THR RUNNER HARRY WILKINS

THE RUNNER FILM WITH IN A FILM

RUNNER TRAINING CAMP

three main runners

Filming for 'the Runner' at Merlin Cinema Torquay

Filming at Torre Abbey for 'The Runner"

The Runner came about when director John Tomkins saw a production of Individual Theatres’ The Tempest in the spring of 2014. After the show, John met with the lead actor, Ben Gilbert, to discuss showreel material. John suggested putting together a 3-minute short, but this quickly expanded into a 30-minute film with around fifteen locations! And so began John’s latest collaborative film: The Runner.

To help make the film, John brought together most of the awesome team from his earlier films such as They're Coming, and the critically acclaimed A Dark Tale and Indietro. Formed in 2012, this collective of creatives has rapidly expanded in number and expertise, and with this film we were delighted to welcome the talented make-up artist Laura Harvey - who successfully transformed James Cotter into a man twenty years older for his role as ‘Henry’.

Key to making the film was casting, with talent assembled from right across the south-west. Among their number were directors, producers and theatre company owners who gave their time voluntarily to work on the film.

With cast and crew in place, filming commenced in mid-June at Torre Abbey (as the location for the film-within-a-film), and the staff here couldn’t have been more accommodating for us. We then moved on to Haldon Forest for the training camp scene - great fun to shoot! - and later the Merlin Cinema in Torquay where we were granted permission to film in Screen 1 for ‘Harry Wilkins’ intro scene.

The film went into post production in late 2014 and 2015 . With grading and sound editing by film maker Dom Lee . The film now complet heads off to festivals across the world .

We’re enormously proud of everything we’ve achieved so far with The Runner, but most of all in that we’ve succeeded in highlighting the south-west as a viable filming location and demonstrated that, with the terrific creative support and networks that exists down here, great things can happen!

View my website http://runnerfilm.weebly.com/