Filming took place over two wet weekends in rural Herefordshire, and involved more than 150 actors (most of them locals), a handful of weird and wonderful props, and extras ranging from a feather clad woman to a camera friendly cow.

Crisis leads to isolation
The film project began several months after the Foot & Mouth crisis, says Melanie Williams, a local farmer's wife who worked as one of the project’s location managers. “For the first time in over 100 years, the Eskleyside Agricultural Society had to cancel the annual ploughing competition, a traditional event where locals showed off their prowess behind a plough. Farmers were unable to move around freely, and people felt extremely isolated." Once the movement restrictions began to lift in summer 2001, people were left devastated after the effects of contiguous culling.

At this point, the Rural Media Company stepped in and suggested the community might like to get involved with a media project. "We began with a children’s storyboard competition” says Vey Ross from the Rural Media Company, who worked as the film’s project coordinator. “The storyboards came back full of poignant images of burning funeral pyres of farm animals. Workshops allowed a whole cross section of the
community to share their experiences of the Foot and Mouth crisis. We then used this as the inspiration for an audio play The Running Man.” After producing the script for the play, the idea for the film came up. Locals took part in workshops held in village pubs in Eskleyside, where they tackled everything from scriptwriting to location finding and other film production skills.

LHI funding makes filming a reality
Thanks to a grant from the Local Heritage Initiative, film work on Shroves began. “On the production side, there was a professional writer, Pete Cann and a professional director John Humphries, and camera crew but everyone else on the project was local” says Vey. “We pointed the community volunteers in the right direction, but they did the film themselves.”

Film gets heartfelt response
The film has since had several screenings locally and at international film festivals. Shroves has raised strong feelings, especially heartfelt identification with the issues raised. “Several people have said the film is truer now than when we filmed it, that the future we portrayed is coming closer all the time” concludes Melanie. Whatever the future for the film, it’s clear that it’s given people the opportunity to make their feelings heard in a powerful and gritty way.