Jack & Doreen's Story...

Jack and Doreen Shakespeare got married in 1955 and in 1958 made a big decision. They decided to leave their jobs, home and families in The Black Country in the Midlands and emigrate to Australia.
A couple of years later, in 1960, they were homesick and made another big decision to come back to England.
But instead of flying back, or going all the way by ship, they decided instead to drive back.
They bought a twelve year old ‘Willys” station wagon, put a bed in the back and added cooking facilities and set off back “home”.
The first leg of their journey was easy – by boat to Bombay. But then they embarked on the drive of their life.
Armed with only Doreen’s old school Atlas, their journey took them by road through India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and finally through Europe and back to England. The last leg of their amazing journey involved loading their Jeep into the plane hold at Le Touquet in Northern France and flying over the English Channel landing at Lydd.
Their incredible journey of more than 9,000 miles each way took 114 days and was incident packed all along the way.
They encountered sandstorms, ice, snowstorms, bandits, bad roads, a herd of elephants and even a gypsy’s curse!
And best of all, they filmed their journey almost every step of the way on Jack’s pride and joy, a wind up Bell and Howell 8mm cine camera. Their film captures lots of their experiences, including the elephants, wading through swollen rivers, the empty corrugated roads, and a visit to a deserted Taj Mahal before today’s tourists had discovered it.
And when they arrived in England, they immediately realised they’d made a big mistake (the Birmingham weather had something to do with it). After five weeks they turned round and drove back again. They used 348 gallons of petrol (at a cost of £71 in those days).
Now happily settled in Australia, with children and grandchildren, sprightly Jack 78 and Doreen 77 surprised that anything thinks their adventure was brave…..even foolhardy.
Said Jack: “We were never afraid, even though these were some sticky moments. It was our policy to treat everyone we met along the way as we would like to be treated, and it worked.”

To watch the 10 min taster please click here

Technical Specifications

Having made a short taster tape in August 2007, JackDor Films Limited has just finished shooting the full documentary in Melbourne, Australia.
Producer/Director Rick Gardner convinced the two directors of JackDor that the only way to shoot this exciting story was in High Definition progressive video and, where possible, in a tapeless environment. He used a local Australian outfit, Axis Films and lighting cameraman Tim Maloney with sound recordist Peter Graham. The main camera was a Panasonic AJ-HPX 3000 with P2 media cards. The camera held 5 cards, each capable of storing 16GB of media with continuous recording. After each section of the shoot, the media cards were file transferred to twin hard drives, verified and the shoot continued. Needless to say, housekeeping of this innovative system was imperative! For the edit process the files of the whole shoot were then transferred to a 750GB external hard drive by Firewire 800 with deep archiving also realised.
Video editing in the UK is imminent and the audio dubbing will follow with specially written music. The final sound tracks are envisaged to be in 5.1 audio.

Please click here for technical info on the HPX 3000 camera