When Clive and I started writing, most coursebooks didn’t have any integrated video. Videos were separate entities, sometime created to accompany coursebooks, or existing as courses in themselves, but it was not always easy to incorporate them into lessons. Most teachers didn’t have easy access to video players. In our case, in the British Council, there was one video player with a TV on a big trolley which you had to book weeks in advance. Pushing it into the classroom, plugging it in and getting it to work was a major undertaking, especially if one only had ten minutes between classes. As a result, we didn’t really use it much. However, we were aware that video was popular with students, so when we were given the opportunity to have video as part of New English File, we were delighted. We were also clear that what we wanted was to have a video which covered typical travel situations to replace the ‘Travel with English’ lessons in the first edition of English File, but – and this was key – it should have an ongoing story line.
Mark and Allie
The first incarnation of these lessons was a story based on two characters, Mark, from the USA and Allie, from the UK. They appeared in the Practical English lessons in New English File Elementary, Pre-intermediate and Intermediate (and are still in existence on YouTube). Probably for budget reasons, it was decided to film the whole thing in a studio with minimal props, and we also thought this would make it easier for students to role-play the situations in their classroom. Clive and I were deeply involved in creating the scripts, alongside a professional scriptwriter. However, we were not expected to be present at the actual filming. One downside of this was that there was no one to monitor how fast the actors were speaking (something which we have subsequently found really important during filming for lower level videos with professional actors). However, the actor playing Mark was a smoker, as was I at the time, and we used to meet up outside the studio to sneak a cigarette, so I took the opportunity to talk to him about keeping the speed natural but slow. In retrospect, these videos did a good job, but Clive and I always felt they would have worked better had they been filmed on location.’
Rob and Jenny
For third editions of English File, one of the first things we asked for was to recreate Mark and Allie, and for the story to be filmed on location in London and New York. To our delight, this was agreed, and Rob and Jenny were born. We kept the idea of one of them being British and the other from the USA, as we felt that this not only exposed students to both accents, which would help them with understanding, but it also allowed us to familiarise students with useful travel language in both British and American English. However, we swapped the roles, making Jenny American and Rob British, and completely rewrote the story. Sadly neither Clive nor I were able to go to New York for the filming, as we were too busy writing.
When we later created Practical English lessons for the new level, Intermediate Plus, we wanted to continue with the Rob and Jenny story. However the actor playing Rob was not available, so we created a mystery drama in which Jenny is visiting Rob’s father in the UK. He is kidnapped, and Jenny and Rob’s cousin help to get him back. This time I was present for much of the filming of this final season, which took place in Oxford. My main memory of this experience was discovering the basement at Oxford University Press, which had some parts which were quite spooky, and which was used as the location for where Rob’s father was being held by the kidnappers. I also remember running up and down the pavement with Jenny, trying to keep warm on a freezing cold day when we were filming a street scene. The new video became extremely popular, and in the many Question and Answer sessions I have done with teachers, a question I am invariably asked is, ‘What happened to Rob and Jenny in the end?’.
Ben and Izzy
Rob and Jenny’s popularity was such that we decided to keep them in 4th editions. However, with 5th editions, it was clear that it was time for Rob and Jenny to be replaced. TV viewing had changed exponentially over the previous decade, and we wanted to create something more like a Netflix series, where, apart from the focus on practical English, we could also really help to develop students’ viewing skills and set them up to enjoy watching video in English. This time, partly because of all the other new video we were creating, we wanted to be involved in every aspect of the videos, from the story line to the script to the casting, and of course we wanted to be present at all the actual filming. To make the videos more Netflix-like, we wanted a series title, a theme tune, recaps to help teachers and students to remember what had happened in the previous episodes, and above all, a really motivating storyline where every episode would end on a cliff hanger. We worked with an excellent video company – the filming took place over a month, and Clive and I were present throughout, Clive literally every day. The director was genuinely open to all our suggestions. We also learned a huge amount about how a video was made. ‘Pictures of You’, as it was finally called, ended up exactly as we had hoped. And for all the teachers who asked, ‘What happened to Rob and Jenny?’, if you watch series 1 carefully, you might just find out!