At Home with Grattan is a promotional film for the mail order catalogue service provided by the company with offices based in Leicester, Rotherham, Hull and Bradford . The film begins in Victorian times with a horse and cart trotting down a country lane. The man in the carriage indicates the driver to turn into a large house where he gets out with a package and knocks on the door. The voice over says that once upon a time when you ordered goods from a shop they were delivered to your door....

At Home with Grattan is a promotional film for the mail order catalogue service provided by the company with offices based in Leicester, Rotherham, Hull and Bradford . The film begins in Victorian times with a horse and cart trotting down a country lane. The man in the carriage indicates the driver to turn into a large house where he gets out with a package and knocks on the door. The voice over says that once upon a time when you ordered goods from a shop they were delivered to your door. The butler comes out and takes the package from the man who gets back into his carriage and drives off. Then voice over then says that we may say that times have changed a lot since then, but have they? Title-At Home with Grattan. The film cuts to the woman who is doing the voice over, a Grattan Agent, she is painting her door and says that people now prefer to come to her rather that trek into town to do their shopping. A woman and her young daughter come over to her house and are invited inside. The woman starts leafing through the catalogue and the voice over says that there is as much choice there as on many a high street. There are shots of lots of the pages of items including frying pans and pots, toys, clothing, and watches. The voice over says that once the items are chosen, all she has to do is spend a few minutes filling out an order form and then post it. There are shots of her doing this. A mail van delivers sacks of orders to the office in Bradford and the agent says that there are offices in Leicester, Rotherham, Hull and Bradford. The bags are brought to the delivery room where they are sorted in categories and a slip with the day they arrived is attached. The voice over says this will help the order to be sent out as soon as possible. There are shots of the crowds of women at desks sorting through the orders. The next shots are from the room where the orders are typed into a computerised system. There are shots of lots of men and women at 1970s computers followed by a shot of a man loading a large computer tape into a part of the computer. At each stage of the process the order from the agent is at the top of the pile visible to the audience. The order forms are then put together and a man takes them to the stock room and begins to get some of the ordered items. He ties them up and puts them onto a conveyor belt where there is a point-of-view shot from the conveyor belt as it moves along to the next department. In the next few scenes the same thing happens. The voice over explains that the orders are added to on each floor. The voice over also talks about the department that deals with problems or customer enquiries and that they also produce a magazine called `Grattan Mail' which is published several times a year for the agents. Then she says that nothing is left to chance and that the best material and designs are used and that Grattan people go to many trade fairs all year round. The next sequence of shots shows the processes that the products go through to ensure that they conform to the samples. The next section shows the production of the Grattan catalogue. The photographers prepare models for shoots, arrange objects against backgrounds and check the products against the photographs. Now in the post room and the voice over talks about how much paper and bags that they use to wrap the goods. The men wrap and weight the parcels and the voice over says that Grattan pays for all of the postage. The mail van drives down the road and arrives at the voice over/agents house. She takes it in and gets the woman, daughter and husband to come over to her house and look at their goods. She then describes the payment terms and how the commission that she gets comes in very handy. Title-At Home with Grattan. Title-Production Controller, Ron Appleton. Cameraman, Norman Jones. Editor, John Daniels. Unit Manager, John Gray. The shot cuts back to the horse and carriage driving along the country road. Title Script-Richard Gordon-Freeman. Director, John Herber. Producer, Jean Wadlow. Made for Charles Barker Films for Grattan.