Recently I met up with my South African martial artist friend Peregrine Dace for the first time since working together in Japan three years previously. While there, we had both worked with Testuro Shimaguchi‘s Kamui Samurai Dojo on Japanese screen combat. Now Perry was in the UK, it was time to work with Independent Drama‘s Ronin Traynor on something a little more European. I asked Director of Photography Andy Little if he would be interested in filming this experiment, and luckily for us, he was. That left us the small matter of having a two day window to devise, choreograph and shoot this two and a half minute short, “The Deserters.”
Travelling a hundred and fifty miles from London to the Peak District, stopping off to pick up some costumes kindly provided by The Lantern Theatre, Sheffield, we took up arms near Langsett Reservoir and prayed for the weather to hold. It did, just about. So we slid around on the morning dew, I almost broke Perry’s thumb and he stabbed me in the groin. The results of which you can see above.
Very excitingly, the short has earned hundreds of views in the week since we uploaded it. I would love to be able to produce more of this kind of thing, so I’ve opened the doors to crowdsourcing. If you’d like to donate One English Pound to helping me develop a pilot for an action packed drama based during the inception of the English Civil War, then please click the button below. Your pound will then be used to help us produce something more ambitious, with mud, blood and a story of deadly intrigue amid a national uprising.
