Empress Coaches, in St Leonards, were used in the new Bridget Jones film, Mad About the Boy. Owner Steve Dine, who is also in the film, tells us more.
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00:00As a company, we've been going, well, we're in our 96th year now.
00:05Empress Coaches, we're the longest continually operating independent in, well, I think the
00:11south coast of England.
00:13Recent years, the business has changed a lot since COVID.
00:15We've got a small fleet of vehicles, fixed modern.
00:19We've got a vintage coach, and we also have a Hurst limousine that we operate.
00:25We do quite a bit of work, local private hire, and stuff for groups and club societies.
00:32But also, we do, from time to time, get involved in the world of film.
00:36The most recent one, of course, is Bridget Jones.
00:39Yeah, we had a call from the film company, I think it was about April time last year.
00:45They were very interested in hiring one of the coaches from us.
00:48I thought it would be our classic coach, our little 1967 Bedford.
00:52That's always popular for film work, but it wasn't.
00:55It was actually our modern 33-seat coach they wanted.
00:59The livery was of interest to them, so we had a call initially to go up to Elstree Studios.
01:08Up there for the day, they checked the coach out, they liked it, went round the whole thing,
01:13put up some runners alongside to check camera angles, things like that.
01:18The next call we had, when it was agreed they wanted it, was to go up to Hampstead
01:23in London.
01:24We had a day up there filming.
01:26That was all the exterior scenes outside the fictitious Callsworthy House School.
01:33That was good fun.
01:34That's when I got to meet Renee for the first time.
01:36She was lovely, a really nice lady.
01:40Funny enough, when she introduced herself, she jumped on the coach,
01:45Hi, I'm Renee.
01:46I jokedly said, Hi, I'm Steve, I'm your coach driver, and she laughed.
01:50I think she thought I was one of the actors.
01:52I don't think she realised I actually was the coach driver.
01:56That was a good start.
01:57That was funny.
01:58We did all the scenes that were needed there at this location.
02:03Funny enough, it wasn't very far away.
02:05It was actually a school.
02:06It was half-turned, so they were using it for the filming, because obviously the kids
02:10were off.
02:11Interestingly, just down the road from where we were filming was where they filmed the
02:15early scenes for the Railway Children, that 1970 film, where there was the family in London
02:23there.
02:24That was quite interesting.
02:25We were quite close in location.
02:26I wouldn't have had a look at the area there.
02:30The next time we were needed was up in Cumbria, where they were filming up in the Lake District.
02:36That was good fun, lovely locations.
02:40We had a very early start one day.
02:42We were filming up on the Kirkstone Pass, where they wanted me to try and drive as fast
02:47as I could up and down the Kirkstone Pass, which was, again, the scenery was fantastic.
02:54They'd hired a helicopter from London that had come up, and that was flying overhead,
03:02swooping down and around to get the scene that they needed there.
03:08The child actors could only work restricted times, so for that part of the filming they
03:13used a lot of dummies that were all set up in the coach.
03:16We set them up the night before inside, so it all looked like there was a coachload of
03:20school kids for the film work.
03:25After that, we cut to a different location, and there's the scene where I actually get
03:29my speaking part.
03:33That was good fun as well, because we got to work with René and Guetel, if I've pronounced
03:39this correctly, lovely actors.
03:43We filmed the scene, which, funnily enough, they didn't even say to me the cue to say
03:48the scene.
03:50It was only when they were doing their first take, and the actors looked at me and said,
03:55and I thought, oh, this is it, it's my speaking part.
03:59So again, there's about 27 takes they wanted to get it from all different angles.
04:05It's surprising how much film that they do take, just to make sure they get that one
04:10little bit that they want, which is seconds, isn't it?
04:13When we'd finished filming up on the Kirkstone Pass, because we'd started early in the morning,
04:20we'd got everything we wanted, but of course traffic's a tourist area, so the traffic starts
04:24to build up.
04:28We got down to the bottom of the pass, and some of the crew were in a pub car park there,
04:32where they wanted to sort of get the extras off the coach, and that left me with the dummies
04:37on board, and the props people said, ah, before you disappear to the next location, they said,
04:42we need the wigs off the dummies.
04:44So basically, they thought, well, don't let them get ruined, where they're going to be
04:49transported to next before they come off the coach, then the child actors would then eventually
04:53be on the coach, and we're doing the filming for the last scenes, where they're all jumping
04:58up and down on board the coach, that was a great laugh, too.
05:02So I'm left on the coach now, with a coachload of dummies, all children, and they're all
05:08bald.
05:09We've got off, I've gone off down the road now to get myself to the next location, and
05:13sure enough, I barely got out onto the lane.
05:16The coach comes the other way, and we're caught up together, and the other driver sort of
05:23put his coach into the side as much as he could, and I thought, well, I'll have to squeeze
05:27through.
05:28And of course, as I'm trying to inch past the other coach, I've got a whole coachload
05:32of holidaymakers looking at me, and all I've got is a coachload of bald dummies on board,
05:39which looks a bit weird, really, but luckily, it didn't have our logo on it, it said Coolsworthy
05:43House on all the logos, so I thought, they'll have to soak that one up, thinking, what the
05:47hell is this?
05:48It just looks strange.
05:49But there you go, that's the sort of thing that happens in the film work, anything goes