The tour of Hoole

I’m working with an estate agency in Chester who would like to have a video tour of Hoole. The only reply reply that jumped into my mind was, “Ooh, you’ll have to choose me, I come from Hoole”, as it came to pass, I did get the commission.

There was some planning around the content but that was mostly worked out by Clare Moorhouse of Moorhouse Digital, with the details and history coming from Alex Horne of Matthews of Chester.

The weather was kind to us and filming took place on the first date that was chosen. We met at The prestigious Double Tree Hotel, which was initially Hoole Hall. We started our filming there, (which was to be the ending of the film, but never made it past the cutting room) Alex had his script, which only he could read, Clare and I have never seen writing so small. It was early in the morning, but once Alex was warmed up, he was away, waxing lyrical about Hoole and it’s history.

We moved to Faulkner Street, the modern day hub of Hoole, still early in the day with only shop keepers preparing for the days business and the pub landlord taking delivery of the amber nectar. Later in the film Alex wanted to go into Hoole Food Market, so we made the arrangements to do this after 10:00 as they were busy setting up the shop and putting together their fabulous veg boxes. We shot the intro to the film talking about Hoole, how the name was derived , why it’s so popular and how easy are all of the transport links. I shot some establishing shots and then we moved on.

The parks were next, Alexandra Park and Coronation Park, beautiful open spaces for residents to relax and play. I can remember playing football and school annual sports day on Coronation Park, as I used to go to school on Clare Avenue, a lovely old school, but with outside toilets at the time, it was freezing in the winter.

All saints church was next, Alex telling us about the the architecture of the church, the south isle designed by John Douglas, the architect to the fist Duke of Westminster, famous for his gothic designs. I was amazed with my restraint, all I think of was jumping in and saying, “I was Christened here”, relax, I kept my composure and my mouth shut.

Onto The old Mission Hall at the end of Hoole Lane, now converted into mews, Alex had some more interesting facts for us and conveniently a barge came down the canal with two of the crew members operating the lock, but in todays world of fast moving media, that also never made it past the cutting room.

Off to Flookersbrook next, more history about how this was the last watering hole for farmers bringing their livestock into Chester Cattle market hundreds of years ago. Flookersbrook now being a very fine property area.

We finished back on Falkner Street, now a lot livelier, more establishing footage and we captured Alex in The Hoole Food Market, buying his veggie box for his evening meal. A great morning filming, off to the editing suite now.

As I start to put the clips together I start with a 6 minute film, which I know is too long, I shave it and shave it to get it under 5 minutes before sending it to Clare for her thoughts. She loves it, but it’s too long. We work out what we can cut, with it still making sense, but now we have it down to 3 minutes 40 seconds. That’s great for the long version which can sit on Matthews website, but now I know I need an “under a minute” version for social media channels Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, etc. The short 59 second clip will come with a link to the longer version on the website if people want to find out more, they are happy to watch the longer version.

That was the story of me revisiting my past and as usual when making any video, learning so much more than I ever expected.