It's rare that you see any canal video on YouTube with anything in the way of a script, any acting, or has anything more than panning travelogue or time-lapse.
So all hail the boys and girls of the 4th Knowle Sea Scout Group, who a couple of years ago produced a cheerful and energetic action adventure story about - who knows, I think it's an impromptu piracy story ... but let them explain it themselves, in their own youthful and zany energy. Most enjoyable lines:
Rating: We have some problems on board. Rachel's been kidnapped and someone's trying to sink the ship. What shall we do?
Captain: Did you pray?
Rating: (rolls head in disbelief)
Captain (trying her lines again): Kill the bugger!
I've only just discovered their efforts, thanks to the lovely 'see also' lists YouTube churns up when you watch anything.
I'd say they filmed it on the Grand Union and North Oxford Canal - there seems to be a lot of 'ridge & furrow' farmland in the background, and the boat has the look of a Union Canal Carriers group hireboat, full of bunks.
We used to produce this larky, high-spirited and inconsequential stuff ourselves when I was running the school photography society and later at Salisbury College of Art in the early 1970s. Our own painstaking 8mm efforts are all lost now. How sad; I'd love to see my youthful energy again, and maybe chase, capture and bottle it for later injection, like monkey glands.
Not only is it a lot easier to make movies now, but also - and just as importantly - it's a lot easier to preserve them.
Youngsters don't know their born now, eh? Maybe in 30 years time they'll look again at it and realise they were.
#tweetlikemygranny
Its the North Oxford canal as you can see the Hillmorton aerials at times. I would think the are on a LNBP boat, see http://www.lnbp.co.uk/
Posted by: Brian | Friday, 20 November 2009 at 05:08 PM