So we started our filming and most of the filming went quite well, but there were some quite tricky scenes. The first scene in the film is the fishermen setting off for their night's fishing, because they... they fished at night. And each boat had a paraffin lamp at the back. One of those pump-up things. What are they called? They're called Tilley lanterns in some places. They have another name in America.
[Q] Coleman lanterns.
Yes, Coleman lanterns in America. In England they're called Tilley lamps. Very often it was the wicks for those that was missing, and we couldn't leave because we hadn't got a new supply of wicks for the Tilley lamps. Anyway, the first sequence... in the script it read, you know, fairly easily, sort of, this boat goes out and... and they do their fishing, they have a bit of dialogue, and the light is coming from this little lamp. Then, at the end of the sequence it says: '...and we pan with the boat into the rising dawn', which is when they stop fishing. Lovely, very nice.
Now we had this launch and I think we also had some... some kind of a raft that was made, I think, so as to enable us to work on the river, which, as I say, was a mile wide. So we started off in this little creek that ran along the village. And all the preparations for going off fishing were done there, and that was relatively simple. We had our generator and we had... so that could be lit fairly simply. And we had a local electrician that helped us who was reasonably experienced, but not in film making, just as an electrician. Except that he had certain habits that we... we, sort of, wondered about, and now and then I heard a shout going up. John Fletcher shouting, 'Ayub no!' What he was doing, he was stripping the cable with his teeth, to make the... to make the connections.