly in the future, a really high-octane political thriller with car chases and explo- sions. In fact, completely opposite to the other films we’re making.”
Just as he remains anxious, as part of his own filmmaking brief, “to preserve on screen for posterity” some rapidly disappearing parts of the Northern landscape, so he remains equally determined to keep a tight rein on all aspects of his bur- geoning business.
“We are true independents. I want to control these films from conception through to delivery to the public.
I want to have an input – I suppose that’s a codeword for control – over everything from poster design and marketing to where how and where ads are placed.” You better believe him. ■ QUENTIN FALK
The Jealous God was originated on 35mm Super F-64D 8522, F-250D 8562 and F-500 8572
In the end, financing eventually dictated that they had to go the small screen route with a sale to Sky then concentrating on DVD and VHS. “However, it got people talking to us about financing the next film and very much helped raise our profile,” Woodcock explained.
Packed with familiar faces like Barbara Marten, Andrina Carroll, Andrew Dunn, Frank Windsor, Paul Shane and Duggie Brown, Between Two Women, set in 1957, dealt with the lesbian relationship between a Yorkshire mill worker’s wife and a local schoolteacher.
Braine-inspired, Sixties-set The Jealous God has an equally ambitious theme – about the conflict between sex and religion as a young Catholic teacher (Jason Merrells from Cutting It) falls fatefully for an attractive Protestant divorcée (Mairead Carty). The supporting cast includes Denise Welch, Robert Duncan, Andrew Dunn and Marcia Warren.
In fact, the odd name – not to men- tion the odd prop like a venerable Austin A35 – recurs in each film including the Woodcocks’ young son, Edward, who adds an extra sense of
8 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture