Created and written by WILL NOBLE and JOE REANEY
The Great British Countryside™ covers an area equivalent to a trillion football pitches. Probably. We don our boots to ramble a rural expanse that's rich with doggers, mentally scarred artists, and You Are Here signs that are out to get you.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH WILL NOBLE
Tell us a bit about yourself and your filmmaking background.
Myself and Joe met on a scriptwriting course at Bournemouth Uni and bonded over a love of Alan Partridge, Curb and Look Around You. Joe's previously made a couple of award-winning short films. Our first foray into animation was with BenPics - with a short called 'Spaghetti' - a cautionary tale about cooking too much pasta. The script itself was actually a sketch written for our comedy group, Birds.
So Rambling is part of a web series called The Green and Pleasant Guide. Can you tell us about your inspiration being this web series and in particular for the Rambling episode?
The Green and Pleasant Guide is basically an homage to/send up of those shows you get on the BBC on a Sunday afternoon, where people are banging on about how great the countryside is. We wanted to put a surreal/dark spin on that, through the lens of Londoners who know nothing about the countryside. So for instance, the Rambling episode features a 'You Are Here' sign that chases a poor rambler around until he winds up running into the thresher of a combine harvester. The presenter is that perma-smile type, who could keep grinning through a bit to camera in an abattoir.
What is your process for creating animation and any hacks or tips you can share?
Find an animator whose style you really love. In our case it was Ben. Plus, the voice talent (Celeste Dring, Luke Rollason, Amy Gledhill) were all people we'd admired from afar, and were fortunate enough to get on board.
Our process is: Joe and I write the scripts, then send them to Ben, who often chips in with one or two suggestions for visual gags. We'll change the script accordingly, before recording the voiceovers. At this point, Ben will make the final animations to fit the voices and everything else that's going on in the script.
How have to tried to get attention to your when releasing it direct online?
We've essentially set up a YouTube channel and a Twitter account, and put some bad jokes on the latter to try and get people to visit the former.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
I mean, the best films about the countryside are probably Nuts in May, Sightseers and Withnail and I. In each one, things go horrifically awry - just like in the Green and Pleasant Guide.