Arenawatch, Day 1

Went down to Gale's hill this morning, to start my observational research. Gale's Hill is not a hill at all. It's a beach on the Teign estuary. As I arrived, the boys from a local shellfish company were loading up their oyster barge, or challand if you want the French. I told them what I was up to, and they were all quite friendly and happy to chat, and explain a bit about seeding and harvesting shellfish.

There's been a managed shell-fishery on the river for over a thousand years; the Teign provided shellfish to the Bishop of Exeter and his cronies.

Next up for launching were a couple of serious fishermen from Tiverton. They looked the business in waders and camoflage and greasy hats. They told me they were headed out about ten miles to fish a wreck.

And so it went. Men came to launch all manner of craft; I interrupted them with silly questions, and they all responded amiably, except one. This was an older guy, who rowed up and unpacked a skiff, carrying rods and buckets and other bits and pieces away to his car. 'Been out fishing?' I asked. 'Nope,' he said, and that was the end of the interview. He was the exception though. Most men love to tell you what they're up to on Gale's Hill. I didn't meet any women there.

The assignment I'm working on, a 30 minute script, based on observational research into a place, is designed to help us screenwriting students get to grips with arena. I had heard about arena from Lucy Vee (a graduate of the Bournemouth screenwriting program), but I didn't quite know what it meant.

Arena means using your setting as a character in its own right. Snoopy understood the importance of arena, when he began his novel, 'It was a dark and stormy night.' That's an angry, dangerous arena to get mixed up with. Billy Crystal's character in Throw Mama From the Train was also struggling with arena, when he was tyring to describe a 'warm, moist' night. The Watch-list the tutors provided includes films such as:

Miller’s Crossing (Coen)

I’m Not Scared (Salvatores)

Psycho (Hitchcock)

Red Road (Arnold)

Tsotsi (Hood)


My arena is going to be Teignmouth Harbour (top right, though you're looking at Shaldon), and specifically Gale's Hill. Various snippets of story ideas keep occuring to me, but I'm ignoring them. I want to keep an open mind during the research phase. If you pushed me to say what I'm going to write about, I'd say 'A stranger comes to Gale's Hill.' I won't go further. In fact, I'm not even going that far. It's a story which takes place on and around Gale's Hill, a beach. It was in a pleasant, accomodating mood this morning.

Maybe next time I go down it will be a dark and stormy night.