Cameras roll at Ganavan
Taynuilt, Airds Bay and Wee Ganavan might be more than 5,000 miles away from Hollywood but they have just become Argyll’s latest locations for a new feature-length film shoot.
Cameras rolled when former Oban High School head boy James Kane, now 21, brought a cast and crew home to his childhood haunts to make a full-on movie in just one week.
Funding through Creative Scotland’s Time To Shine – Nurturing Talent Fund, meant James, who grew up in Taynuilt, could get his ambitious film up and running.
He is about to launch a crowdfunding page to get it edited and go global to film festivals around the world and into cinemas with plans for its premier at Oban Phoenix Cinema.
If all goes to plan, it should be ready this summer, says James, whose acting career, which includes London’s West End, started when he was just four. The last decade has already seen his career span film screens, national opera and theatre tours, as well as making BBC documentaries.
But this film, Solstice, sees him in his first director’s role, as well as playing one of its lead characters, Sandy.
The story-line follows PHd marine science student Sandy who meets and falls in love with Mia on a beach clean. Her dad owns a fish farm that has just signed a deal with a packaging company. Cue packaging boss’s son Dem and Mia’s pal Eilidh for a bit of a love tangle, bring in a smattering of sub-plots, drug dealers, a kidnapping, a festival and a good ending
‘Making a full-length film in just one week is unheard of but that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are confident, not cocky, and trust each other to make it happen. We are working really hard but it’s not like being in a city. It’s not frantic, we’ve got fresh air, amazing surroundings and time to breathe,’ said James.
The young cast and film crew came from all over Scotland to shoot it but there were parts for the locals, too.
James’s writer mum Anna Angelini created the script, his dad has a fisherman’s role in it, and even his little brother Dante Kane, 11, has got a part. Donald Kennedy, who ran Etive cruisers, helped out with boats for loch shots along the glen, and Taynuilt’s Lord Andrew Campbell-Gray gave permission for land use and managed to land himself a starring role as one of the villains. An old school friend’s band Rumskee also got a spot.
‘I want the audience to just be able to enjoy the scenery and the story. If they do take a message away with them, to think about how much plastic we use, then that’s a good bonus,’ said James.