THE FINAL DAYS OF ERNEST LARMAN (2024)

A short film bringing to life the story of Ernest Larman, a Langford war hero who died on a battlefield in Belgium on June 1st, 1915. A comrade witnessed the events leading up to his death and wrote it all down in a letter which he sent to his parents.

I’ve never been into producing short films, but a Facebook post by our Parish Council Chairman, John Shipman, kicked off a journey that ended up in us making ‘The Final Days of Ernest Larman’.

Mr Shipman had brought to the villages attention two medals that had been awarded posthumously to a Langford man who died in WWI. They were up for auction on eBay. I immediately put in a high bid! Initially I wanted nothing more than to bring them back to Langford, at that point I wasn’t thinking about making a film.

When I got my hands on the medals, I spoke with my good friend Linda Franklin. We had worked closely together on ‘Langford Tales’, she had helped with the archive and we did a lot of research together. Aside from my wife and kids, Linda was probably the only person who was involved in that project over the whole three year period, so we have a very close bond.

When I told her about the medals, Linda did what she does best, started investigating and stumbled across a 1915 article from the Biggleswade Chronicle. It featured a letter that had been written from a trench in Belgium. The author was Richard Eaton, a young man from Sandy who’d described in great detail the events leading up to Ernest Larman’s death.

LINDA FRANKLIN

Rsearcher

The thing I can’t get over is how we managed to acquire those medals of Ernest’s. Originally we were just going to put a short piece of info on display with them for the locals to read. I just happened to put Ernest’s name into the computer and up came an article from the Chronicle of 1915 that described in full detail the last hours of this brave man, written by his fellow comrade from Sandy in a letter to his mother. What are the chances of that happening? It’s remarkable that such a personal account of what happened exists because mostly it’s all cold facts and figures from those WW1 stories.

- Linda Franklin

The letter along with the medals provided us with a wonderful opportunity, to make short film to honour Ernest, who up to this point, only existed as a name etched into the stone of our village memorial.

Making a film about an incident that took place over 100 years ago had its challenges. Everything would have to be done using archive, of which there was very little. There are no surviving photos of Ernest. We tried to find relatives but to no avail.I knew from the off we would get Richard’s words narrated and would base the film around that. Langford resident Jacob Barnes - who also did narration work for ‘Langford Tales’ helped us voice the letter.

To accompany the story describing Ernest’s action on the battlefield, I decided to bring on a sound-designer to use sound-effects to bring the letter to life.This was done by a professional audio mixer called Alex Marcou.

We had a chat and I told him that I wouldn’t supply him with any pictures, just Jacob reading out the letter. I wanted Alex to do the sound-design as if it were an audio book. He did an incredible job and his sound work provided the inspiration to create the images needed to complete the film.

Alex and Theo discussing what audio work was needed over a Zoom call.
Their collaboration was done entirely remotely. Alex worked from his home studio as did Theo.

The sound work on a film is usually created to the pictures but Theo wanted to do it the other way round.
Alex was givin nothing but the words of the letter being read out.

Only after Alex had deliivered the audio could the images be worked on.

The Edit Suite

Creating the pictures was tricky. I didn’t want to try to recreate trench warfare in 1915 Belgium. I felt the pictures shouldn’t distract from the words of the letter and Alex’s wonderful sound-design.

For me, the film is all about the sound of war accompanying the words that were once upon a time read by Ernest’s grieving parents.

At times I felt we needed more archive but kept reminding myself that so many names on the 100,000 war memorials across the UK are not so lucky. It felt like fate had brought Ernest’s medals our way. I’ve often wondered if the same hand of fate also had anything to do with Richard’s decision to write that letter 110 years ago? This project would not have happened had he not.

We made this film for both Ernest and Richard.

'The film has brought Langford history alive for all residents who wonder about the past, the folk who fought for freedom and for so many who gave their lives'

- John Shipman - Chair, Langford & District Parish Council

‘The Final Days of Ernest Larman’ has been submitted to film festivals around the world and has already been accepted into festivals in Amsterdam, Sweden, Germany and the UK.

It won ‘Best Score’ award at the ‘Amsterdam New Cinema Film Festival’ and Alex picked up ‘Best Sound Design’ at the ‘Paradise Film Festival’ in Cologne, Germany.

The UK premiere at the ‘Bedford Independent Film Festival’ which was a special touch being on home soil.

It was given the award for 'Best Documentary Short'.