Finding Esther

Finding Esther

A story to touch your heart

The film is now complete!

Click here to view the trailer (5MB) in a new window.

This is an Apple QuickTime movie - if you need help playing this, please visit Apple's site at www.apple.com/quicktime or contact us. For a streamed Flash version go to www.visicomdigital.com/portfolio and select Trailers, Web Clips & Exhibition Loops, where you can also see some other Visicom Ltd trailers.

Stills from the film are available in this photo gallery, and a DVD is available (please contact us for details.)

Premiere: Sunday 1st February 2009, at Uckfield Picture House.

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For 2008, the Players moved into the medium of film for their summer project, with the making of a Film Short (44 minutes), based on the real-life story of a young village girl who went missing in about 1927, aged 16, and never re-appeared.

Resident screenwriter Valerie Chidson met members of the family of the missing girl before starting work on the screenplay, and discovered the truth about the strange disappearance. The film’s title is Finding Esther and it is seen from the point of view of Esther’s younger sister, Milly. This is the first time the story has been told.

Filming took place in June and July 2008 (with a few re-takes in August - the weather was not too kind...). Since most of the cast were either at school or working, the film could only be shot at weekends. All locations were in and around the village of Waldron. The Director is David Spearing, newly graduated from Ravensbourne Film School, and Cameraman John Meakin heads up Visicom Ltd in Uckfield. Music was specially composed by a local professional composer, Pedro Celli, using funds provided by Friends of Music in Mayfield.

Newsletters kept villagers informed during production - you can view these in a new window by clicking on Newsletter July 2008.pdf or Newsletter September 2008.pdf.

Coincidentally, by a great stroke of luck, Waldron’s curators of memorabilia, Sue and Barry Russell, had been given some vintage 1920s film, made by Eugene Oakshott, the head of a wealthy family living at Foxhunt Green. This vintage footage has been put together with Finding Esther on to DVD as a complete package - please contact us if you'd like to acquire a copy.

Waldron Community Players received funding from Awards for All, Friends of Music in Mayfield and the Waldron Millennium Trust to make the film, and residents and local businesses became “Angels” - please click here for more details and a list of our Angels.

Events were also held to raise the remaining finance needed for this ambitious project:

Finding Esther was funded by Awards for All (part of the Big Lottery), and the Friends of Music in Mayfield generously funded new music for the film. The Waldron Millennium Trust also awarded a grant.