The trials and tribulations of shooting your first feature film.

About 3 years ago, the rights for A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books entered the public domain. That is to say: anybody can now ‘borrow’ them and interpret them how they wish.

Slate 1 horror film 100 aker wood — Rolling!

I’d been aware of this for a while, but then learnt that everybody’s favourite filmmaker Scott Jeffrey was making his own interpretation with ‘Blood and Honey’, (a movie that would come to be interpreted as ‘bad’). I was curious to see Jagged Edge’s take on it, and waited - like a bear eyeing a jar of hunny - to see if there was an opportunity.

I grew up on the Christopher Robin stories. The sketchily-drawn maps of woods, and tales of heffalump traps & stalking woozles appealed to the sometimes-insular adventurer in me, so the thought of making my own rather dark horror interpretation of them very much appealed to me. There are some woods near to me in Oxford which I regularly amble around, with many gorgeous old trees, streams etc. It’s a large, undulating area (about 100 Hectares in fact) with so many spots where I would think “Oh that’s Rabbit’s house! That could be Pooh Corner! Christopher would build a treehouse there!…” It was soon that I realised this film wasn’t going to be about Christopher Robin, or Winnie… but about the woods themselves.

The 100 Acre Wood.

Or - as Pooh wrote it - “100 Aker Wood”.

Thus it was born, and I got to work on the script. That’s the (relatively) easy bit. It’s also essentially free. I was going all-in and funding this myself, and when you're on a low budget like that, finding a location is the hardest part. After a couple of false starts and dead-ends, one of the potential cast said her Dad owned a place on the edge of Oxford. An old mill house with lots of rooms, creaky floorboards, tons of character, and an attic. Perfect! (It also turned out that this young lady, Alanna, is a very good actress, and I casted her in the film. Could’ve been a bit awkward otherwise…) Funnily enough, a few months beforehand, I'd rented out my Airbnb to another local filmmaker for peanuts. I almost didn’t, since it was a weekend in the busy Summer period. But my gut told me I should, so maybe Karma rewarded me with this big old mansion for free.

Wheels were put in motion. I teamed up with Jack Mundy, who was the DoP on Croc! That was shot in a frankly ridiculous 6 days; I was fairly sure that we could do ‘100 Aker’ in 9-10. But finding a window that long in which the cast of 7-8 were all free proved slightly tricky. Eventually we settled on a fortnight in March 2025. We were to film roughly half in the house and half in the woods. Things were falling into place…

… and then I broke my ankle.

Paul Franklin broken ankle cast leg foot — Showing support for Ukraine.

Well, someone I play football with kindly broke it for me. A bad tackle from behind that resulted in my twisted foot taking his whole bodyweight. Everybody heard the crack. Optimistically, I still hoped it was only a sprain, managed to drive home, and because it was Friday night, I didn’t go and get it looked at until the Monday. X-rays proved it was well-and-truly fractured.

This put a spanner in the works. The shoot had to be delayed, no question. It also meant that I spent a few weeks on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, getting Deliveroo to bring me wine and painkillers (the former worked better than the latter). Dates were rescheduled to the 2 weeks before Easter (with more shuffling and compromises). However, it had been raining a lot in February, and the extra month gave the ground time to dry out, which was indeed a blessing.

Sunday 6th April - most of the cast arrived at the Mill location. I spent half the day ferrying things back and forth, including an inordinate amount of food in giant tubs. I then watched with amusement as the gang - who were all around late teens/early twenties - attempted to light a barbecue and then cook food. Who says Gen Z don’t have any life skills?! It was like a Channel 4 show where a bunch of young people who’d never met were put in a house together… Anyway, this was (as I’d hoped) a good bonding exercise, and they all hit it off from the start.
And the next morning, we hit the ground running.

A basic of filmmaking is that the more people you have, the quicker and easier everything should be. But every extra person is another bill to pay, another mouth to feed, and another bed required. As the week went on, I wish I'd hired another person on the production side. As well as directing, I was also trying to juggle arranging food, sorting out hotels or extra bits we had to order, in a house with intermittent wi-fi. It was certainly a struggle, and my body was feeling it. Mentally and physically. My ankle was still healing, I was rather unfit, and just not used to being on my feet 14 hours a day. I was waking in the mornings with my whole body aching. But we cracked on, and eventually Week One was in the can.

Then we headed into the Woods…

That weekend should’ve been restful, but I struggled to switch off. There were still things to sort out, food to buy, runners to find... And also a pit to dig in the woods.

On Monday we restarted, venturing to a far corner of the woods known as Westhill Farm. An abandoned community project that I stumbled across on one of my rambles. With a couple of shelters, a ready-made fire pit, and even a wooden outhouse, it was a great ‘Unit Base’. However, getting people & kit there was the tricky bit.
I have to confess: I underestimated how difficult filming in a forest would be. Myself, I could wander around the woods for days. But some people aren’t so inclined; and speaking of inclines - getting trolleys of equipment up and down even slight slopes was hard work. Especially when it’s a bit drizzly. It also didn’t help that someone forgot to bring the memory cards from the carpark, so we were almost an hour behind from the start. And with so much to squeeze in, it was inevitable something would get pushed back.

There’s a location near to Westhill - let’s call it the ‘Rabbit Hole’ - that I 1000% wanted to use. It’s a boggy quagmire with trees, and an actual hole in the ground, like something from Yoda’s planet of Dagobah. But that got put back to another day. Trouble was: we didn’t have many days, and those were all full anyway. In a house where everything’s in one place, it’s possible to push, but outdoors - when you need to bring light to pitch black and batteries need charging - it’s hard to do anything quickly.

The main takeaway from Monday (apart from the lukewarm pizza we had delivered) was that this week was going to be a struggle. Even moving the camera crew 100m was a slog. Having spent time finding all these lovely locations with gnarled old trees, we had to make some compromises and find alternate spots that were nearer each other (and nearer the carpark). My DoP insisted that everything looks the same in the dark, but I was not convinced, and I was a little dispirited that a film called “100 Aker Wood” was not going to feature very much of the woods…

Thursday night eventually arrived, and an exhausted team ventured back for one more sortie. As a kind-of base I’d hired someone I knew from a Facebook group with a large campervan. Strictly we were guerrilla filmmaking (Oxford Council had been very unhelpful with permits etc), but thankfully that carpark is often frequented by vans camping overnight, so we didn’t draw too much attention to ourselves. We started at dark, with the intention of going as far into the night as we had to… whilst going back to the house the next day to do some shots in a car before everyone went home for Easter. This didn’t quite happen, though.

Paul 100 aker wood director directs actors in woods night — Literally Directing.

Today was the day of The Finale, and I think all of us on the production side had massively underestimated what a beast it was. It featured 5 of the cast, and without giving too much away: a bit of a fight and maybe a weapon. There was also a fair bit of dialogue, and a fair bit of running around. I guess - when I wrote the scene - I had imagined we’d have a couple of huge lights that’d allow us to cover a large area without shifting equipment around too much. Sadly that wasn’t the case, and even with 4 or 5 lights, every little bit of ‘He runs off down here’ and ‘She then darts off down here’ meant moving lights. It got late rather quickly, and somewhere around 2am the whole crew were out on their feet. Jack had gone into ‘Low Power Mode’ and I couldn’t think straight. A decision had to be made.

There was no point trying to rush the ending. If that looked awful or didn’t make sense, then all the work preceding that was a waste. However, I’d got a stunt coordinator in, and thankfully the actors involved in the ‘scuffle’ had been working on that earlier. So we decided to do that, then call it a day. The two actors involved were raring to go (especially ‘Tigger’ who’d been wearing prosthetics & blood for most of the day). So at least we had that in the can, and it looked great.

That was small consolation though. Everyone felt dejected. The look on the face of the gang when I told them we would have to come back … Most of the actors were local or London, but poor James - our Christopher Robin - had come from near Leeds.
We got back to the house around early morning, cleared it, cleaned it, and scrapped the car scene too. For now …

- ———————-

It took me about a month to ‘decompress’ from the trauma and exhaustion of those 9 days, before I could even think about reshoots. I used to walk around the forest all the time, but now I had serious PTSD and mostly avoided them! At least the film was already being edited by the very capable Kant Pan (“The Crying Game” etc), so that was something. But then comes the Epilogue of the story that goes on much longer than expected, like Return of the King. It proved incredibly hard to get everyone back for just a few more days. Various people were on holiday or had other work booked. Also, Summer was approaching, and while that makes shooting outdoors much more pleasant, it also makes it much more light. As in, it wouldn’t be dark until 9-10pm. Which means we’d have to go for full-on Night Shoots, of which we’d only get about 5-6 hours of actual night.

Tee fallen down on road to woods — You Shall Not Pass!

So it wasn’t until mid-September that we regrouped for 3 more days of filming. I was feeling confident, and this time we planned the Finale on the first day so we’d be fresh. But the weather had other ideas, as it warmed up for Storm Amy… James rang me mid-morning to say he was stuck on the train as a tree had fallen on the line outside Oxford. Shit. I then began to get texts from the London gang who were affected by that. Alternate travel arrangements had to be made, taxis had to be taken, and a couple of early scenes had to be rethought.

We were already an hour behind and we’d barely started. We cracked on, as fast as we could. But mid-afternoon, more bad news: A tree had fallen down on the road up to the car park, barely 100m away! We were trapped! Not only that, but two of the girls had popped to the shops with the Make-up Artist, plus we had another actor arriving for a later scene. There is actually a back route into the woods - a long bumpy dirt track - but this doesn’t show as an option on Google Maps. So people were literally going around in circles.

The woods were fighting back!

This delayed us at least another hour. We still had to squeeze in the ‘Rabbit Hole’ scene, which I'd planned to do in the desired location, but that had to be repositioned. I was filled with dread, foreseeing what might happen.

We eventually recommenced The Finale, deciding to start afresh since the previous footage wasn’t great. Then sure enough, at almost exactly the same point, it was clear we weren’t going to finish (plus people had to be back the next day), and so I had to call it again. The disappointment was palpable. I wanted to cry. I wondered if the production was cursed and we’d never get it finished…

- ———————-

The remaining 2 days went rather smoothly, which was something. More in the can, and more actors wrapped. After a well-earned family holiday in which I didn’t at all think about the film, we began to look to December. At least a month’s notice was necessary since people had seasonal jobs. We also now had the small issue that an actress was getting braces on her bottom teeth. Thankfully they were barely noticeable, so that was a relief.

On the down side, the ongoing filming was ruining me, both mentally and physically and financially. 1 day’s shoot doesn’t cost much less than 3 days, what with hiring in big lights, travel expenses etc. Added to which, on that fateful first day of the September pickups, a pop-up gazebo had got broken in the wind, and someone in the carpark had poured beer into the generator, which added a few hundred more to the bill. Each further shooting day brought increasing pressure to get it finished. This time we simply had to get it completed. Right? But somewhere in my gut, I felt it wouldn’t be. What this time? I wondered. Weather? Sickness? War? The night before the mid-December shoot, I barely slept, and woke up with my whole body tingling.

Sure enough, the Beast was not slain. I really thought we had enough time, and with no location changes we could just plough through it. But no. Actors arrived late again - with no excuse this time - but I thought we’d be okay. I’d hired a gas heater and another pop-up to make it a bit cosier, and thankfully the previous week of persistent rain held off on the day. But it was a Sunday, and people didn’t want to go back too late. We managed to do a lot more, and wrap 2 more actors - which meant 2 less people to get back - but still fell short. Having hoped I'd never again have to see that look on the actors’ faces again, I had to once more as I broke the bad news.

I’d been hoping to wrap it before Christmas, but no. That present would have to wait.

- ———————-

Back we came, end of January. Just the 3 actors this time, so a bit less planning and expense. The actress with the braces had now gone brunette for another job, but we found a work-around. At least she didn’t lose a leg or have a sex change. I was hoping it’d be third time lucky with the Rabbit Hole (I wasn’t entirely happy with the location we’d used before), but due to relentless rain for the previous month, it was too wet, and a unit move would’ve taken hours. So we did some pick-ups on that bit to make it work. And yes, we finally defeated the Monster that was The Finale, and I got to utter those sweet, sweet words “That’s a wrap”. We cleared the woods, I got home around 02:30, had a glass of wine, and slept for 14 hours…

I had a nice lazy week, a huge weight unburdened from me. I felt so relieved. Food tasted better, birds sang more brightly … well maybe not, but I was certainly happy. What an experience! I learnt many things. There were many positives: I’d shot my first feature; it looks great; seeing the actors in their costumes makes me smile. There were a few negatives too: I’m broke; someone stole a heap of original ‘Christopher Robin’ drawings; and I’d had to make some compromises.

Next time I'm going to make a nice simple movie with 2 people in a room doing nothing. No woods, no fights, no weapons.

There’s still a lot of work to do of course. The process of post-production begins, with sound, music, VFX and more to be done. And then, decide what to do with it. I’ve given myself the goal of submitting to Frightfest, which is hopefully achievable. Hopefully it goes down well, and then we’ll see…