Culloden (film) - Production

Production

Culloden was Watkins' first full-length film. It was also his first use of his docudrama style in which actors portray historical characters being interviewed by filmmakers on the scene as though it was happening in front of news cameras. The film was produced on a low budget, with only a handful of extras and a single cannon. Watkins made use of carefully planned camera angles to give the appearance of an army.

Watkins also "wanted to break through the conventional use of professional actors in historical melodramas, with the comfortable avoidance of reality that these provide, and to use amateurs - ordinary people - in a reconstruction of their own history." He accordingly used an all-amateur cast from London and the Scottish Lowlands for the royalist forces, and people from Inverness for the clan army. This later became a central technique of Watkins' filmmaking.

According to an estimate by the cinematographer for the film, Dick Bush, about 85% of all camerawork in Culloden was hand-held. This newsreel style shooting gave an already gritty reality a sense of present action. Culloden looked like a documentary of an event which occurred before the camera was invented. From this the film illustrates the recognizable documentary style of ‘cinema verite’.