The Return of the Little Prince

 
Sarah Finch and Paul Gateshill share their experience of making a short film for the ‘Economy of Francesco’.

The ‘Return of the Little Prince’ was performed at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 2016. In 2019 we were approached to perform it again for the conference of young economists entitled the Economy of Francesco in Assisi in March 2020. We were delighted and reassembled the cast from GB, Finland, France and Italy. Plane tickets were purchased. We were all set and then… Covid19 struck across the globe. Initially Italy was one of the worst hit in Europe and so the conference was postponed until November that year. Little did we know that Covid19 would still be rampant and the conference would have to be an online event.

From theatre to film
The original performance was a 30 minute piece of theatre. We were unable to repeat this, so we decided to rewrite the script, specifically for this event and film it, using just local actors. It was a total rewrite, with the pandemic as the backdrop for the Little Prince’s return. It was also just 14 rather than 30 minutes long. We were approaching mid October and just one month before the conference was due to begin.

New relationships
Our next challenge was  – who do we find to film and edit it? We soon came across a young film-maker called Joshua King. We hit it off straight away. There was a shared vision and enthusiasm for the project, so we planned to do the filming at the end of October. In that time we also found two actors to make up the team: Richard Syms a retired Anglican priest and professional actor, together with Charlotte Collingwood, both a musician and actor. The team was ready for action!

Building the team
One of the main ideas behind this enterprise, going back to the first performance in 2016 – was not just the play itself, but the style of working with the whole team. We wanted to create an ethos of trust and creativity in the group, where egos are set aside and mutual love is at the forefront of the whole process. Everything else then becomes secondary – we all begin to relax, negative stress disappears and everyone flourishes and shines. With this as the basis, the filming was a delight. We covered everything in the allocated two days, with everyone mucking in and enjoying one another’s company. By the end we were exhausted but extremely happy.

The final touches
With filming in the can, it was then up to Josh King to edit the film ready for the online conference in a few weeks time. During this period he sent us various drafts and we were struck by his attention to detail and his open-ness to our suggestions, not to mention his professional creativity. The film was streamed at the online international conference  on 19th November 2020. You can view it at https://tinyurl.com/y6kvl3fo

 

A few responses received to date:

A Jewel!
This was worthy of Antoine Saint Exupery’s Petit Prince – charming and forceful at the same time.
There’s a kind of directness in the film that made me think of the book “Mister God, This is Anna: The True Story of a Very Special Friendship”
A real work of Art.
What a wonderful little film
Fantastic! Simplicity with courage and strength. Just what our world needs right now.

P. Gateshill

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