Yorkshire filmmaker and multimedia specialist Wayne Sables is capturing the story of Wakefield’s music scene on camera.
Wayne has been commissioned by Upper Westgate Heritage Action Zone – the four year partnership between Historic England and Wakefield Council – to create a 30-minute documentary about the way in which music has become central to Westgate’s successful regeneration.
The finished film will be screened at Wakefield Live, the free, multi-venue festival across Wakefield City Centre on September 17, with plans also afoot to take the film onto the international festival circuit, where Wayne’s previous productions have won a host of top awards.
Sables said: “Before I came to this project I had absolutely no idea the Westgate music scene was so huge. This is a fascinating story that needs to be told, and to do it justice I’ve been talking to everybody from musicians to backstage crew to access the full story of how this cultural hub has grown to be such a strong part of the fabric of Wakefield life.”
The Doncaster-based director will work alongside award winning Sheffield-based photographer, cinematographer, and content producer Oliver Ibbotson on the project.
Sables is something of a fixture on the Yorkshire independent film scene. He has previously worked with Cannon Hall in Barnsley, created a series of short documentaries across all Barnsley’s heritage sites and also been part of the team that created If These Walls Could Talk, an immersive sound and vision experience at South Yorkshire’s historic Wentworth Woodhouse.
In Rotherham he has worked with the Children’s Capital of Culture team and a group of young producers to create a short film around the collections at Clifton Park Museums, and on a major projection mapping project that saw a series of digitally created animations projected onto Rotherham’s historic minster.
In Leeds and Wakefield, he partnered with Dance Action Zone Leeds to create a series of films exploring the links between dance and health. He si the co-licensee for TedX Doncaster, while further afield his film Familiar Struggle, choreographed and performed by Barnsley dancer Keira Martin, was named Best Experimental Film at the Montreal Independent Film Festival 2021 and saw Sables take the best experimental director prize at the LA Sun Film Fest 2021.
