Projects and Ongoing Work

2009             2010

We are delighted to confirm that ‘Dunfermline Opera House - From Fife to Florida’ was officially released on the 1st May 2009 at the Corner Music Bar in Dunfermline.

Guests at the launch included various people who had contributed to the film, including Ronnie Coburn and Bill Findlay who did turns on the evening. Jim Tolson (MSP) and depute provost Lizz Mogg also attended and the event was reported in the Sunday Post, Courier and Dunfermline Press.

The DVD is now available for sale from this website, and eBay (listing user name ‘talismanfilms’), the Dunfermline Central Library also stock copies of the DVD.

We’d also like to thank everybody who took part in the making of the DVD, they are too numerous to mention here but they know who they are and will receive a complimentary copy of the film, if it hasn’t arrived already. It goes without saying that we simply could not have made the film without their numerous excellent contributions.

From Fife to Florida

After this mammoth project the group is collectively having a lie down in a darkened room!

Finally finishing the Opera House film has allowed us to turn our attention to other projects, which to a certain extent had sat on the ‘back burner’.

One such project was the ‘I was there’ a musical show based on the music and history of the legendary Glasgow Apollo.

This intriguingly came about thanks to a previous project we had produced in 2005 – The Final Countdown. Tommy McGrory had seen our film and asked if he could use some of our footage for a forthcoming show he was producing to showcase his ‘Loud’nProud’ Rock Orchestra, Tommy commissioned us to film the complete show.

For the uninitiated the ‘Loud’nProud’ Rock Orchestra is part of a project run by Tommy in Paisley and offers youngsters the chance to increase their musical experience plus play to large audiences – the Rock Orchestra have performed at the Wickerman festival on a number of occasions to much acclaim.

The actual ‘I was there’ shows represented a further ambitious step as this time the venue was the vast Armadillo at the SECC. The youngsters, aided by some well known actors - Dave Anderson and Lesley Robertson, put on a superb show.

We have also filmed the Fife Jazz Orchestra in Carnegie Hall who put on a night of Big Band favourites with a special tribute to Tommy Sampson.

We were invited to film some of the performances at the Edinburgh Jazz festival and these presented some interesting challenges, not least trying to work out which musician was about to stand up and do a solo. If there’s one tip we would preach strongly it’s the benefit of having a back up camcorder filming a fixed wide view throughout the show.

A great new venue was ‘rediscovered’ in Dunfermline – the Alhambra was brought back into the spotlight as a venue for the first time since the 60s and what an impact! KT Tunstall has gone as far as to describe it as her favourite UK gig and a lot of people would agree with her.

We were there to film the first official gig – Nazareth headed the bill with first class support from Stevie Agnew and Wired Desire and the whole night showcased what an atmospheric venue this grand theatre is.

2010            2009

So what’s new? Well over the years we have as individual group members filmed the changing face of Dunfermline, and now seems a good time to sit down and take stock of what we have shot. This will involve going back into our archives, and also sourcing where possible film footage and stills from archives held by third parties.

Unlike the Dunfermline Heritage productions we are intending to be slightly more contemporary with our footage. The production will chart the changing face of Dunfermline from the early 50’s to 2010. This is very apt as this year is Celebrating Fife 2010. We are in the process of applying for a grant from Fife Council to help cover some of the costs in making this DVD.

As film makers anyone who has shot with 8mm knows there was often a spare 10ft of film to be used before it went to the lab. We often used these short ends to film anything happening around town. So mostly as a group but sometimes independently of each other we have taken the chance to capture the evolution of our town.

If anyone out there has film footage of Dunfermline or stills, we would be delighted to view them with the possibility of incorporating them into our production. There is one film we are keen to see, it is the fire that destroyed the vast Regal cinema. If anyone has footage of this we would love to hear from you. We can be contacted: here

Looking to the future, we are contemplating doing a similar project about Kirkcaldy. Once again we would be interested to hear from anyone who has film footage of bygone years of Kirkcaldy. (social events, gala days, past buildings now no more, etc.)