Roanoke: The Lost Colony: West Stow In Action

So as i'm still a student, sadly I still have deadline days and the last two days i've been frantically trying to complete one of those, which I managed in the last few hours. Living with Jenna (2nd AD) we both had the pleasure of this last minute dash (which wasn't helped by the shooting of Roanoke) although I need to to check Dan and George (who are the other two on the course) are alive, this is one of the small reason our updates will start now.
So with two shooting locations to cover, let's start with the most exciting location of the two, West Stow.

Situated just by Bury, St Edmonds West Stow is a true to life Anglo Saxon Village which although seems odly the wrong time period, is in actual fact a perfect setting for the colony of Roanoke. The true to life colony was incredibly small and although called Fort Raleigh was in no way a "Fort" as one would imagine.

Ignoring the actors, extras and crew for a split second I think the most incredible thing about the three days was the weather. We shot the continuity shots to these three days back in the Summer on the hottest days of the year, and it was hot. However for December 4th,5th and 6th we managed to have bright blue skies and sun piercing the air (such description). Although the temperature was rather cold compared to the Summer, through the camera, which is really all that matters to us, the light and colour was perfect, so thank you to the Weather Man:

- "you've done us proud" - As someone could say without bringing grammer into the equation.

It has been a truley wonderful and amazing experiance for me due to the incredible comitment and talent of our actors, actress, and extras. For our cast, there is really no faulting anyone and it would be impossible to replace any as they travel mile after mile put in hour after hour for the production and all I can see is a level of professialism that would be expected on a multi million pound production but has been offered to our production from some incredibly talented, amazingly comtted and just wonderfull people that make up our main cast. In reality i'm lost for words for everyone but had to put something down that has only touched the surface of how strongly i feel about our cast.

As for the near 100 extras that have comitted themselves to our prodction over the course of the summer it has been amazing how they have suffered the cold, heat and long hours for us, thank you, and I can't wait to meet up again at the Premiere.

We had three days one West Stow, the first involved the main cast for the most part on their own, although we did have three extras help us on our way, the second day saw the colonist extras and cast and then the third was the ship crew. As Sam explanied below we had alot of scenes to battle through and the worst problem was the light. Light faded inside the buildings by 3pm so it was an extreme push to make sure we made got through all the inside material by then along with all the outside scenes by 4pm . By the end of each day it felt like 10pm due to the light although in a turn from the norm we were generally at our varying acomadation for the night by 6pm, we still had to be up and back by 6:30am.

I'll stop rambling at let you see some of the pictures Angela took on the day: