Why Matlock?

[Conkers]

If you read this Shane, I was just wondering why you chose Matlock to film DMS and how you ended up in Riber Castle filming? I went for a day out with my missus and visited both Sonnys Club and Riber Castle and thought they were strange places to find to film a movie...hard to find.

[RichK]

Hi Conkers,

I did the locations on DMS.


Reasons for choosing Matlock:

1/ Because the film was part funded by East Midlands Media (www.EM-Media.org.uk), one of their requirements was that the film be shot in their area. Their aim is to raise the profile of the region as a whole, and it also meant that a decent sized chunk of the production budget was returned to the local economy, location fees, hotels, employees etc..

2/ The story required locations that were bleak, and at times grim. To get wilderness we decided on the Peak District. There's moors, rocky outcrops, disused farms, and blasted, broken landscapes in the old lead-mining areas. Then when you consider the other towns in the area, there's Buxton, Bakewell, Ashbourne (all a bit too twee), Alfreton, Belper, and Wirksworth (estate areas not really big enough), and Chesterfield (I looked but a bit too big, with nowhere really standing out as "cinematic.") We didn't want to stray into the old coal mining areas north of Nottingham as they are a completely different landscape, and also away from the moors that we wanted, so it was Matlock almost by process of elimination.

3/ Shane wanted somewhere that resembled Uttoxeter, where he grew up. Matlock is similar in size, albeit slightly smaller. It still has the same feel, small, quite close-knit community where people who were kids there still reside, in the same community relationships that they had in their childhoods. Bigger cities, generally, (and this is a big generalisation) are often in a state of flux, whole areas being occupied by different ethnic groups at different times, gentrification etc, population movements on a much bigger scale. Relative to this, small towns can often be really static and slow moving, with small gene pools.

We couldn't film in Uttoxeter itself for reasons mentioned above, not as cinematic and also outside Emmi's area for funding purposes.

4/ A friend of producer Mark Herbert lives in the town, and he knew the main estate used in the film, very handy for getting to know the people of the town, who as it turned out, were all very friendly and welcoming.

5/ It's nice and hilly too, so lots of good vistas. Flat areas can be OK for filming, but hills are great. You get lots of depth in the background, and you can shoot things at all sorts of different levels without the expense of a massive camera crane etc.


What's next? Oh yes, why that club for Sonny's?

Well, once we'd committed to filming it in and around Matlock, the choice of club gets somewhat limited. It's just a case of getting addresses and visiting them all. The one we chose was as you will probably now know, quiet, and quite sparse inside, with interesting different areas on different floor levels. Because we only used part of it, it meant the club could carry on more or less as usual while we filmed - interesting for their punters to have something like that going on, and better for us than having the potential higher cost of closing a place down completely while we filmed. Again, very nice, friendly people too.

And Riber Castle...?

This was slightly a case of the story following the location... obviously the evil that happens in the story needed to happen somewhere. Because Shane writes the stuff as well as directs, it means he can retain control, and therefore flexibility, with regard to things like setting. With this flexibility in mind, the brief was therefore "find something interesting and cinematic for all this stuff to happen", rather than the specific request to "find me a castle and a disused zoo because that's what we've already written in the script"

The castle is visible from most parts of town and was already likely to be seen lurking in the background in other scenes. With such a stunning location on the doorstep, which we knew was also a closed-down zoo (visited it years before on a school trip!), we went and had a look. To find the old cages still there was a bonus - it's such an original, quite surreal and scary place, just the ticket for the scenes in question.

Hope that answers your questions.


Richard

[Conkers]

Yeah Thanks.

[BrotherNumberOne]

Wow Richard. Thanks for that. Highly informative and nice of you to take the time.

Is Riber castle the place up on the hill? I used to live in Chaddesen & Alvaston as a nipper and remember going on day trips to Matlock and vaguely remember seeing this place up on a hill....

[Conkers]

yes riber castle is on the hill. it can be seen from miles around.

[BrotherNumberOne]

Well shiver me timbers.... Thanks for that.