The Locations Of 'A Warning To The Curious' (1972 BBC Ghost Story For Christmas)

This is a video tour of the locations used in the British 1972 BBC TV drama 'A Warning To The Curious', based on the M. R. James book of the same name. It's probably my favourite of the BBC Ghost Story For Christmas TV series. Around January of 2017, I happened upon the K-Punk Blog site detailing the author’s visit to identify & photograph the locations used in the filming (http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/ar..., all around the North Norfolk coast. I also filled in a couple of further locations from Adam Scovell's BFI Blog (http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/ne.... Here are the locations I visited, listed in the order they are shown.

Waxham Beach, east of the village of Waxham
Sections of this beach appeared in 'Whistle And I'll Come To You'

Sherringham Station on the North Norfolk Railway
Doubled as Seaburgh Railway Station

Shipwright's Pub on East Quay Street in Wells-Next-The-Sea
Used as the inn in Seaburgh as shown on screen, now a private residence

Happisburgh Lighthouse in Happisburgh
Used as the lighthouse in Seaburgh as shown on screen

St Mary The Virgin Church in Happisburgh
Used as the church in Seaburgh as shown on screen

Weybourne Station on the North Norfolk Railway
Doubled as Thruxton Railway Station

Holkham Beach north-west of Wells-Next-The-Sea
Used as the beach and forest area where the crown is buried

The locations were pretty much as I had expected them to be based on my research beforehand. On visiting Holkham Beach, I parked in the Holkham Beach car park, which is a ways west of the nearest village of Wells-Next-The-Sea. There were two peninsulas of forest either side of the car park stretching out onto the beach. I assumed that the one on the right, nearest Wells-Next-The-Sea was used in the film, but I decided to go towards the left-hand forest first as the author of the K-Punk Blog site did not see any likely screen-matching hills (from which Paxton dug up the crown) in the right-hand forest. About half a mile round the beach/tree-line, the make-up of the forest changes to fairly flat ground, younger trees and looks nothing like that seen on screen. I backtracked and went to the right-hand forest. I lugged my camera equipment around two miles round that treeline instead, and couldn't spot any likely looking hills either. I could have gone further, right the way round to Wells-Next-The-Sea causeway, but time was getting short and I was totally knackered. That said, the film was shot nearly 50 years ago, so all it would take is for the tree-line to have moved a short distance forward or back, or erosion to change the layout a little, and suddenly that hill could never be identified.

Most of the locations were pretty quiet when I did my shooting, with the exception of Weybourne railway station which was semi-busy. I shot most of the footage of Sherringham railway station at around 6am, hopping fence and approaching the first person I saw to ask permission. Sherringham station gets pretty packed during the day. Filming trains either arriving or leaving Sherringham station via the road bridge overlooking the station can be tricky. There is only one pavement; on the side which looks down onto the station. To film footage from the other side of the bridge looking out into the distance, you have to stand tight in to the bridge wall, and it's a fairly busy narrow road.

Over those two days, I got 107 shots totalling around 80mins of 1080p footage using my Sony NEX-VG10 camcorder with 35mm-lense-adaptor and a 28mm Canon old-style manual SLR lens. I did try to properly compose a number of the shots but for the most part I opted for coverage over quality. There are a few shots in there with moiré patterns, which I'd normally catch on my 7" LCD monitor, but I simply lacked the time to properly compose and double-check each shot. Once I got back home, I immediately started editing with Adobe Première, matting the 1080p 16:9 source footage into 2.35:1 widescreen, using Magic Bullet Looks to change the colour grading, and a Gorilla Grain 16mm film overlay to add the grain. I made the opening and closing titles to roughly resemble those used in the original, in keeping with the 70s BBC production look of the film. I happened upon a complete 'A Warning To The Curious' OST listing here; http://ringostrack.com/en/movie/a-war..., and used this to assemble & mix my own complete score, which I added to my footage.

I'm not intending to do anything further with this project beyond this YouTube upload, and a few Blu-ray copies for friends. If anyone is interested in getting a Blu-Ray copy, or if any media production companies interested in licensing my footage, then please get in contact via email through my http://www.bookofthedead.ws website. The email address is at the bottom-left of every page.