The boys from Get Duked! on surviving the Scottish Highlands

City street smarts count for nothing in the Scottish Highlands, as four teenagers find out the hard way in Ninian Doff’s debut feature, Get Duked!, released on Amazon Prime this Friday.

Three of them are sent out in the country on the Duke Of Edinburgh’s Award scheme as the alternative to being expelled from school and, together with a fourth member of the gang, who is their complete opposite, they find themselves not just up against the landscape, but the local community and a group of aristocrats who have their rifle sights trained very much on them.

Talking to The People’s Movies’ Freda Cooper, actors Samuel Bottomley, Viraj Juneja and Lewis Gribben (the fourth member of the team, Rian Gordon, unfortunately, wasn’t able to in), about what it was like filming in the wilds of Scotland – and how one of them managed to keep his clothes perfectly white for most of the film, despite the rain and the mud …..

Freda Cooper Congratulations on the film! Have any of you ever had a go at the Duke Of Edinburgh’s Award or anything like it?

Lewis Gribben I did! I failed because I didn’t do the volunteering because I didn’t want to volunteer – I know that was bad ……

Viraj Juneja He asked how much he’d be getting paid and they said it’s volunteering, so he went like nah …..

Lewis Well, how much do I get paid? No?! I could go to Tesco and get £7 per hour!

Samuel Bottomley You didn’t do it because you didn’t want to do it, Lewis, is what you’re saying!

Lewis I did the camping. I loved the camping part. It’s just that the volunteering was, well ….

Viraj Did you fail before that?

Lewis No, we did the camping bit first, so I did that and I had an idea of what the film would be like.

FC So had any of you been to the Highlands before? What was it like shooting there?

Viraj It was my first time there and it was beautiful going to the set every day and when you look outside it’s almost like a Windows Explorer background, with the hills and everything. It’s picturesque.

FC Yeah, but it’s real!

Viraj It’s beautiful!

Lewis It’s so beautiful.

Samuel Beautiful, but it can also be absolute hell. It can go from looking so beautiful and within five minutes it can be hell on earth, d’you know what I mean? Midges. Sheep shit. Rain. Other things …..

FC Viraj, for most of the film you look like you’ve walked straight out of a commercial for detergent! Your clothes are brilliant white! How did you manage to keep them like that for so long?

Viraj That was to the costume department. These guys, at the end of a scene, they’d be running down a hill, doing stupid stuff. And it’s almost like seeing your friends do something and you want to in, but your parents say no. And I realised I was making the costume department’s job more difficult by ing in, so I decided I had to be a bit more sensible.

Samuel We were sliding down hills, rolling down them – I went down that hill so fast, didn’t I? I had this waterproof coat on and me and Rian [Rian Gordon, who plays Dean] were sliding down this hill and we got up some serious speed.

Lewis Yeah, we got a telling off for that!

Get Duked! is released on Amazon Prime on Friday, 28 August.