One Big Mop Productions has announced the winner of a competition to create a work of art for its forthcoming film The Moor. The film is a horror / mystery set on Dartmoor and based on its surrounding legends. The competition was created in association with The Prince’s Trust and South West Art Workshops. The artwork is a truly stunning piece created by Mark Chilcott, and depicts The Great Storm of Widecombe-in-the-Moor when the devil supposedly attacked Widecombe church in 1638. Mark used needles on wood in the old classical wood-carving style of Albrecht Durer & Lucas Cranach. Mark is a self-taught artist currently living and working in Wales and who recently quit his job to pursue a full-time art career.
The artwork will feature in the opening scene of the film and thereafter as part of an ongoing exhibition of The Moor at the Dartmoor National Park Visitor Centre in Princetown, Devon. The artwork will eventually be auctioned at the film’s premiere at BAFTA in London with proceeds being donated to The Prince’s Trust. The exhibition will continue indefinitely, eventually including set photographs, display material, DVD sales, the film trailer, and a Film Location Pocket-Guide, etc.
Filming of The Moor completes at the end of October and the world premiere is expected to be in spring 2017.
One Big Mop is a multi award-winning film production company, of which two of its previous short film projects, I’ll Be Home Soon and Dreaming of Peggy Lee were recently invited to screen before the jury of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in order to be considered for an Oscar nomination in the Short Film category.
The Moor follows Oliver, who has taken his six-year-old daughter Heather to the moor to experience a May-day celebration. However when Heather disappears, Oliver embarks on a journey that leaves him unable to discern whether he is relapsing into mental illness or whether the devil has actually taken her. With Dartmoor’s iconic and infamous figure of the Evil Rider at the centre of this world, along with the pagan-like rituals of its inhabitants, The Moor meets between two worlds of past and present.
The film’s writer and director is James Everett who grew up in Torbay and Newton Abbot and as a schoolboy remembers a culture of ghost stories and legends surrounding the moors. Said James: “The Moor is a tribute to and celebration of Dartmoor’s dark history and mythology. I started working on the project 13 years ago after completing my film and TV production degree. Dartmoor was the first place I came to find inspiration for a film and my vision has been to make something that feels totally realistic but has the aesthetic backdrop one might normally associate with something more overtly magical or fairytale-esque. The location is the prime ingredient in achieving this”.
Said the film’s producer Paul Olavesen-Stabb: “We are working closely with the Dartmoor National Park Authority, The Duchy of Cornwall, The Prince’s Trust and Devon Life, all of whom have shown tremendous support for and helped with the production. The short, whilst being a film project in its own right, is also a forerunner for two major feature films of the same name which have been optioned by Goldcrest Films (Carol, Captain Philips, Twilight, Gandhi, etc.).
Please view some footage and support our crowd-funding campaign to raise additional funds for post-production: https://igg.me/at/dotmfilm
For further information, please contact Paul Olavesen-Stabb, Producer, One Big Mop Productions (07711 086227 / paul [at] onebigmop [dot] com)
Written and Directed by James Everett
Producer Paul Olavesen-Stabb
Rosemary’s Baby meets The Wicker Man
Horror
13-minutes
