By Duncan Bick

Last updated at 12:32, Thursday, 19 July 2012

School pupils are taking a piece of Border history to the silver screen.

Luke Patterson is making The Reiver's Curse

The youngsters from Brampton’s William Howard School are producing a film involving the legendary Reivers and starring the infamous Carlisle Cursing Stone.

It is set to be entered into Keswick Film Festival for the Golden Osprey Award, dedicated to films with a local setting.

The project is being led by pupils and supervised the school’s video production teacher Sarah Ledger.

She explained: “It’s a ghost story. It is basically about a ghost hunter who is investigating a story he has heard about and he goes to Hermitage Castle (in Newcastleton) to investigate the story further.

“He gets there and all sorts of scary things happen.”

The film, entitled The Reiver’s Curse starts at the Cursing Stone, which provides inspiration for the hunt.

Installed in 2001, it has been blamed for many of the misfortunes that have since affected the city.

The hunter’s investigations take him into the history of the Border Reivers, who rampaged across Cumbria and the south of Scotland between the 13th and 17th centuries.

Ms Ledger found that the production sparked an interest in local history among the pupils behind the short.

A six-person team went out on location at both the stone and the castle. Three were behind the camera while the others made up the film’s cast.

Another pupil is responsible for editing the footage into a seven-minute short.

Ms Ledger said filming in Scotland was a particular challenge as they had just four hours to get the footage they needed.

“It was very, very tight, but it was good,” she commented.

People taking part, range from year eight pupils to those in year 13. All are members of Activity Film, a group which makes a short film every year during the school’s activity week.

Previous efforts have been well-received at the Keswick festival. In 2009 they took the Golden Osprey with To Brampton With Love. The following year they were runner-up with The Solway Spaceman.

They did not enter last year’s production, Insto Boy and plan to submit this year as well.

First published at 11:24, Thursday, 19 July 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk