Castle View School, in Meppel Avenue, Canvey closed in 2012.

Former pupil Joe Mander and friend Liam Heatherson decided to make a film about the history of the building, with the help of former headteachers.

Joe who is an apprentice at ITN, runs Beyond the Point, a local history website, together with Liam. Here he tells the KATIE MANSFIELD why he chose to spend 12 months creating the documentary.

I HAVE been working on a documentary about an abandoned school for the past few months.

This wasn't any old school though, it was my old one, so I held a personal connection with the place.

I was there from 2008-2011 when the whole school moved to a new site about half a mile away.

“In 2011 I founded Beyond the Point and never thought at the time I would be filming a documentary about it in the years to come.

It wasn't until I came across a photo online that showed police at the site, I thought, ‘what's happening there?’ It turned out it was a training exercise by Essex Police, who use the site for firearm exercises and police sniffer dog tests.

Liam and I decided to look into it. I then realised how little I knew about the place, as the crucial historic moments happened before I was even born. I researched some details although I didn't find out that much.

By chance, I was at Margate FC, filming Canvey's match, when I met Russell Sullivan, my headteacher when I started at Castle View. He retired in 2010 and is nowan education and community director at Margate FC.

Russell had heardwewere looking into the history of the site and took my business card to email me over some details, memories and old photos of the school.

This was the first major step for this production. Russell sent many old photos and details, all of which were very useful in showing the history of this school which had thousands of pupils pass through its doors.

Before I met Russell, I had visited the site with Liam.

We tookawalk around the exterior, filming mostly handheld and shot a couple of pieces to camera.

Once we had the extra material from Russell, the council allowed us to visit again, with permission to visit and film the exterior. We invited Russell on this visit, to film him speaking about his memories at the school and how bits of it have changed.

We also put more emphasis on video quality and took a tripod along with us. This made a big difference in the production quality, making it look a lot more professional.

Although this wasn't evident in the production stage, it was very noticeable during post-production, so it's worth carrying the extra bit of weight!

I knew the site off by heart.

However, it made sense to take a walk around first so Russell could get familiar with the building and also remember more details.

Liam also had only visited the site once before.

After our mini tour, we walked back to the site entrance stopping to film the building and also Russell speaking. Russell would look at Liam who was holding the blimp, while I filmed.

We were also joined by Luke Baker who was taking some behind-the-scenes photos for us.

Once we had finished filming, we spoke to the security guard who let us in some areas inside the school, which although it was good for us to look at, we couldn't use any footage because we didn't have permission.

We now had all the material we wanted for the documentary and this was saved and backed up.

These were put into a rough picture cut, although this was just to get a general feel of how the project was starting to look.

“Now the documentary is finished and we hope people will watch it and enjoy it.

I hope it brings back memories for people who studied there. It’s sad to see my old school in this state but it was great to go back and walk the empty halls.”