REGIONAL CASE STUDY
NORTHWEST
A
fter tackling a haunted house in
The
Orphanage
and the aftermath of a
devastating tsunami in
The Impossi-
ble
, Spanish filmmaker JA Bayona has set his
sights on a new kind of horror in
A Monster
Calls
. Based on the acclaimed 2011 children’s
novel by Patrick Ness, the film stars Lewis
MacDougall as Conor, a boy tormented by bul-
lies at school while coping with a dying
mother at home, who finds an unlikely friend
in the form of a fearsome mythic creature
(voiced by Liam Neeson).
But despite the film’s fantastical elements,
Bayona and his team took to the north west of
England to find the perfect settings for the
story’s everyday anxieties.“The film needed to
be grounded in a realistic and recognisable
world,” says Location Manager Tom Howard,
“something we could all relate to. We certainly
chose the best bits, from using Marsden as the
town the boy lives in, to the Blackpool Plea-
sure Beach for a day out.”
Drawing inspiration from Jim Kay’s glori-
ously evocative, minimalist black-and-white
drawings, the filmmakers used the book’s
illustrations as their guide for scouting spe-
cific locations. “We looked at [them] often
when scouting or discussing the shortlisted
locations,” says Howard. “The school exterior
was one such location, and we searched for a
while until we found it in Slaithwaite.”
Undiscovered country
Line Producer Sarah-Jane Wheale, who served
in the same capacity for 2014’s
Effie Gray
, has
worked extensively across Lancashire and
Yorkshire, and felt confident that the north
west could provide the emotional and tonal
backdrop to Conor’s inner turmoil. “We were
able to find all of the exteriors for the film,
including the exterior of the house and land-
scapes,” she says.“There were many recces, and
the sweeping landscapes behind each house
and high street were an inspiration and add to
the drama.”
According to Howard, Bayona’s initial Span-
ish scouts travelled across the UK looking for
the right environment in which to set this
small-town tale, but kept returning to the
north west.
Beyond its striking locations, Howard says
the region provided the necessary infrastruc-
ture required for a major film production. “We
needed all the support [that] a major ‘media’
city can offer — from crew to equipment and
first-class transport links,” he says. “We could
have been in Leeds for this, but the director
preferred the look of the north west.The other
element we needed to find was a church on a
hilltop”— one of the book’s pivotal settings —
“and this was the hardest location to find. It
was finally discovered, after a long scout, near
to Manchester.”
The superb locales did come with their own
challenges, however. “For any crew filming in
October in the north, it is always the weather,”
Wheale says of production obstacles. “All the
films I have worked on recently have had dif-
ficult weather conditions, [but] the UK crews
are incredible and we have adapted to filming
in rain and cold for many hours. As a result, we
get extraordinary landscapes and pictures.”
In fact, it is a fitting testament to the north
west’s popularity that, Howard notes, “There
was so much television work going on in the
region [that] getting a crew member with the
relevant experience [who’s] not about to sign
up for a six-month production was difficult.
But I used many crew members based in the
local area to head up the second unit or to
man the first unit.”
The team is quick to note the help received
from local agencies.“We received a lot of assis-
tance from Bobby Cochrane at Creative Eng-
land,” Howard says. “Especially when filming in
Manchester, as we did some big set-ups here
—from taking over a few streets in Didsbury for
four split-day shoots to a car speeding through
a town to be held up by a train at a level cross-
ing. This train sequence took over the centre of
Ramsbottom for two nights with the full assis-
tance of the local council, local businesses and
the residents of this quiet market town.”
Now that the north west portion of
A Mon-
ster Calls
is finished, Howard, Wheale and the
rest of the UK production will wait to see
what wonders emerge once the Spanish team
add their magic to the film.
UK
A Monster Calls will be released in the US
on October 14 and UK on October 21
“
THE UK CREWS ARE
INCREDIBLE. WE GET
EXTRAORDINARY PICTURES
”
Sarah-Jane Wheale, Line Producer
A Monster Calls
For the team behind Spanish director JA Bayona’s forthcoming
fantasy A Monster Calls, the north west provided landscapes that
were both fantastical and down-to-earth.
Tim Grierson
reports.
MAGIC
and
MOOD
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