Le Tour de France - On the road again!
John, Sarah and Ken Patterson - the original team from 'Sans Frontières' - have been green screen filming in Newcastle University's Culture Lab as part of the digitalisation of our show Le Tour de France.
A recent successful bid to the Esmé Fairbairn Foundation has resulted in an award which gives the go-ahead for TSF to revisit this much loved show, an adventure involving our detectives being caught up in the Tour de France bicycle race. The original show toured to schools and venues for lively school groups of 8-11 year olds and family audiences.
The hope is to re-film scenes originally played on stage to align with extensive film footage from France which also featured in the show. At present we are investigating doing this via the blue/green screen process where actions filmed in front of such a screen can be superimposed on other background film.
Initial fears of Sarah's costume sporting a green too similar to the glowing back screen against which we would film were allayed in the technical sessions there. We have been very lucky to enlist the sevices of local film maker Christo Wallers from The Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle, to sidestep such technical obstacles.
We spent two days filming one section of the show which included the Panneaux song based on French road signs, performed on our quirky trio of bikes: racer, unicycle and scooter! Other scenes saw Le Fantôme Cycliste's dastardly plan to stop us with a jar of tacks thrown in our bicycles' way!
The finished film will include interactive media with French language and cultural themes embedded in a cliff hanging adventure to save the yellow jerseys of Le Tour de France.
Vive Le Tour de France!!
