No mayflies

Early June. Got back from Cannes, very tired, lots of bickering and dying to go fishing. Maybe those mythic Mayfly are still about sending the fish stupid.

Arrive at the water. Express my enthusiasm to the Bailiff. I think he mutters 'stupid boy' to himself as he walks away, a bit like Captain Mannering in Dad's Army.

Didn't see anything all evening. Do mayflies really exist?

Cannes

Making films with something to say has always been my aim but it's never been easy. I've spent the last 2 years writing Captain Kirk, a feature film about a young boy growing up in a small town in remote Scotland during the last days of punk rock and torn between his rebellious brother and an overbearing father. It's a great tale, gritty, full of brotherly love and hate and the passionate mistakes of youth. We took the film to Cannes film festival last May and ran ourselves into the ground with meetings to find financing. When a film is finished I'm sure Cannes Film Festival is a wonderful place but when your looking for money it really and honestly is not so much fun. Funny thing is money people make promises and I think they do mean well but the rosé seems to zap away a few of their memory synapses when you speak again in the UK.

However while sheltering from the sun in the British tent we hear a seminar on the big buzz coming from the states - D.I.Y. film distribution using the internet. Very interesting, and very empowering - away with the middlemen, the shopkeepers, if your film is good enough then sell it yourself. It makes sense as no-one one has quite the passion for a project than the actual filmmakers.

Great but not so much use when we first need to find a million quid to actually make Captain Kirk.

Heike "No but what about our other project - the Hardy's and fishing film?"

Andy "Err, yeah, are you thinking what I'm thinking..."

Yes we were. That was a year ago and now The Lost World of Mr Hardy is coming along nicely. We were able to go back to Cannes last week and pick up some great ideas about releasing our film on the internet.

Mayflies

Growing up in Scotland I'd only heard of the mythical mayfly from the Trout and Salmon magazines. What was this beasty? A three tailed mammoth that sends trouts crazy but cruelly only inhabits the bottom few miles of the Kingdom. Maybe it's just a myth to taunt the chookters!

I'd waited about 20 years just to see my 1st Mayfly and now I'm a Southerner too so I now claim my rights under Mayfly regulations. I've still never seen or fished a proper Mayfly hatch so there's always a revival in excitement come late May a little akin to waiting for Santa Claus. My fave local water claims to have one of the best hatches of any still water. Thing is though, late May is really tricky in my calendar as film work always gets in the way and so I always miss the mythic beasties. I duly head down to the water too early in the season but full of expectation.

The odd mayfly drifts across the top but a cold easterly blows up to put everything down (just like all the years before). The bailiff grins a 'well what did you expect look'. No luck and I can't try again for another three weeks so the mayfly will foil me once more.

I see a badger on the way home though so that makes up for a lot.

An archive

In May 06 I began the phonecalls and the reading, finding out as much as I could about everything made or written about Hardy's. I knew of James Hardy's book, 'The House the Hardy Brothers Built'. It was essential reading but out of print, every other title I could dig up seemed very hardwear orientated. I also phoned as many publishers as I could to, not just to pester them but to sound out the marketplace for the subject. What stuck out the most was James Hardy's initial publisher Fly Fishers Classic Library who told me what a lovely man he was. That sounds very encouraging I thought as I munched lunch.

Naturally washed it down with a bottle of Montepulciano ( yeah right, as if) and that's when I first spoke to Medlar Press. It was quite a conversation, Sophie probably originally thought, 'loon', so she passed me onto Rosie who no doubt thought 'drunk' so passed me onto Jon and then I don't think there was anyone else he could pass me onto. So I told Jon about my film idea and he was well, very enthusiastic. Great. He was going to republish James Hardy's book in the Summer and is historical consultant to Hardy's. He was pretty keen on their story being told, what's more he told me there were archive films - Am I dreaming?

I really do love archive film material, although I don't quite know exactly why. I think it's something to do with capturing a world so recently lost yet so very different from ours but irrefutably there for us all to see. Those world's perhaps a century away and saved by the same technology responsible as much as any other for all the changes.

It stings to think of how much of this heritage is just fading away in forgotten attics. Once it's detiorated it's lost forever and it seems so needless. So when Jon mentioned the archive film footage the hook was truly set. To be able to rediscover and build a story around such a world, that legend of Hardy's, suddenly became a real possibility. The only problem now was the biggest hurdle, how to find a broadcaster to fund the project.

Courgettes

I was going for a run one day, up through the woods onto the track to the open tops of the South Downs near where we live. That's where I had the initial idea. Running is good like that, ideas come from out of the blue. I just thought I'd love to make a film about Hardy's, they were such an interesting, enigmatic and iconic name.

The idea had not come from totally out of the blue. I had wanted to buy a spare rod, just to have handy for when I can persuade visitors to come along for a spot of fishing. But I thought hmm maybe I can buy something a little different and let the visitors use my own rod. I wondered what would I like and remembered that I'd always wanted a cane rod for dry fly fishing when I was a kid so why not try a second hand one. There are probably lots of reasons not to buy a second hand one but it was an old itch and I was keen to scratch, even if only to consign it to the dustbin of the past. Ebay beckoned and I could not believe just how many used cane rods were out there. So a week or so later our grinning postie knocked on our door with a Hardy Palakona Perfection. It was a lovely old clunker too. Luckily I'd missed the advent of the more modern carbon in my 20 year absence from angling so I had no real idea of what I was missing in the modern high tech stakes. Probably just as well.

Anyhows what really struck me was that the rod came in the original bag and with the original oiled label. A 50 year old rod, older than me and with the label still attached. It cost me about £55, probably about the same as it cost when new but goodness has the world changed since then. That rod and it's dried out oil label became to me a touching link with the past.
The seed for all of my films start like that, some little curiosity, a tick that grows into a idea and through this a film develops.

I got back from my run and related my thoughts to Heike my producer. She happened to be in the back garden ruminating over the chalky spots that were appearing on the courgette leaves. Surprisingly there was no snort of derision, she's very encouraging like that. Instead she hummed it over and we said no more for a while. We both just thought hmm, there is a film in there but how can we get it made?

The beginning

In May 2006 I had the idea that I'd like to make a documentary film based around Hardy's, the fishing tackle company. I had come back to angling after many years away and found it such a reassuring surprise that the name Hardy's, a name so prevalent in my youth and 80 years before that, still meant so much to thousands and thousands of people all over the world. I always was and still am interested in the idea of why they became so popular, why they meant so much to so many people and also in discovering how much fishing has changed in the years since they came on the scene. I quickly became absorbed and passionate about making the film but with many years of filmmaking under my belt I was also aware of the difficulty in finding a broadcaster who would be interested.

Later that month we, as in myself and my producer Heike, took a trip to Cannes for the film festival. We also have a feature film project called "Captain Kirk" and we were there to finance this. Whilst suffering down at Cannes (no irony intended, its really not as glamorous as people would have you believe) we hit upon a way to make our film. The method was great, simple and very modern - for us it was really exciting as it meant we could set sail on a year long odyssey to make The Lost World of Mr. Hardy.

The blog will gradually build to tell all about the film and how we made it and our journey across the UK from the Summer of 06 until March this year and into the edit room where I now sit. As we add to the blog we hope it brings across the passion and enthusiasm of the people we met, the love of Hardy's and for fishing tackle of the very highest quality, the importance of the hand made in our lives, of angling, the countryside, conservation, history and even for films themselves... Hmmm, no pressure there then, so better get started.