Community comes together to make a movie at Torquay Museum

Barry Chandler, Engagement and Collections Manager at Torquay Museum:

Last month the Torquay Museum hosted its first drama film production – a vampire series called Immortium created by local filmmakers, writer/director Luke King Abbott and assistant director Ryan Noir.

The museum is no stranger to film crews, but these usually come from television companies making historical documentaries.

Last year the museum was visited by BBC2, which produced Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen and Channel 4’s production Alan Carr’s Adventures with Agatha Christie.

Over the years, the museum has appeared in many documentaries, particularly on prehistory, and provided information to production designers for the Hollywood film Lost City of Z, but we have not been the scene of a production until now.

Immortium is the creation of King-Collins Productions, an independent film company founded by Luke King Abbott and Jason Collins.

It tells the story of an ancient vampire, La Croix, played by Collins, who does the unthinkable: he falls in love with a human. If they have a daughter together, she’s half vampire, half human: an immortium, Estella, played by Caitlin Bussell.

The tyrannical Vampire Emperor punishes La Croix by taking the immortium, killing his wife and imprisoning him in a coffin for 15 years. When an unsuspecting teenager frees him, he has only one goal in mind: find his daughter.

However, he must first contend with manipulative allies, dangerous enemies and even scarier faces from his past…

Museum staff were excited about the idea of ​​hosting this production, which is part of a nationwide boom in independent film production, particularly in the horror genre.

The museum is an ideal location for filming. It can be closed to visitors, the lighting can be controlled and parts of the displays form the perfect backdrop.

The filmmakers liked the Old Devon Farmhouse gallery as the setting for La Croix’s coffin, but they needed a lot of extras!

Some of these extras were provided by the production, but the museum needed to be filled for the shoot, so we searched our social media for extras and were very interested.

It turned out that locals ranging in age from four to 80 helped with the production, giving the illusion of a busy museum. Even museum staff and volunteers got involved, and the afternoon filming provided a real sense of the local community coming together.

Stills photographer Mike Alsford captured the extras and the fun and excitement of making a movie.

However, it requires many hours and a great deal of planning and preparation, from timing shots to coincide with the fading light to catering to the cast and crew.

The filmmakers are not yet sure where the series will be screened or when it will be released, but the museum was delighted to be a part of the experience.

Museum staff are always interested in using the galleries in new ways and appealing to different audiences. Follow the museum’s social media for more updates on the fate of Immortium.