going to make a feature film and we all thought she was joking , '' said 18-year-old Ben Jones , a Gryphon student , who plays Sergeant Troy in the film . `` But we all kind of went along with it and it 's turned into this . '' Clarke was inspired to make the feature after she directed a play with some film footage in it the previous year . `` I thought to myself , ` I 'm going to make a film , ' '' she said . After getting permission from the school , Clarke sat down with Hardy 's book during the school summer holidays and over two weeks wrote a screenplay . In August 2008 , Gryphon 's Hardy feature went into production . `` Far From the Madding Crowd '' unfolds against the backdrop of rural 19th Century England and tells the story of beautiful Bathsheba Everdene who inherits a farm from her uncle and finds herself loved by three men . The feature was filmed over weekends , holidays and snatched evenings after school . It is full of exquisite costumes , gorgeous Dorset vistas and faultless acting from students aged
LONDON , England -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- A schoolteacher from southern England with no previous filmmaking experience has given amateurism a good name by directing her pupils in a feature film fit for Hollywood . Alice Ralph , 18 , stars in `` Far From the Madding Crowd '' as Bathsheba Everdene . It has taken a year of hard work using only one camera , but teachers and pupils at The Gryphon School in Sherborne , Dorset , recently premiered their 110-minute long adaptation of English novelist Thomas Hardy 's seminal 1874 work `` Far From the Madding Crowd . '' `` When I watched it for the first time , it was actually quite an emotional experience , '' director/producer and Head of Drama Rosita Clarke told CNN . `` It 's a kind of relief to see the efforts of what you 've worked on and achieved an absolute reality . '' Clarke is the driving force behind the project and says many people did n't believe she would be able to pull off a feature film when she first came up with the idea . `` Miss Clarke pitched the idea , and said she was