Filming the St Leger: What I Learnt About Telling a Story You Don't Know Yet

When the St Leger commission came up, I applied for it. Then I got it. And somewhere between those two things it dawned on me that I didn't know the first thing about horse racing.

I've lived in and around Doncaster most of my life. I knew the St Leger was on, the way you know the weather's on. Oldest Classic in the world, run on the Town Moor since 1776, the town fills up for a week every September. Beyond that, nothing. I couldn't have told you Ja jockeys name, pr any pf the winners or that it was for three year old horses, or that you can only win the St Leger once with the same horse.

You'd think that's a reason not to apply. Twenty years in, I've come round to the opposite view. Not knowing the subject is one of the most useful things you can bring to it — which is half the reason I put myself forward in the first place.

When you don't know a world, you ask the obvious questions — the ones the people inside it stopped asking years ago because the answers have gone invisible to them. Things like, what is the St Leger? Why i sit important? Whats the Tripple Crown? Who was Lester Piggot? Those questions are usually the exact ones the audience has, because they're coming to it as fresh as you are. Understand it too well and you start making a film for people who already get it, which is nobody who needs the film.

The other thing not-knowing buys you is your own eye. Early on you shoot what catches you before you can explain why. Early on I filmed some rarely seen silverware celebrating the 100 year anniversary. I didn’t realise the significance of filming artefacts until I unlocked their stories. I've learnt to trust that. The first impression is the one the viewer will share, so it's worth more than the clever stuff you shoot later once you think you've worked the place out.

A race isn't a story. A festival isn't a story. They're a backdrop. The story is always a person. The film didn't have a spine until Steve animatedly tells you when Charles Dickens came to Doncaster, or when Tony tells you about the characters that have come and gone or when Simon tells you why Lester Piggot is the greatest Jockey of all time.

When you don't know the subject, you also can't drive an interview. You can't steer someone towards the answer you were after, because you don't know what you were after. So you shut up and listen properly. I get better material that way than I ever do when I walk in thinking I know where it's going.

And I never pretended to be a racing man. My sport is motor sport if I’d have lied it would have clocked it in about four seconds. Being the curious outsider is an honest place to film from — you're asking on behalf of everyone watching who doesn't know either.

The homework still matters. I read up, I [did whatever prep you did]. But there's a trap in research: the moment you finally "get" it, you start filming what you think you're supposed to film instead of what actually caught your eye. The job is to learn enough to be useful and not so much that you lose the way you saw it on day one.

What I took from it wasn't about horses. It was a reminder that the not-knowing is the gift, and it doesn't last. Use it before it wears off.