Guerrilla shooting at Glastonbury

“Don’t worry, security will think we’re just taking photos.” Our cameraman is trying to reassure me as we depart London to shoot our short film Letterbox at the most high profile music festival in Britain… without permission.

The Glastonbury Festival embraces the spirit of rebellion, I keep telling myself as I crouch in the back of a bus, packed tight with four others, trying not to giggle, in the blistering heat.

“Who’s giving who permission? I feel like it’s my festival”

I’d spoken to the Festival’s administration, and they’d made negative noises –we heard they denied Saatchi permission to film too. Letterbox’s co-writer, director and editor Annabel Allison justified the decision to film anyway: “I’ve been going to the Glastonbury Festival since I was 14,” she said. “Who’s giving who permission? I feel like it’s my festival.”

I knew it was going to be risky being trafficked inside, but I wasn’t prepared for quite how long and bumpy a ride it would be. There is a line in the script that I can’t help thinking about: “So, you got no ticket?” asks one character. “No, but I figured, if Aunty Fawzia can get into the country with no papers, I can get into Glastonbury with no tickets, right?” It certainly made me think of the irony of writing a film about the journey of a girl, Imani, hitching from her home in Bradford to Glastonbury in a niqab and getting smuggled in.

My legs have gone to sleep and I am ignoring my pressing bladder. The veil between our script and reality thins: there is a heart-stopping moment in both the film, and our attempts to make the film, where the back of the truck is inspected by security. I hold my breath, close my eyes… but our production equipment, like our lead character, is well hidden. Exhilarated and petrified we trundle on.

Half an hour later we get the all-clear from the front of the van. I hop out, relieve myself, grab a can of Guinness and look out at the site. It’s beautiful. There is something ethereal about a pop-up city as grand in scale as the Glastonbury Festival: there are elaborate stages, art pieces, props, clubs, pubs, circus tents, and a whole range of half-built stuff that I can’t fathom. The air is filled with sweet pre-festivity excitement.

Everyone seems to be cuddling hellos and passing around smokes, catching up on the last year’s events. I, however, am pulling on my mum’s ill-fitting niqab, a garment that has not seen the light of day since her years in Riyadh. This is not going to be my usual Glastonbury knees-up.

We prepare for the first scene. I check myself in the mirror. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I was ever going to wear one of these things, let alone at my favourite festival, the place where ordinarily I dress most audaciously. I felt uncomfortable, anxious and alien. Letterbox is a fish out of water story, and I was feeling just that.

I was getting zero eye contact. My presence seemed to make others feel uncomfortable; they would rather not have to be confronted by my character of Imani, and all the pre conceived baggage the black cloth carries with it.

You don’t have the luxury of control, lighting, or time, but you do get gifted other stuff – magic moments that aren’t in the script, but somehow add to the story

Shooting guerrilla-style means you don’t have the luxury of control, lighting, or time, but you do get gifted other stuff – magic moments that aren’t in the script, but somehow add to the story. Annabel is happy when two policemen in high-vis walk past the camera as it’s rolling, bringing some subtle tension to the shot.

To shoot in this way takes conviction and guts. We soon get used to manhandling the general public. We take over whole cafés, redirect rivers of people, go behind bars to pull pints and employ confused extras on the spot. Once people realise we are shooting a film they become surprisingly obliging.

At night I literally disappear in my pitch-black costume, which makes filming challenging: Annabel panics when I am swallowed up beside a crowded stage, momentarily lost to everyone.

Exhausted from a night of shooting and trudging in the unforgiving mud, at five in the morning I arrive at a grungy party where I am required to get the muntered masses to dance with me. I am not, it seems, the only one in costume: a pink rabbit obliges and spins me around in a whirl of pink fur and inky cloth.

Our micro crew is often invisible to the crowd. An actor in character drunkenly tells me to “F––k off!” and some nearby revelers step in to defend me, unaware that they are extras on a film set. I quickly explain and everyone resumes their positions for take two.

By Monday morning the film is in the can – except for one last shot, that of Imani being dropped off at the start of the festival. Our van is packed up and we head for the exit. It’s now or never. I don the niqab for the last time, we put the camera on the ground and get the truck to drive over it, the undercarriage revealing me, isolated beside a load of brightly painted bins. A huge lorry appears behind me and adds a sense of impending doom to the scene. The director jokingly holds up an imaginary walkie-talkie to her face, pretending that we have a budget, and extended crew. “Krrkkk krrkkk… cue lorry.” We all roll over laughing, exhausted and exhilarated. We have a film. We got away with it: a crazy idea immortalised, a festival experience like no other.

Thank you Glastonbury for being the film set that we could never afford to build, and for all the willing extras, as far as the eye could see. C

Letterboxfilm.com
Letterbox on Facebook
Letterbox on Twitter