LOCATION UK 2015

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SHOWCASING THE UK’S FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCTION INDUSTRY - NO4 - 2015

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FIRST FOR WORLD-CLASS FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCTION For generous tax reliefs for film and television, competitive costs, leading talent and crew, outstanding facilities and stunning locations, base your next production in the UK. With offices in the UK and US, the British Film Commission provides free, tailored support to major productions from development through to delivery.

The British Film Commission thanks its gold sponsors

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www.britishfilmcommission.org.uk @FilmInUK_BFC

SHOWCASING THE UK’S FILM & TV PRODUCTION INDUSTRY N°4 2015

BRITISH FILM COMMISSION CHAIR, BRITISH FILM COMMISSION IAIN SMITH CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE BRITISH FILM COMMISSION AND FILM LONDON ADRIAN WOOTTON SENIOR PRODUCTION EXECUTIVE (UK) SAMANTHA PERAHIA EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, US PRODUCTION (US) KATTIE KOTOK SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, US PARTNERSHIPS (US) TARA HALLORAN PRODUCTION SUPPORT OFFICER (UK) HANNA MACLEOD PA TO THE BRITISH FILM COMMISSION (UK) SONYA WATT RESEARCH AND INFORMATION ADMINISTRATOR (UK) SAMUEL GILL EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT (US) JENNIFER PATTERSON FILM LONDON HEAD OF FILM PROMOTION & CULTURE (UK) COLETTE GERAGHTY SENIOR PRESS & COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER (UK) ALEX DELLER MARKETING & EVENTS COORDINATOR (UK) EMILY HADWEN DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR (UK) SONYA WILLIAM COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER (UK) AVALON LYNDON FILM CULTURE AND MARKETING OFFICER (UK) FLORA MENZIES BRITISH FILM COMMISSION UK OFFICE BRITISH FILM COMMISSION - SUITE 6.10 THE TEA BUILDING - 56 SHOREDITCH HIGH STREET - LONDON E1 6JJ - UNITED KINGDOM T: +44 (0)20 7613 7675 - F: +44 (0)20 7613 7677 - E: ENQUIRIES@BRITISHFILMCOMMISSION.ORG.UK BRITISH FILM COMMISSION US OFFICE 2029 CENTURY PARK EAST - SUITE 1350 - LOS ANGELES, CA 90067 - USA - T. +1 310 481 2909 LOCATION UK IS THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE BRITISH FILM COMMISSION AND IS PUBLISHED FOR THE BFC BY BOUTIQUE EDITIONS LTD. ADDITIONAL COPIES ARE AVAILABLE ON REQUEST FROM THE BFC. BRITISH FILM COMMISSION - SUITE 6.10 THE TEA BUILDING - 56 SHOREDITCH HIGH STREET - LONDON E1 6JJ - UNITED KINGDOM EDITOR JULIAN NEWBY MANAGING EDITOR DEBBIE LINCOLN CONTRIBUTORS CLIVE BULL, SARAH COOPER PUBLISHER RICHARD WOOLLEY ART DIRECTOR CHRISTIAN ZIVOJINOVIC WWW.ANOIR.FR PUBLISHED BY BOUTIQUE EDITIONS LTD - 117 WATERLOO ROAD - LONDON SE1 8UL - UNITED KINGDOM - T: +44 20 7902 1942 - F: +44 20 3006 8796 WWW.BOUTIQUEEDITIONS.COM ADVERTISING SALES JERRY ODLIN INTERNATIONAL SALES DIRECTOR JODLIN@BOUTIQUEEDITIONS.COM

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CO N T E N TS

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THE FORCE AWAKENS

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The UK hosts the next installment in the ongoing Star Wars adventure

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ANIMATION The UK has become the go-to place for animated film and television productions

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MACBETH Shakespeare’s tragedy comes home to Scotland

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INCENTIVES With a vast increase in the number of international productions filming in the UK, the country’s film and television incentives are clearly working

UK

SHOWCASING THE UK’S FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCTION INDUSTRY - NO4 - 2015

STUDIOS

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A collection of images featuring stunning locations around the UK — some famous on the big screen, some yet to be discovered

Marvel’s heroes shoot in a disused police training school in London

IN PICTURES

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

46 CITIES

As the production industry continues to grow so does the infrastructure — throughout the UK

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WOLF HALL Shooting a period TV drama in the locations where the characters actually walked

The UK’s booming production industry means the amount of studio space on offer is booming too

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FORTITUDE A UK production, set in Norway and shot in Iceland and London

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MEET THE EXPERTS Hear from behind-thescenes talents working on some of the biggest titles of the moment

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SPONSORS & SUPPORTERS ADVERTISERS INDEX

ST GILES’ CATHEDRAL, EDINBURGH Situated on Edinburgh’s historic Royal Mile midway between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace, St Giles’ Cathedral has been a major Edinburgh landmark since the 12th century.

The ornate interior includes stunning stained glass windows, as seen in our cover photograph.

(Photo, courtesy D Cowie/ Scottish Viewpoint)

MAKING A SCENE STAR WARS

THE FORCE AWAKENS A CAST READ-THROUGH OF STAR WARS: The Force Awakens at Pinewood Studios.

Clockwise from top right: writer, director and producer J J Abrams; actors Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, Carrie Fisher and Peter Mayhew; producers Bryan Burk and Kathleen Kennedy; actors Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Andy Serkis, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega and Adam Driver; and writer Lawrence Kasdan

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MAKING A SCENE STAR WARS

PINEWOOD STUDIOS GROUP OVER 80 YEARS OF WORLD CLASS FILMMAKING • 36 STAGES AND ASSOCIATED PRODUCTION ACCOMMODATION • 3 DEDICATED DIGITAL TV STUDIOS • COMPREHENSIVE RANGE OF POST PRODUCTION AND MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT • PRODUCTION SERVICES FROM TRADITIONAL CREATIVE SERVICES, 3D PRINTING, LIGHTING AND GRIP EQUIPMENT • FUNDING AVAILABLE TO UK FILM AND TV PRODUCTIONS • INTERNATIONAL STUDIOS Renowned across the globe for excellence in its field, the Pinewood Group now has Studios in Cardiff, Wales | Toronto, Canada | Atlanta, Georgia USA | Iskandar, Malaysia | Dominican Republic STUDIOS | TV | WATER | POST PRODUCTION | MEDIA HUB | PRODUCTION SERVICES | FUNDING

UK Office: +44 (0)1753 656 767 | LA Office: + 310 244 3770 | NY: +1 310 874 6797 For further information on our studios and facilities, please visit: www.pinewoodgroup.com/ukstudios

MAKING A SCENE STAR WARS 9

PRODUCTION COMPANY Bad Robot tweeted out the clap board used on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens as shooting started at Pinewood

MAKING A SCENE

Even with plot and script under lock and key until its December 2015 release, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is creating a buzz here in the UK. Location UK heard the early thoughts of production manager Simon Emanuel

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TAR WARS: The Force Awakens is set 30 years after the events of Return Of The Jedi and features characters from the original trilogy including Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker.

Some of the film was shot on location — in the Abu Dhabi desert and the Irish island of Skellig Michael, for example — but the majority of the action happened at the UK’s Pinewood Studios.

The film’s unit production manager, Simon Emanuel, first heard from Lucasfilm back in 2012 and the first piece of advice he offered was that they should start the project sooner than originally planned.

“Because we started early we managed to get exactly the crew we wanted,” Emanuel says. “I genuinely think we had the best crew I’ve ever put together and that’s because we chose them early. Plus, of course, when you say

the words Star Wars it does help.”

Emanuel says the prospect of meeting Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy (E.T., Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park) for the first time was somewhat “nerve-racking”, but his fears were unfounded and he soon got the message that top of her list of priorities was a happy crew and a happy production. “She was wonderful to work with,” he says.

An “extensive worldwide search” for locations followed. UK locations included military base Greenham Common in Berkshire, which served as the rebel base; and Puzzlewood, a 14-acre ancient wood in the English county of Gloucestershire.

Puzzlewood is distinctive for its mosscovered trees and rocks which give off an eerie green light. “It’s a really unusual place,” Emanuel says. “It was once the site of a mine. The tunnels of the mines collapsed many years ago, leaving pathways through the woods that are below the level of the ground. So you walk along these paths with the woods above you. It’s a magical place.”

Back at Pinewood, and confirmed Star Wars fanatic Emanuel describes a spinechilling moment when he walked onto the stage where the Millennium Falcon spaceship was being built.

“The ramp up to the ship and the

entrance were pretty much complete and so I walked up to have a look — and I stopped for a moment and thought, ‘My God, I’m walking up the ramp of the Falcon!’. Even though it was just plywood, that really was quite a moment for me.”

So what does Emanuel think is the reason that such an iconic piece of American popular culture ends up being created here in the UK? “Well, it’s partly the Film Tax Relief of course. That has proved to

Simon Emanuel

“The constant factor is that there are world-class crews here” be working, it’s making money for the country and the exchequer, and it means it’s a great time to be a part of the British film industry,” he says. “But also, the constant factor is that there are world-class crews here. We have the best set construction in the world, in terms of quality, and I think that when you’re investing a huge amount of money into a project like this, you want to have that kind of security — the knowledge that it will be done well. That’s a key part of the success we’re enjoying right now.”

Choose

the UK

There’s never been a better time to choose the UK for film and TV drama production and post production.

Creative Skillset works behind the scenes to ensure the UK remains a top destination for film and TV drama productions by developing world-class talent.

By choosing the UK, Creative Skillset will support your production with: • Highly skilled film professionals and technicians • Funding for training courses • Set-ready and subsidised trainees …and more.

Contact Creative Skillset on 020 7713 9800 to talk to the film or TV team.

creativeskillset.org/sif

Image © 2015 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Multi-award-winning Double Negative is one of the world’s leading providers of visual effects for Film (early 2015 saw Dneg win their third BAFTA and second Academy Award® for best VFX for their work on Interstellar).

Operating from locations in London, Singapore and Vancouver, Dneg collaborate with clients from the rst stages of projects; producing ideas, concept imagery, previs and production plans. Meanwhile Dneg’s R&D team create the tools to produce groundbreaking digital environments and characters, creatures and effects, from the real (water, smoke and re) to the magical. Dneg prides itself on close collaborative working relationships with clients; ensuring productions la receive the same high standard of creative and technical service. both small and large Recent Shows include: Avengers: Age of Ultron, Interstellar, Ex Machina, Jupiter Ascending, Exodus: Gods and Kings, In the Heart of the Sea. Currently in Production: Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, Terminator: Genisys, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Huntsman, Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation, Spectre, Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass, Ant-man, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Contact Matt Holben or Alex Hope

160 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5QA, 0207 268 5000

MAKING A SCENE MACBETH

MAKING A SCENE

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Through the fog and filthy air See-Saw Films’ Macbeth shot in Scotland where Shakespeare’s play is set. But they still had to pipe in their own fog.

Sarah Cooper reports

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ITH ITS jagged rock formations, dramatic mountain scenery and stunning coastline, the Isle of Skye provides the perfect backdrop for See-Saw Films’ adaptation of Macbeth, directed by Justin Kurzel, and starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.

“The film needed an authenticity about it. It needed to be awe inspiring and we were trying to find that wonderful combination of spectacular landscapes but also realism,” See-Saw Films’ Iain Canning says of the decision to shoot the feature on

the remote Scottish island — previously host to big-scale productions including 47 Ronin (2013), Prometheus (2012) and Snow White And The Huntsman (2012).

“Skye is like no other place in the British Isles, it is so dramatic as a backdrop, very barren, very sparse. It feels prehistoric in places,” the film’s location manager Eugene Strange says of the island — whose lack of people, traffic, pylons and telephone wires, enabled Kurzel and DOP Adam Arkapaw to get the sweeping, dramatic shots they wanted relatively easily.

“Justin didn’t want it to feel like a classic

MAKING A SCENE MACBETH 19

MICHAEL FASSBENDER as Macbeth

MAKING A SCENE MACBETH 20

British period film, he wanted it to have the feel of a Western, so by using big expansive locations we were able to create that sense of foreboding,” says Strange, who was brought in to work on Macbeth having previously scouted locations for Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin (2013), which also shot in Scotland. “It’s my favourite place to work in the UK, you get a majesty and scale that you don’t get anywhere else,” he says.

But with shooting taking place in February 2014, the cast and crew had to battle against some harsh conditions, as Strange explains: “It was quite a rough winter, very cold, we had horizontal rain and strong winds at times, and we were shooting outside pretty much the whole time. Our Australian director had never seen anything like it.”

While the weather may have helped to add to the film’s bleak and ominous look, London- and Glasgow-based specialeffects company Artem was brought on board to create Shakespeare’s “fog and filthy air”. “Huge swathes of the landscape had to be covered in a nice even layer of

mist. So we were pumping it through fans and black piping to spread it out upwind so it ends up coming across frame in the right way,” says Artem’s CEO Mike Kelt.

As well as shooting some scenes on Hadrian’s Wall and on Hankley Common in Surrey (a rare piece of heathland with uninterrupted views near London), the almost 200-strong crew found itself at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland, which was used as the exterior of Dunsinane Castle. It has rarely been used in feature films, but Strange says it proved to be the perfect location. “It’s hard to find 11th-century buildings that are not in ruins, but Bamburgh is very intact as castles go.

Plus it has a stunning position, right on the beach, with sand dunes rising up, that makes it incredibly photogenic.”

Ely Cathedral, near Cambridge in England, was used to recreate the interiors of Dunsinane Castle. The key was finding somewhere that was from the Norman period, with Romanesque arches that didn’t look obviously restored. “Ely has a real sense of scale like very few other cathedrals in the UK of that period,”

Strange says of the building, which has been used in a number of other period films including The King’s Speech (2010) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008).

One of the film’s pivotal scenes – the banquet during which Macbeth has ghostly visions after he has murdered Duncan and taken the throne – was shot in the cathedral’s Lady Chapel, which was turned into a banqueting hall. “It’s a big tourist attraction, they have morning song and evensong every day and they have to keep running. So it’s a big process of timing and scheduling to make sure they are happy. It is the most amazing location to work with, so accommodating and friendly,” Strange says.

Australian director Kurzel — whose gritty feature debut Snowtown played in Cannes Critics Week in 2011 where it got a special mention — may not seem like the most obvious choice of director to bring Shakespeare’s iconic story about an ambitious warrior in 11th-century Scotland to the big screen. But for producer Iain Canning, who added the project to his company See-Saw’s slate four years ago,

MAKING A SCENE MACBETH 21

MARION COTILLARD as Lady Macbeth with Michael Fassbender as Macbeth

Kurzel was always an exciting proposition.

“In Snowtown, the way the characters interact with their environment and the landscape is incredibly important. The same can be said for Macbeth,” says Canning who, together with his producing partner at See-Saw, Emile Sherman, won an Oscar for The King’s Speech. He describes Kurzel’s version of Macbeth as a “fresh take, a very muscular, visceral interpretation that will attract those who would normally say they don’t want to see Shakespeare”.

The cast includes Paddy Considine,

Rain on location for Eagle of the Ninth

David Thewlis, Sean Harris and Jack Reynor. Cast members adopted Scottish accents for their roles, with the exception of Cotillard as Lady Macbeth. “Her character has a disconnected quality in the play. She is singular in her drive. So we thought it would work well if she was from somewhere else,” says Canning, whose mother and grandparents are Scottish.

Financed by StudioCanal and Film4, the production also received funding from Creative Scotland on the back of the Scottish leg of the shoot. StudioCanal is handling international sales as well as

distributing in the UK, France and Germany; the Weinstein Company has picked up US rights.

For StudioCanal UK’s CEO Danny Perkins, it was the “perfect mix of talent and material” that attracted him to the project: “Shakespeare’s plays have endured for hundreds of years and that’s because they are such great stories. When you put that material in the hands of a distinctive filmmaker like Justin Kurzel with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as the leads, you’ve got a powerful piece of cinema.”

Mist on location for Macbeth

FILM IN SCOTLAND FOR THE PERFECT LOCATION

www.creativescotlandlocations.com E locations@creativescotland.com T +44 (0) 141 302 1723/35

The River Croe, Ardgartan, Argyll Forest Park.

Photo: Keith Fergus/Scottish Viewpoint.

FEATURE INCENTIVES

FE AT U R E

PRODUCTION HITS ALL-TIME HIGH With some 36 international films and 87 major TV series shooting in the UK in just one year, it’s clear that Tax Reliefs on offer are working. Clive Bull reports

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T’S AN extraordinary time for film and television production in the UK. Production levels are at a new high. Studios are expanding. and great British talent has triumphed, with 40 UK Oscar nominations for the 87th Academy Awards.

According to the British Film Institute’s (BFI) research and statistics unit a record £1.47bn was spent on feature-film production in the UK in 2014, of which 84% was inward investment. Add that to the total £615m spend on high-end television production, 46% of which was inward investment, and you have the best-ever set of results in terms of inward investment. By any definition that indicates a huge volume of interest in making films in the UK. The talent, the infrastructure, the crews, the visual effects and the studios are all part of the attraction. But a critical component as well are the UK’s Creative Sector Tax Reliefs. “It’s an incredibly important anchor. It gives you a place at the table,” Adrian Wootton, chief executive of the British Film Commission (BFC) and Film London, says. The BFC, along with industry partners, has worked hard with the UK Government to produce a sensibly structured scheme that is intelligible to filmmakers around the world. “It’s pretty robust in terms of its transparency,” Wootton says, “and doesn’t require ‘middlemen’ to be involved in it and make it opaque.” That determination to be easily

The BFI

“Spending on high-end television in the UK was 87% higher in the first year of tax relief than the preceding year”

understood and simple to use has been reflected in the efforts of agencies like the BFC, Creative England, Creative Scotland, Film London, Northern Ireland Screen and Wales Screen which have been doing a lot of work on the ground with producers to make things clear, effective and cut red tape and bureaucracy. “Tax breaks, alongside the consistent input of big Hollywood movies, have created a climate of stability for investment,” Wootton says.

Major international productions recently drawn to the UK have included Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), In The Heart Of The Sea (2015) and Tarzan (2016), Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) and of course the new James Bond film Spectre (2015). And the UK Film Tax Relief is a key piece of the jigsaw in attracting such large-scale productions. “The Star Wars franchise is here because of the skills, the Tax Relief, the studio facilities, and the visual effects facilities,” Wootton says. Fresh from the big hit Paddington (2014), and the space epic Gravity (2013), Harry Potter producer David Heyman (Heyday Films) is working with J K Rowling and Warner Bros. on FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem(2016)—another sign of the continuous flow of inward investment.

In the 2015 budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced his intention to increase the value of the UK Film Tax Relief to 25% for films of all budget levels, subject to State Aid approval.

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Wales offers diverse locations, experienced crew, excellent facilities and flexible finance for production.

Little wonder that the BBC has designated Cardiff as its centre of excellence for TV drama (home to Doctor Who) and Pinewood Studios have opened their only UK studio outside of London here.

Contact Wales Screen to discuss all your production requirements

wales.screen@wales.gsi.gov.uk www.walesscreen.com

FEATURE INCENTIVES 25

AIDAN TURNER stars as Ross Poldark in Poldark, a Mammoth Screen production for BBC One

The requirement for the minimum UK expenditure is also reduced to 10% (from 25%) in order to make the UK a more attractive partner for minority co-productions and also to maximise access to the UK’s industry-leading post and VFX houses, even when storylines require shooting overseas. For example Warner Bros.’ upcoming sci-fi epic Geostorm (2016) which, although shooting entirely overseas, will still be carrying out its VFX in the UK. Some 36 major international films shooting in one year is an indication of how popular and well established the UK Film Tax Relief has become. But we now have the first full-year figures for the UK HighEnd TV Tax Relief introduced in 2013 with 87 major productions contributing to total high-end television production spend of £615m.

Major international titles included 24: Live Another Day and the fifth season of HBO’s massive global hit Game Of Thrones.

Downton Abbey, Wolf Hall, Poldark and Granchester were also among the major dramas to benefit, along with the 2015 feature-length pilot The Bastard Executioner (Fox21/Imagine/FX) which is shooting in Wales. Indeed one of the effects of the introduction of the high-end television extension of the incentive scheme has been further outreach into different parts of the UK. “Whereas film has tended to be quite heavily London and south east, what’s fantastic about the television tax credit is that it is encouraging television companies to go to those other

Alison Small

“Interest is coming from everywhere, UK feature films, UK TV drama, international feature films, international TV drama — it’s everything”

regional hubs, in the nations and regions, and I think that’s going to further continue,” Wootton says. “London and the south east is a massively important hub, but we’re growing Belfast, we’re growing Bristol, we’re growing Cardiff, we’re growing Manchester, and Glasgow and Edinburgh are already well-known for hosting major drama production and have every intention to build on that success.”

One big boost for Scotland was the decision

by US cable network Starz and Sony Pictures Television to film Outlander in the country. The drama is based on the series of novels by Diana Gabaldon, which tell the story of a time-traveling heroine. The deal was a triumph for Creative Scotland and when the decision was announced UK Chancellor George Osborne said he had no doubt that the UK High-End TV Tax Relief was influential, when put together with Scotland’s package of oustanding locations and expert crews.

In Bristol, ABC Studios filmed the Disney series Galavant at The Bottle Yard. It’s a record-breaking deal for the area and, along with Da Vinci’s Demons in Swansea and Game Of Thrones continuing in Belfast, is a further indication of the level of international production now supported by the new incentive.

These example of major players shooting outside London and the south east, is encouraging to other producers wanting new and unique locations that haven’t been seen before.

T S E B E H T N D O N I I T H C U BE D O R P K U IN

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LOCA PRODUCTI POST UNTS ACCO VFX

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Adrian Wootton

FEATURE INCENTIVES

“We’ve seen a huge increase in inquiries for production,” Kaye Elliott, head of production services, Creative England says. “We’re working really hard to encourage feature films and high-end television to look at the regions of England as well. Production companies are risk-averse — and understandably so when there’s a lot of money at stake — so they can be nervous about shooting in an area they think is under-filmed or not filmed. Showing how many projects have gone before is absolutely essential in winning over that trust level and bringing projects further out in to the whole of the UK.” Another means by which the BFC encourages overseas producers to shoot in all regions of the UK is the organisation of Familiarisation Trips, which introduce executives to the UK’s production industry. The Trips are tailored to the specific sector in question, whether it’s film, high-end television, VFX or post.

An industry commissioned independent report published by the BFI, BFC and other partners has concluded that spending on high-end television in the UK was 87% higher in the first 12 months of the UK High-end Tax Relief (April 2013-March 2014) than the preceding financial year. The report — The Economic Contribution of the UK’s Film, High-end TV, Video Games and Animation Programme Sectors — is updated every two years, and for the first time looks at the appeal of the incentive scheme in these newly supported sectors.

The Production Guild represents UK film and TV production management professionals. Chief executive Alison Small says there’s been a huge jump in interest in filming in the UK. “We run an availability service for our members and we get calls all the time from productions and we’re seeing those increase day by day,” she says.

“I suppose the biggest impact has been the television Tax Relief. And the interest is coming from everywhere. UK feature films, UK TV drama, international feature films, international TV drama — it’s everything.”

So while the number of both international and home-grown projects is increasing rapidly, how is the industry able to cope with demand? To make sure that the expert talent is available, training is another vital part of the equation. “I think we’ve invested more money in skills training than any other country in the world,” Wootton says. The skills training is facilitated by Creative Skillset, the National Film and Television School, and a whole range of other training providers. “That is training money that’s not just come from Government.

The Government has put money there but the industry has had to match it, and the industry has matched it,” Wootton adds. The success of the Film Training Levy has now been followed by the TV Training Levy. The television industry contributes to Creative Skillset’s Skills Investment Funds via the Skills Levy. It applies to high-end television dramas that have benefited from the Tax Relief scheme.

The funds collected are used directly to support the next generation of high-end TV talent. “The fact that last year over £16m went into training is a phenomenal figure because with the demand that’s being created obviously we need more highly-trained crews — and we need those crews also in different parts of the UK,” Wootton says.

And the training is aimed not just at new entrants, but continuing professional development as well. “We are flat-out, busy delivering training right now,” Small says. “With increasing numbers of production people being taken up into higher levels, we need to make sure people have what they need in order to be able to move up with their careers.”

SPOTLIGHT ON REGIONAL FUNDS IN ADDITION to the film and television Tax Reliefs, the UK boasts generous national and regional filming incentives.

For example, Yorkshire operates a £15m Yorkshire Content Fund (YCF) which is the largest regional investment fund for production in the UK. With backing from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), it is open to all content producers working in film, television, games and digital projects either based in Yorkshire, or looking to establish a base in the region. The public-private partnership fund aims to stimulate local production levels by backing projects where all or most of the filming takes place in Yorkshire. Private investment matches the ERDF money on a project-by-project basis, and so far Screen Yorkshire has put £10m into more than 20 projects. The feature film Dad’s Army (2016) based on the classic Seventies British TV comedy was initially looking for Screen Yorkshire investment with the aim of filming in the region for a few weeks only. “The Yorkshire location scout Leon Seth visited the coast and soon found Bridlington Old Town, a wonderful time-warp of a place clustered around one old street, which the Dad’s Army team fell in love with for Walmington-On-Sea [the fictional English town where the film is based],” Richard Knight, head of production at Screen Yorkshire, says. “With the nearby white cliffs of Flamborough Head making an excellent match for the south coast of England, it quickly became apparent that the entire shoot could be accommodated in Yorkshire, delivering considerable savings of time and cost.” The fund has also supported Catch Me Daddy (2014), ’71 (2014), X + Y (2014), and Bill (2015), along with TV dramas Peaky Blinders, Jamaica Inn and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

• Further information on the UK’s national and regional filming incentives can be found at www.britishfilmcommission.org.uk.

“I think we’ve invested more money in skills training than any other country in the world”

The incentives and the expertise form part of the picture; and then there’s the UK’s stunning landscapes. Increasing in number due to the UK High-End TV Tax Relief, international television dramas are showcasing the vast range of locations within the UK and are boosting the country’s economy not just in terms of the production industry but also tourism. Game Of Thrones has transformed the image of Northern Ireland which is now world-famous for the beautiful settings, the castles and the cliffs featured in spectacular historical sequences. Likewise, they call it the Broadchurch factor. The global success of the ITV drama has brought a 40% increase in tourism to the Dorset town where the series is shot, as visitors seek out those stretches of magnificent coastline. “The Government has recognised the value of what film and television offers to the UK,” Wootton says. “It really showcases our richness, our culture, our architecture and our amazing landscapes. And it really is having a definite effect on the amount of people coming to this country and wanting to visit those places.”

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SHOWCASE LOCATION IN PICTURES

IN PICTURES LOCATION UK HAS TEAMED UP WITH SCREEN AGENCIES, FILM AND TOURIST OFFICES, LOCATION SCOUTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS TO BRING YOU IMAGES OF STUNNING LOCATIONS AROUND THE UK. SOME ARE WELL USED BY FILM CREWS, OTHERS ARE STILL TO BE MADE FAMOUS ON THE BIG OR SMALL SCREEN

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SHOWCASE

SCRABO TOWER NEAR NEWTOWNARDS, COUNTY DOWN Scrabo Tower is found west of the town of Newtownards in County Down, Northern Ireland. The extraordinary building is visible from miles around and was built on a volcanic plug above the town in 1857 as a memorial to Charles Stewart, third Marquess of Londonderry, who was one of the Duke of Wellington’s generals during the Napoleonic Wars. The tower is one of Northern Ireland’s best-known landmarks and the views from the top are spectacular. Recent productions include Dracula Untold (2014).

(Photo, courtesy Tourism NI)

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CROMER PIER NORFOLK The Victorian seaside town of Cromer boasts wide beaches and a period lighthouse, and is in the English eastern county of Norfolk. The town has good transport links to the county town of Norwich and is close to National Trust properties at Blickling Hall and Felbrigg Hall. Recent productions include Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013) and In Love With Alma Cogan (2011).

(Photo, courtesy VisitEngland, Iain Lewis )

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SOUTH STACK LIGHTHOUSE ANGLESEY, NORTH WALES The South Stack Lighthouse, designed by Daniel Alexander and completed in 1809, is situated on a rock off Holy Island (historically Holyhead Island), a small island to the west of the larger Isle of Anglesey near the north-west tip of Wales.

The lighthouse is connected to Holy Island by a footbridge which is reached on the landward approach by descending 400 steps cut into the cliff face. Recent productions include Take Down (2015).

(Photo, courtesy Visit Wales 2014)

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NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM LONDON The Natural History Museum’s Hintze Hall boasts architectural features including a striking Romanesque entrance, a grand staircase, an intricate hand-painted ceiling and soaring arches.

Also on the musuem site is the Darwin Centre which offers a cleaner, more contemporary blank canvas for filming. A rear and front car park provide excellent, easy-access loading-bay facilities for production teams and vehicles. Recent productions include Paddington (2014) and Jupiter Ascending (2015).

(Photo, courtesy The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London )

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DALE STREET NORTHERN QUARTER, MANCHESTER Manchester’s Northern Quarter is well-known for its ability to double for Brooklyn in New York. Also the Northern Quarter’s grid layout makes implementing road closures a relatively easy process. It’s the perfect street environment to dress as period US or London. Recent productions include Sherlock Holmes (2009), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and Genius (2015).

(Photo, courtesy Carl Hodgson )

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CORN DU FROM PEN Y FAN BRECON BEACONS NATIONAL PARK, MID-WALES With mountains and moorland, standing stones and castles, lively waterfalls and vibrant communities, the Brecon Beacons National Park provides a stunning backdrop to this mountain, Corn Du. In total the park covers approximately 520 square miles of South and Mid-Wales, and includes parts of the counties of Powys, Carmarthenshire, Monmouthshire; the Rhondda Valley and the town of Merthyr Tydfil. Recent productions include TV series The Hollow Crown (2012-) and Tarzan (2016).

(Photo, courtesy Visit Wales 2014)

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THE SSE HYDRO GLASGOW The SSE Hydro is the latest futuristic addition to the skyline of the River Clyde in Glasgow, Scotland. This Foster + Partnersdesigned 13,000-seater arena features a translucent facade that glows in a variety of colours at night. Recent productions in Glasgow include Cloud Atlas (2012), World War Z (2013), Fast & Furious 6 (2013) and TV series Outlander (2014-).

(Photo, courtesy Scottish Viewpoint )

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RYE EAST SUSSEX Rye is a river location with a picturesque harbour and several beaches approximately two miles from the open sea and the south coast of England. Historic buildings in the town include a castle and a monastery, all within two hours from London. Recent productions include TV mini-series Mapp & Lucia (2014) and The Monuments Men (2014).

(Photo, courtesy VisitEngland, Alex Hare )

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SHOWCASE LOCATION IN PICTURES

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CAERPHILLY CASTLE SOUTH EAST WALES Caerphilly Castle, with its vast grounds, was built as a fortress of walls within walls. Surrounded by a series of moats and islands it has been a popular filming location over the years and was used to stand in for 17th-century London in the 1995 feature film Restoration. Recent productions include TV series Doctor Who (2005-), Young Dracula (2006-2012) and Merlin (2008-2012).

(Photo, courtesy Visit Wales 2014)

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MUSSENDEN TEMPLE, DOWNHILL DEMESNE, COUNTY DERRY-LONDONDERRY Mussenden temple was built in 1785, inspired by the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, near Rome. Located in the beautiful surroundings of ruined mansion Downhill Demesne, it perches on a 120-ft clifftop above the Atlantic Ocean on the north-west coast of Northern Ireland with spectacular views over the Downhill Strand beach towards Magilligan Point and, to the east, Castlerock Beach toward the towns of Portstewart, Portrush and the headland at Fair Head. Recent productions include TV series Game Of Thrones (2011-).

(Photo, courtesy Tourism NI)

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ST. PETER’S SEMINARY CARDROSS St. Peter’s Seminary near Cardross, Scotland, is a 1960s Modernist disused Catholic seminary building about to undergo partial restoration and stabilisation. It has been described by the international architecture conservation organisation DoCoMoMo as a “building of world significance”. Listed Category A, it has the highest level of protection for a building of “special architectural or historic interest”.

The site was recently handed over to artist Angus Farquhar, with the intention that part of it will become an arts venue. The building was the subject of the 1972 documentary Space And Light.

(Photo, courtesy NVA)

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ROYAL VICTORIA DOCK LONDON The Royal Victoria Dock offers many filming locations, from gritty, industrial areas to gleaming open spaces, with the spectacular backdrop of the iconic London skyline, including Canary Wharf and The O2 arena. Recent productions include Sherlock Holmes (2009) and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015).

(Photo, courtesy Sunborn London)

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MOURNE MOUNTAINS COUNTY DOWN The Mourne Mountains, a granite mountain range in County Down in the south-east of Northern Ireland, includes the highest mountains in Northern Ireland and the province of Ulster.

The highest of these is Slieve Donard at 850 metres (2,790 ft).

Songwriter Percy French wrote of the area as the place ‘where the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea’. This stunning location has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Recent productions include TV series Game Of Thrones (2011-) and Your Highness (2011).

(Photo, courtesy Tourism NI)

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LOCH SCAVAIG FROM ELGOL ISLE OF SKYE, SCOTLAND Skye is the largest island in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. Thanks to a road bridge to the Scottish mainland its breathtaking scenery is easy to reach. This view, taken from the village of Elgol, shows the Cuillin mountains across the clear waters of Loch Scavaig. Recent productions include Prometheus (2012), Snow White And The Huntsman (2012) and 47 Ronin (2013).

(Photo, courtesy Scottish Viewpoint )

SHOWCASE LOCATION IN PICTURES

MORE LONDON LONDON More London is a 13-acre business estate situated on the south side of the Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge.

Occupiers include the Greater London Authority in the landmark City Hall. Views are available across Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the Gherkin, City Hall, the Riverside Walk and other landmarks. Recent productions include TV series Spooks (2002-2011).

(Photo, courtesy Jon Cefai)

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MAKING A SCENE AVENGERS MAKING A SCENE

The return of Earth’s mightiest heroes Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Age Of Ultron is one of a number of major action movies to shoot recently in the UK. One of the members of the crew responsible for putting the superheroes up onto the big screen describes some of his favourite scenes

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VENGERS: Age Of Ultron is the sequel to 2012’s The Avengers.

Ultron’s ultimate mission is the destruction of humankind and Earth’s mightiest heroes, including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye, join forces to stop him.

And a lot of that plot unravels in the UK. Bond- or Bourne-style, the film traveled to many parts of the world — including Seoul in South Korea, the Aosta Valley in Italy, Johannesburg in South Africa and Chittagong in Bangladesh. But its base was Shepperton Studios, west of London, from where it also visited a number of locations around the UK. One of which was Bourne Woods, in the county of Surrey, just under two hours south of London. A popular location, the woods can be seen in many major movies including Gladiator (2000), Children Of Men (2006), The Golden Compass (2007), Robin Hood (2010) and War Horse (2011).

In Avengers: Age Of Ultron Bourne Woods was turned into a battle scene, for which the crew installed a fake military bunker along with two 10-metre-high watchtowers, and a number of special effects machines which created wind and smoke. Meanwhile the Government-run

Forestry Commission, which owns most of the land, warned residents of a series of loud explosions.

With no snowfall forecast to fit in with the production schedule, they also sprayed an area of the woods with artificial snow to create a winter scene — the material was wood-based and biodegradable.

For the film’s first assistant-director, Jamie Christopher, a stand-out memory of the production was when all the Avengers first appeared together. “It sent shivers down my spine,” he says. “All of them were on the set at the same time and having been a fan from such a young age, to stand on a set with so many childhood heroes, even though they were just characters, it was a massive thrill.”

The experience of filming at the now disused Hendon Police Training Centre in north-west London was also special for Christopher. “The location manager, Jamie Lengyel, found the site. We turned it into a European city and it was fantastic,” he says.

“It was such a great playground for us and Charles Wood, the production designer, did the most amazing job of turning it into such a realistic place.”

Location manager Charlotte Wright said they may not have been able to achieve what they achieved anywhere else.

MARVEL’S AVENGERS: Age Of Ultron. Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, on the Hendon set . © Marvel 2015

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“Everyday on set our special-effects team would come up to us and ask if they could blow yet another thing up. I will never forget watching the art director instructing large bulldozers to dump rubble over the set decorators’ lovely set dressing that had been so painstakingly put together. The attention to detail was amazing.”

Christopher adds: “The people there let us do pretty much what we needed to do.

We put a lot of practical special effects in the building — and when it finished, after about three weeks, Jamie Lengyel sent me a photograph of the clean-up. You’d never have known we had been there.”

Christopher’s career has followed many of the recent action- and VFX-heavy blockbusters shot in the UK, including The Mummy Returns (2001), The Da Vinci Code (2006), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Thor: The Dark World (2013); Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014) and the entire Harry Potter series (2001-11).

And “putting a huge sequence together” is always the high point of a movie for him.

“The explosions, the extras, the stunts, the choreography, it’s so intense that when you finally start doing it there is a great sense of achievement.” He adds: “Enthusiasm is such an important element in a film crew.

You always get that in the US, and you get it here too. The industry here, I think, is based on enthusiasm. They love what they do, and they put 100% into it, over and over again. I get so used to working with consistent crews; Harry Potter was 10 years and pretty much the same crew. You understand each other; it feels like you know what everyone can do, what everyone needs, and what everyone wants — and that’s half the battle.”

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FE AT U R E

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COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU As the number of films and TV series shooting in the UK grows, so does the production infrastructure.

And as Clive Bull reports, this is happening in and around cities all over the country

LONDON

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HIS is a record-breaking period for London, with so many productions not only filming there, but featuring the capital itself. Its instantly recognisable locations and world-class crew have attracted numerous top titles, including Paddington (2014), Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb (2014) and the television hit 24: Live Another Day. Oscar-winners The Theory Of Everything (2014) and The Imitation Game (2014) both made use of the capital’s wide range of landmark locations. And of course the latest James Bond film, Spectre (2015), showcases some of London’s great assets. But while the capital continues its starring role in an array of productions, it’s a similar picture right across the UK. Business is booming for other key cities, each with their own heritage locations and local expertise.

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BBC TV DRAMA Peaky Blinders, which has Liverpool doubling for Birmingham

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BRISTOL

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REATIVE England, the screen agency that supports all productions outside of London in England, and works closely with individual film offices, has its head office in Bristol, 120 miles to the west of London. The most populous city in southern England, outside the capital, Bristol has played host to numerous high-profile television dramas in recent times. The latest Sherlock TV special starring Benedict Cumberbatch is based at Bristol’s Bottle Yard Studios and has filmed on location across the city. Landmarks include the beautiful Georgian green space Queen Square, the city’s Grade-II listed concert venue Colston Hall, the extraordinary 45-acre Victorian Arnos Vale Cemetery, and the 860-acre Ashton Court Mansion and estate. The 17th-century King Street in the historic centre of Bristol was closed for the shoot and filled with 100 extras as it doubled for Victorian London. The Bristol Film Office also sourced locations — notably Bristol Cathedral and the harbour walls — for the historical drama Wolf Hall (Playground Entertainment for Masterpiece and PBS), based on the Hilary Mantel novels about the rise of Thomas Cromwell. And the Disney series Galavant (ABC) filmed a scene on board The Matthew Of Bristol, a replica of the English ship that discovered North America in 1497, and is moored at Redcliffe Wharf. A green screen and techno crane were brought in for the occasion.

Bristol’s proximity to London has always been a big draw

for visiting productions, but more recently having Wales as a near neighbour has paid dividends. “We’re surrounded by coastal and rural counties, we have the Cotswolds within easy reach and a whole variety of urban and residential locations within the city, so we can meet most location requirements,” film officer Natalie Moore says. The Redcliffe area is one of the most popular choices for location managers — with the unique Redcliffe Caves a particular favourite. A replica 17th-century village was built on Redcliffe Wharf for the C4 series New Worlds, and Doctor Who shot its Night Terrors episode at the local Redcliffe Housing Estate.

For the TV drama version of J K Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy (HBO) the production team filmed in Bristol in July 2014.

The Film Office secured locations at Silbury Road and the Flax Bourton Public Mortuary. The production wanted to use a field behind the house that was being filmed, which provided some challenges in terms of liaison. The field was part of a planning proposal for a new football stadium and a new transport route.

“Our job was to ensure that the production was able to open up conversations with the football club, council transport, conservation, street-lighting and highways officers, councillors, police and residents to secure the location,” Moore says. “We were successful in getting all parties on board.”

Creative England has launched, with the British Film Institute’s NET.WORK, a Bristol Talent Module to give emerging filmmakers the skills and support they need to make their first feature. Key industry talent is taking part in a series of talks, panels and case studies, at the Watershed in Bristol until the end of

The Bradford Film Office is based in the world’s first UNESCO City of Film.

We provide a FREE service, which will allow you to find the perfect locations, assistance with permissions, crew and how to approach parking and traffic control.

Having close connections with the local council, businesses and property owners we can guarantee to support all your needs to ensure productions run smoothly.

We help you MAKE it. www.bradfordfilmoffice.com

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2015. NET.WORK sees the BFI work with national partners, Creative England, Creative Scotland, Northern Ireland Screen and Wales Screen to create a network of skills development teams across the UK.

CARDIFF

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LITTLE further west is Cardiff, the capital of Wales, and a city that has become a setting for a host of mainstream television dramas, including British series Sherlock, Doctor Who, Torchwood and Gavin And Stacey. Cardiff is popular with location managers because of its versatility and compactness, often doubling for New York, London and a range of other European capitals. It’s also the backdrop for the long-running medical drama Casualty (BBC), with around 48 weeks of filming a year. Cardiff became Eighties London for the Robert De Niro film Killer Elite (2011) which saw Jason Statham demonstrate his motorcycling skills in Windsor Place in the city centre. Other features to visit Cardiff include Skellig: The Owl Man (2009), Abraham’s Point (2008), Human Traffic (1999) and the Wesley Snipes movie The Contractor (2007). The area has been given another boost with the introduction of Pinewood Studio Wales in Cardiff, which is set to host Sons Of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter’s big-budget American period drama The Bastard Executioner (FX Productions, Fox 21 and Imagine Television). Allison Dowzell of Wales Screen, the national film commission, says: “The city’s close proximity and excellent road links to mountains, countryside and coastline offers a wide range of world-class locations within easy reach.”

The Cardiff Film Unit is the first of its kind in any local authority in Wales and works with a variety of local, national and international line producers and location managers to provide everything from initial location and crewing advice to recces and logistical support.

Working closely with Wales Screen, the film office assists with crew and equipment hire, unit bases and parking dispensations, office and studio space, and accommodation and transport.

Film Unit manager Ali Yassine says his 20 years experience in film and television, from a runner to a producer and director, give him a valuable insight into what production companies need. “I often get scripts and location breakdowns sent to me as well as logistical requirements and get called for advice on everything from the mundane to the spectacular,” Yassine says. “I’ve haggled with local suppliers to get the best available price for everything from office space to dry cleaning, and try to see everything as a challenge. If I can’t make it happen, it generally means that every avenue has been exhausted.”

LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER

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OVING NORTH, and Liverpool and Manchester form part of a corridor of great northern English cities that also have a key role in the UK’s film and television upsurge.

“Manchester is a really important city for us,” Kaye Elliott, Creative England’s head of production services says. “So much content is made there, it’s got fantastic locations and it’s able to do a lot of periods. The Town Hall is used all the time as it’s an amazing piece of gothic architecture, both internally and externally.” Manchester Town Hall became the Houses of Parliament for scenes in The Iron Lady (2011) with Meryl Streep. It also doubled for Westminster in the movie Sherlock Holmes (2009). “Manchester Town Hall is quite an easy choice to double for the Houses of Parliament,” Mally Chung, a location manager who worked on the film, says. “With its vaulted ceilings and spiral stone staircases — not forgetting the cobbled courtyard — it would be quite a challenge to build a studio set to match its scale and grandeur. There’s some fantastic architecture in Manchester’s northern quarter offering scope for Victorian doubles, making it a must-see filming location for shooting period drama.” Recent major movies shot on location in the city include a new blockbuster version of the Mary Shelley gothic tale Victor Frankenstein (2015), which sees the city’s cobbled Albert Square as a backdrop for Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy.

Manchester became 1900s New York for Genius (2015), which places Jude Law and Colin Firth in the northern quarter of the city, with the area given a makeover, complete with fake shop fronts and retro advertising hoardings. A Monster Calls (2016) and TV crime drama Ripper Street have also shot in the city and surrounding area.

“The proximity between Manchester and Liverpool is a great draw,” Elliott says. Genius, for example, shot in both cities, as did TV drama Peaky Blinders (BBC) which had Liverpool doubling for Birmingham. The city’s Rodney Street, Great Howard Street, Dale Street, Stanley Park, and Stanley Docks were all used. Liverpool hosted two major productions within a short period with Fast And Furious 6 (2013) shooting in the streets and Birkenhead Tunnel, and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) also in action in the city centre.

“Liverpool’s filming credentials go from strength to strength, with this being one of our busiest times in our 25-year history,” Lynn Saunders, Liverpool Film Office manager, says. “There is always filming in the city, and there is a real buzz when big productions come to town as Liverpool is transformed into a mini-Hollywood.”

360˚ 18th century architecture, cobbled streets, medieval wynds and a city ready to welcome filmmakers, make Edinburgh the first choice for on-location period filming.

Film Commission for Edinburgh, East Lothian and Scottish Borders

www.filmedinburgh.org

info@filmedinburgh.org

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LEEDS AND BRADFORD

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HE WIDE range of cities across Yorkshire, together with their proximity to scenic countryside, has made this a boom period for the region, facilitated by Creative England’s Yorkshire office and other agencies including Screen Yorkshire. “Each of these cities provides a good variety of locations, from edgier housing estates, light and heavy industry through to elegant town halls, mansions and top-end glass and steel offices,” says Richard Knight, head of production at Screen Yorkshire. “The thing that most often surprises producers seeing Yorkshire for the first time is the sheer variety of the locations. The high volume of recent filming has educated a lot of council staff about the world of film too. They’re getting really switched on to meeting the needs of a shoot.”

Managed by Screen Yorkshire, the Yorkshire Content Fund has been instrumental in bringing a number of major productions to numerous cities in Yorkshire, including the US-UK co-production Hunter’s Prayer (2015) starring Sam Worthington, in which it invested part of the $25m production budget. The first production to benefit from investment through the Yorkshire Content Fund was BBC2’s drama series Peaky Blinders. The series used production offices and studio space at Studio 81 in Leeds as well as a number of locations in and around Leeds and other Yorkshire cities.

Creative England’s digital & marketing manager Andy Jones says: “With Leeds just over two hours from London by train [Yorkshire] boasts excellent transport links including Leeds Bradford international airport. Yorkshire has proved to be a popular region for filming over the past few years, and Creative England offers a free film office service to productions wanting to shoot here and we work with all Yorkshire local authorities in a film-friendly partnership to ensure productions are fast-tracked when it comes to securing vital filming permissions. Recent projects we have worked on include Mr Turner (2014), Testament Of Youth (2014) and Dad’s Army (2016); and television series Happy Valley and Last Tango In Halifax.”

In the foothills of the Pennines mountain range is the city of Bradford which recently gained UNESCO status as the world’s first City of Film. Bradford has a rich film heritage with some of the pioneers of cinema technology linked to the city, a history reflected in the National Media Museum, which is in the city.

The Victorian courtroom in Bradford City Hall is used almost exclusively as a film set and has hosted UK television soaps Coro-

nation Street and Emmerdale. “This area has been a real magnet for film and TV production and has doubled as London and Berlin,” UNESCO City of Film director David Wilson says.

The adaptation of Vera Brittain’s World War One story Testament Of Youth (2014) shot in the streets of Bradford, also the Bollywood film Welcome To Karachi (2015) shot extensively in the Bradford Bazaar and other locations including the council chamber in Bradford City Hall. The Bradford Film Office is currently supporting a number of productions including BBC drama An Inspector Calls, and Hollywood came to town again when Drew Barrymore arrived for comedy drama Miss You Already (2015).

The city of Sheffield provided the location for X + Y (2014), and the thriller ’71 (2014) was filmed at multiple locations in Sheffield, including the landmark Park Hill Flats. ’71 also filmed in Leeds, making use of the period housing in Hyde Park and Beeston to double for Belfast. It’s been a busy period for the Yorkshire city of Hull as well. A Royal Night Out (2015), the reimagining of VE Day in 1945, transforms Hull into 1940s London. Alfred Gelder Street is made over to become London’s Piccadilly, and Hull City Hall stands in for the Ritz Hotel.

GLASGOW

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REATIVE Scotland is the first point of contact for filming in Scotland, working closely with the film offices there — including Glasgow, which is now very experienced at hosting major productions, including recent blockbusters World War Z (2013), Cloud Atlas (2012) and Fast And Furious 6 (2013).

World War Z required closing the entire city centre for two weeks as it doubled for Philadelphia in the action-packed opening sequence of the film. Only a few weeks later Glasgow also stepped in for San Francisco in the sci-fi drama Cloud Atlas which once again required major co-operation with city authorities. Key roads were closed and street furniture removed as the city was dressed with American signage and traffic lights. Part of Glasgow’s appeal is the layout of the road system, with the wide streets not dissimilar to many US cities.

And Glasgow also became London for Fast And Furious 6. Again the unusual nature of the wide streets was part of the attraction, and the Glasgow Film Office was able to co-ordinate road closures for the complex vehicle stunts featured in the action movie. “The role of a film commission is all about facilitation. We have to meet the needs of the production but also appreciate how much of an impact filming can have on everyday activity in the city,” Glasgow film commissioner Jennifer Reynolds says.

www.glasgowfilm.com

Driven by locations

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It’s been a hectic period. After a succession of major films shot in the city, Glasgow then went on last year to host the Commonwealth Games and with this came a number of issues regarding traffic management, restrictions around venues and priority routes. At the same time several television productions were filming in the city, with their own demands on valuable street parking. “We made every effort to keep filmmakers aware of the increased pressure on the roads network and found that, by giving as much advance notice as possible, the council’s roads section could accommodate nearly all filming requests without creating further inconvenience to residents and businesses,” Reynolds says. We’ve built up a great relationship with our colleagues in various council departments and they are keen to assist production as much as they can.” Filth (2013), the film adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s best-selling novel, was partly shot in Glasgow, and starred one of Glasgow’s own, James McAvoy. “My experience shooting in Scotland was excellent,” Filth producer Ken Marshall says.

“Good crew, good people to work with. Very film-friendly and surprisingly versatile for different settings and locations. Glasgow in particular was a great city to film in.”

that honours Sir Walter Scott — turns up frequently in Cloud Atlas when Ben Whishaw as Frobisher climbs the steps every day and sees Sixsmith there for the last time. Edinburgh is the one location in this time-traveling sci-fi epic that is made mention of repeatedly throughout the film, and exists in a recognisable fashion.

Sunshine On Leith (2013), the glorious musical about a pair of soldiers returning home to Edinburgh, takes full advantage of the city’s skylines and streets.

“Our role as the film office for the city region is to create as film-friendly an environment as possible for filmmakers,” Rosie Ellison, film manager at Film Edinburgh says. “We work with the local authorities in south east Scotland and with the local police force to establish quick and straightforward procedures so that we can turn around quickly filming requests for road closures, parking, street dressing or council locations. I’m delighted to say that both the City of Edinburgh Council and East Lothian Council have recently renewed their Filming Charters confirming their welcoming position towards filmmakers.”

BELFAST

EDINBURGH

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IFTY MILES across the country, the Scottish city of Edinburgh plays host to an increasing number of home-grown and international productions. Edinburgh’s stunning medieval architecture and the cobbled streets of Newtown are a perfect backdrop for historical dramas, and part of the reason Film Edinburgh has been able to announce a 53% increase in production spend figures for 2014, totalling £4.6m.

Brodie Pringle, location manager at Creative Scotland says: “With 50 miles between them, Scotland is in the fortunate position of having two major cities, with very different locations.

Glasgow with its grid system and contemporary cityscape and Edinburgh with its Medieval city and Georgian Newtown. We’re focused on growth in Scotland but it’s important to state we’re already in a strong position and have an industry that has been established for decades, championed by a real entrepreneurial independent sector.”

Recent hits that put Edinburgh on the screen internationally include One Day (2011), starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, which featured some stunning Edinburgh sequences taking in the old and new towns and Arthur’s Seat. The hill, said to be named after King Arthur, also famously featured in Chariots Of Fire (1981). The Scott Monument — the Victorian Gothic memorial

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HE HIT HBO series Game Of Thrones, now in its fifth season, chose Northern Ireland as its base, a decision that helped put the region and the city of Belfast very much on the map as a film and television location.

As the capital and largest city in Northern Ireland, Belfast boasts both a city backdrop and a range of striking landscapes on its doorstep. The city’s architecture is predominantly Victorian, but alongside the classic buildings sit some impressive examples of modern architecture. Keith Lemon ¬ The Film (2012) took full advantage of Belfast’s most popular locations, shooting in Linenhall Street, Titanic Drawing Offices, Waterfront Hall and Old Northern Bank on Waring Street. Two high-profile recent shoots here were Gary Shore’s Dracula Untold (2014) and the Ben Wheatley film High-Rise (2015). Also shot in the city were television drama series The Fall (2013), from the BBC, starring Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan, and BBC2 police corruption series Line Of Duty (2014).

Northern Ireland Screen chief executive Richard Williams says the region has “the most compact 5,196 square miles of backlot in the world. Many places may have beautiful scenery and urban landscapes but few have the range of accessible, film-friendly and close-at-hand locations. Here you can be on location on the beach in the morning, in the city in the afternoon, with your weather cover within easy reach back at the studio or build space.”

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MAKING A SCENE WOLF HALL 52

MARK RYLANCE as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall

MAKING A SCENE WOLF HALL

MAKING A SCENE

Telling stories by candlelight Shooting in candlelight, with hand-held cameras, in the actual places where the characters had set foot some 500 years ago, combine to make Wolf Hall a period drama with a difference.

Julian Newby met cast and crew

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O CONFIDENT was BBC Worldwide of the appeal of historical drama series Wolf Hall, that for its international launch it treated over 700 television buyers from around the world to a Tudor-style, Wolf Hall-themed, candlelit banquet in Liverpool Cathedral in February 2015.

The event was more of a celebration than a sales pitch, however, as by the time the long tables had been laid for the hundreds of guests, the series had already sold to a number of territories around the world.

There are numerous factors behind the TV series’ success. Hilary Mantel’s books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies – about the court of King Henry VIII from the perspective of the King’s confidante and political player Thomas Cromwell – won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2009 and 2012 respectively. So a ready-made worldwide audience was in place.

The cast was another selling point. The success of the books and a play on Broadway meant that international names were drawn to the production: Damian Lewis as Henry VIII; leading British stage actor Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell; veteran star of stage and screen Jonathan Pryce as cardinal Wolsey and many more.

The actors were also keen to work with director Peter Kosminsky. “I trusted Peter,” says Pryce — whose acting credits range from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) to Pirates Of The Caribbean (2003/6/7) and a wealth of roles in TV and theatre. “He’s got it all in his head.

He’d absorb the story and the book and then set up a process whereby you do five takes or

so — just do them, and they were mostly between me and Mark (Rylance) — and at the end of those takes he would just come and quietly and say something like, ‘I like that, and have you thought about doing this as well?’ It’s like he’s building on what you’ve already given him. There’s no director’s ego apparent on set.”

Mantel was also happy about Kosminsky’s appointment. “He was a director she had always liked and she was pleased we had chosen someone who wasn’t an obvious choice — rather than a chocolate box period dramatist — someone who, like her, is intensely political,” producer Mark Pybus says.

Comedian, screenwriter, novelist and actor Mark Gatiss, who plays bishop and politician Stephen Gardiner, said Kosminsky’s “very different” approach to period TV drama appealed to him. “It was a great experience,” he says. “It’s the immediacy of hand-held cameras. It doesn’t feel stately. They are real people with our problems but sometimes with more dangerous outcomes. My costume got dirtier and dirtier and they didn’t do anything to it, and there was very little makeup.”

Kosminsky has “touched a nerve and done something different”, Gatiss adds.

“When I heard about the book I thought, ‘Well this story has been told.’ But this is a new take on it because it’s so personal — you don’t meet anyone until Cromwell meets them — Cromwell is a character we have seen in so many adaptations and suddenly you have a very different version.”

Kosminsky’s challenge was to reflect Mantel’s writing style which gets inside the

head of Cromwell. “Although the book is written in the third person, it’s completely seen from Cromwell’s point of view and you have a lot of sense of the interior monologue,” Kosminsky says. “We weren’t using voiceovers or narration so we needed a camera technique that made you feel you were with Cromwell and so we followed him with the hand-held. I felt that would help to understand it was from his point of view.”

And like Mantel’s novels, Kosminsky strove for realism: “What we were trying to do was to make it clear that these people don’t know they’re in history, they’re people like us sitting around in their own present time. They’re not thinking ‘Oh, we’re in the past!’ We wanted to create a feeling of naturalism. It’s certainly true that with all the costumes and sets in much historical drama, there is a tendency to make these things heightened and, you know, feel theatrical. We wanted to do the opposite — make the costumes feel really lived-in, and the locations feel like people were living in there. ‘We’re stood in a room where Henry and Anne actually stood. How would that room have been lit then?’ So it really all flowed from that desire to feel contemporary.”

Wolf Hall was shot entirely on location around the UK — in places of the era and, as Kosminsky says, many where these characters actually trod. Pybus says the shoot was originally planned for Belgium — but a delay of 18 months, down to Rylance’s availability, was enough time for the UK High-end TV Tax Relief to kick in and so the production came back home.

53

DAMIAN LEWIS as King Henry VIII

“Then Peter Kosminsky came on board and he was someone who always filmed on location; that was something key to him and therefore it became key to the production,” Pybus says. “I think that’s rare for this kind of production. You’d normally be filming 40-50% on a stage, which is easier though not necessarily cheaper. But having made that decision, one thing we had to deal with was the fact that there are only so many appropriate Tudor buildings in the UK and you use up the ones near your base and then you get further and further away and by the end its like a massive Tudor circus bouncing around England and it’s

very tiring. But it does give you something different on screen and for the actors to turn up to these locations, knowing the characters they were portraying had been in them many times, it would give you an extra spring in your step.”

“There were many houses, and I enjoyed that,” Pryce says. “All the wood, that’s what I remember most — on the floors and the walls, the age and beauty of the wood. And the gardens, because we shot in the summer we were seeing the gardens in their prime.”

Pryce says he was aware that moving from location to location was “a trying

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MAKING A SCENE WOLF HALL

experience for everyone else, but I would just turn up occasionally and enjoy my time. But the production in general was incredibly hard work, and it shows.”

“We were able to approach the series in this way as we had the financial possibility to bring the show back to Britain,” Kosminsky says. “And it was all down to Mark [Pybus], because he knew that in the south-west of England there were these amazing properties from the period and so the idea to do it all on location simply evolved really. And because I come from a documentary background, I’ve done very little on stage. I was always going to prefer going on location if we could; I’m used to it and I like it.”

The series filmed in a number of National Trust buildings in Somerset and Wiltshire in the south-west of England and in the Hampshire city of Winchester in the south; Caerphilly Castle in South Wales; coastal fortress Dover Castle and Penshurst Place, once owned by Henry VIII, both in Kent in the south-east of England; and up towards the Midlands, in Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire.

The production moved into The Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol for pre-production in January 2014. The Studios remained the Wolf Hall production base, and location filming started some months later.

“We filmed across the summer and the crew was lucky that the weather was good.

I think for the cast in their Tudor garb, they weren’t as pleased when it was 25º and the rest of us were walking around in shorts.

For them it was tough. But ultimately you reap what you sow, and all the hard work we put into it has paid off.”

Wolf Hall is a Company Pictures and Playground co-production for BBC Two and Masterpiece on PBS, in association with BBC Worldwide.

55

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FEATURE STUDIOS

FE AT U R E

WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE The UK’s booming production industry means the amount of studio space on offer is booming too. Clive Bull takes a studio tour of Great Britain

A

UDIENCES watching the new 12-part drama Fortitude, set in a fictional Arctic town, would be surprised to learn that much of the series was shot in a distribution warehouse in Hayes, West London. A perfect example of how, in the face of growing demand from high-end TV productions and major international films, stage space is at a premium and new life is being breathed into post-industrial buildings, alongside the expansion of existing facilities.

As you can read elsewhere in this magazine, the former distribution centre for exotic fruit and vegetables became home to the Fortitude houses, civic centre and police station sets — and they remain there for a second series.

For the big screen there’s an impressive list of huge blockbuster productions booked in to the UK’s major studios: Rogue One, the first

JOE WRIGHT’S Pan, shot last year at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden and Cardington Studios

stand-alone Star Wars film; the latest Bond movie, Spectre; Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation; Pan; and Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. This huge raft of films has put pressure on the scheduling of stage space, but the studios have responded with expansion. Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden has plans for three new state-of-the-art stages consisting of a 35,000 sq ft building and two 17,000 sq ft stages, plus additional office space. Pinewood Studios has a £200m development plan which will add 100,000 sq m of new facilities, effectively doubling its current size.

“We know lower-budget independent feature films and high-end television don’t regard it as necessary to be in Pinewood, Shepperton or Leaves-

57

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FEATURE STUDIOS 59

JOHN MADDEN’S The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel took advantage of the post-production expertise at Twickenham Studios

den,” Adrian Wootton, chief executive of the British Film Commission and Film London, says. “They are interested in us finding and repurposing old factories, warehouses and industrial spaces for them, and that’s what we’re doing.”

One such site is the Gillette Building. Once a factory that produced razors, the famous Art Deco building in Brentford, West London, first became a studio for the Bruce Willis movie Red 2 (2013). More recently it was the base for 24: Live Another Day (2014), season nine of the Jack Bauer thriller.

“There are more and more examples of this,” Wootton says.

“There are going to be more announcements of boutique studio spaces coming up, with a combination of the established players and new people in the marketplace. Alternative spaces are being developed and we are working very hard on that; we are doing our very, very best to accommodate the demand.”

One of the earliest examples of an industrial space becoming a centre for film and TV production is 3 Mills Studios in East London — now a busy media complex with 11 stages, 170 production offices and 10 rehearsal rooms. Three Mills Island is London’s oldest surviving industrial centre, and home to The House Mill, the largest and most powerful of four remaining tidal mills in Britain. With much of its heritage preserved, 3 Mills is able to offer incredible exterior locations including tunnels, basements, canals, rivers, cobbled streets and an array of period buildings from the 1700s to the 1980s. And the advan-

Adrian Wootton

“There are going to be more announcements of boutique studio spaces coming up, with a combination of the established players and new people in the marketplace”

tage for filmmakers is that this is all just a few miles from Central London. “It’s the only large studio in London’s East End and we are mainly on an island so it presents a very romantic image,” studio executive Tom Avison says. “You arrive at what you think is an industrialised area and suddenly you are looking at 19th-century buildings with oast houses and cobbled streets and you’re almost passing into another world. It’s a unique historic location, quite unlike any other film studio you’ll ever work in.”

Recent productions using the studios include Mr Holmes (2015), starring Ian McKellen; and Legend (2015), starring Tom Hardy.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation ( 2015) took Tom Cruise to the banks of one of 3 Mills’ rivers for an exterior sequence, which saw the Hollywood actor and co-star Simon Pegg board a barge as part of a night shoot. The US television drama The Royals (Lionsgate Television/E! Entertainment Television, 2015) was made at 3 Mills using two stages and a variety of London locations within and around the studios. The series stars Elizabeth Hurley and revolves around a fictional British royal family.

In west London, Twickenham Studios was established in 1913 on the site of a former ice rink and was at the time the largest film studio in the UK. It has a long and fascinating history.

At one point the studios seemed destined for demolition but a Save Twickenham Studios campaign, combined with the passion of new owners and the resurgence of UK film production, meant that the historic facility would break the hundredyear barrier. Today the studios are at the cutting

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LIZ HURLEY as Queen Helena in The Royals, shot in and around 3 Mills Studios

edge of technology with post-production facilities focused around a custom-built Sound Centre — Twickenham was among the first of the UK studios to install Dolby Atmos capability. There are three sound stages with dressing rooms, star apartments, makeup, hairdressing, wardrobe departments and camera rooms all adjacent to each stage.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) and Survivor (2015) are among recent feature films to take advantage of the post-production expertise there, while Bastille Day (2016) and television dramas such as Black Mirror (Endemol) have been shooting at Twickenham.

Just north of London, in the county of Hertfordshire, Elstree Studios — established in 1926 and with a history that spans the silent era through to Star Wars and beyond — struggled in the Nineties when it was the subject of a long campaign to save it from being redeveloped. The campaign succeeded and in 2008 a new head, Roger Morris, came in and its rejuvination began. Now profitable and an important contributor to the local economy, it has recently hosted The Kings Speech (2010), Sherlock Holmes: Game Of Shadows (2011), Under The Skin (2013) and Paddington (2014), and is a permanent home to a number of hit TV series including the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing.

Another important establishment in the history of UK film and television, Ealing Studios, in west London not far from Twickenham — best known for the series of comedies produced after the Second World War — is also enjoying the UK studio boom. Recent features hosted here include One Chance (2013), starring James Corden, A Long Way Down (2014), starring Pierce Brosnan, and long-running TV drama ITV’s Downton Abbey (2010-).

The expansion and development of studios is happening right across the UK. Pinewood Studio Wales brings a huge new facility to

Mark Hackett

“The team responsible for the transformation has produced a facility we are proud of and clients have responded very positively toward”

FEATURE STUDIOS

Cardiff, with 70,000 sq ft of shooting space including two stages of 20,000 sq ft each. The new studio is on the site of the former Energy Centre and forms part of Pinewood’s global network of film studios.

The 10-year-old building was previously used as a clean environment for producing solar panels and the conversion required sound treatment for the two stages, provision of secure data networking capability and upgrading of power distribution around the site. Purpose-built scene dock doors were fitted and interior walls were reconfigured to suit production requirements.

The Pinewood Studio Wales complex will be the focal point of a rapidly growing production scene in South Wales, with the city already a setting for leading television dramas including Sherlock, Doctor Who and Merlin. Pinewood Studio Wales also hosted Kurt Sutter’s big-budget American period television drama The Bastard Executioner (FX Productions/Fox 21/Imagine Television), which also used Dragon Studios, west of Cardiff. “The process has been a joy to observe,” Mark Hackett, sales director TV Pinewood Studios Group, says. “Having constructed studios around the globe the team responsible for the transformation has produced a facility we are proud of and clients have responded very positively toward.”

A remake of the 1994 hit The Crow is the first feature film to be made at the new studios; the original 1994 horror movie starred Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee. Based on the comic book franchise, The Crow tells the story of a rock musician who returns from the dead after he and his fiancée are murdered.

A vital element of the new studio’s development is the involvement of Pinewood Pictures, the film finance and distribution arm of Pinewood Group, which has broadened its advisory portfolio to include the Welsh Government’s £30m Media Investment Budget. An early beneficiary of this was Take Down (2015), shot in Wales and the Isle of Man. “This deal will provide a major boost for the local economy, providing jobs and opportunities in the Welsh industry,” Pinewood Pictures’ Steve Christian says. “We’re hugely excited to be working with the Welsh Government, not only to further support quality British filmmaking but also to highlight the fantastic facilities that Wales can provide, complemented by the opening of Pinewood Studio Wales.”

Another redevelopment invigorating the economy of South Wales is the former Ford and Visteon car-parts factory in Swansea. The 260,000 sq ft facility is the home of historical fantasy television drama Da Vinci’s Demons (Starz), which imagines the early life of Da Vinci in 15th-century Florence. The production is based in the revamped industrial building with location filming in surrounding areas, including The Mumbles, Langland Bay and historic buildings including Margam Castle and Neath Abbey.

One of the most impressive transformations from industrial space to studio is Titanic Studios in Northern Ireland. Set on an eight-acre site that is

61

FEATURE STUDIOS 62

only a five-minute drive from central Belfast, the facility is centred around the original Paint Hall studio, which was formerly a huge Harland and Wolff shipyard building, used to paint component parts of ships in climate controlled conditions. In addition, there are two new purposebuilt sound stages, the Hurst and McQuitty stages, named after Belfast filmmakers Brian Desmond Hurst, director of many films including 1951’s A Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim; and William McQuitty, producer of the epic Titanic movie A Night To Remember (1958). The Paint Hall was first used for the sci-fi feature City Of Ember (2008) and Universal Pictures’ Your Highness (2011) but is now famous across the world as the base for the massive HBO hit Game Of Thrones.

The vast space is divided into four 16,000 sq ft cells, set out in a square with its own internal roads and streets, a layout that has helped directors create separate but internally connected settings within the studio area. Each cell is 28 metres tall and has one 90 cm thick external wall.

To reduce noise pollution the building is double skinned and none of the ceilings is external. The impact of hosting Game Of Thrones has been considerable, with visitors flocking from all over the world to take in some of the Northern Ireland locations, and the growth of interest in production has lead to further expansion plans, with permission now granted to double the size of the existing facility.

Half an hour away from Belfast you’ll find The Linen Mill Film & TV Studios — another fine example of industrial space given a new lease of life. Until 2008 The Linen Mill was an active processing plant for Irish linen exported around the world. Now, as a studio, it offers 77,000 sq ft of internal build space, plus a preview theatre, canteen, design studios and various stores. Game Of Thrones also used The Linen Mill to take advantage of the exterior space, which features an outdoor floodable stage with green screen, two three-acre backlots, five acres of hard stand yards, pastures, stables and half a mile of river frontage. The size of the available space, combined with the proximity of Northern Ireland’s studios to some breathtaking rural locations has been a significant factor in attracting high-end television to the region. “We believe very strongly that Northern Ireland is a great place to do really big things,” Richard Williams, chief executive at Northern Ireland Screen, says. “The more you need to build, the more locations you need, the better value the proposition, and Game Of Thrones has illustrated that truth handsomely.”

If Game Of Thrones has been instrumental in the creation of new studio space for Northern Ireland, then Outlander has done the same thing for Scotland. Now into its second season, the time-traveling fantasy drama produced by cable network Starz, Sony Pictures Television and the UK’s Left Bank Pictures, is an adaptation of the Diana Gabaldon novels, which have sold in their millions throughout the world. It is based in a converted factory in Cumbernauld, just outside Glasgow, now known as Wardpark Studios. Again part of the appeal was the studio space, right on the doorstep of the region’s stunning rural locations. Cumbernauld Glen and Loch Lannoch formed part of 18th-century Scottish scenes, along with a number of historic castles.

“With Sony’s Outlander taking advantage of the new incentives and filming in Scotland, they are essentially now part of the Wardpark legacy,” Brodie Pringle, locations manager at Creative Scotland, says.

“They have provided the first large production facility in Scotland, with sound stages, an essential gear-change for the industry here.”

The production also brought 37 new trainees into the industry over multiple disciplines, a lot of those coming directly from further education. “We have a solid and experienced crew base in Scotland but this expansion in the more junior positions has been long over-

Brodie Pringle

“It’s exciting that young filmmakers get the experience of working on a high-quality, large-scale production”

due,” Pringle says. “It’s exciting that Outlander has provided this link into industry and that young filmmakers get the opportunity and experience of working on a high-quality, large-scale production so early in their budding careers.”

With ever-increasing interest in bringing productions to Scotland, the Scottish Government is now backing plans for a permanent purposebuilt studio, while the demand is also being met by Creative Scotland, which has made identifying temporary spaces a priority. “We’ve always offered potential pop-up studios and regularly commission surveys of the central belt area — at least four times a year,” Pringle says. “Commercial property availability changes all the time so this is a necessity. We want to know when something new may potentially come on the market in order that we can actively promote new spaces.”

Since opening in 2010, The Bottle Yard Studios has gradually transformed a disused industrial space into a vibrant creative hub in the south-west of England. Based in Bristol, The Bottle Yard now offers a total of 300,000 sq ft of flexible production space, with some highly diverse locations on its doorstep, from Regency period architecture to picturesque coastlines. As the name suggests, this is another of the many repurposed sites given a new film and television role. At one time it housed the full production line for the famous Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry. But business of a different kind is now booming in Bristol as a succession of major dramas have chosen The Bottle Yard Studios as their base, including Wolf Hall (BBC, 2015) starring Damian Lewis and Mark Rylance, the dramatisation of Hilary Mantel’s best-selling historical novels, which also shot in six of the South West’s nearby National Trust properties.

The family drama Poldark (2015-), set in Cornwall in the 1700s, was also shot at The Bottle Yard Studios and at a host of rural settings across the region. And The Bottle Yard is hosting Galavant (2015), the major US TV series, produced by Disney’s ABC Studios. “We decided to base Galavant at The Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol because we were confident we’d get a first-class service from [Bottle Yard site director] Fiona Francombe and her team,” UK producer Helen Flint says. “The studio is conveniently situated for Bristol and the great locations that surround the city.”

If it’s sheer size and scale that you are looking for, then Cardington Studios could well be the answer. The enormous aircraft hangar in the county of Bedfordshire, 55 miles north of London, was originally built during World War I to house airship construction, but now has a new life as a film studio.

“Cardington’s a great space because if you’re wanting something huge there’s nothing bigger — it’s absolutely fantastic,” Creative England’s head of production services Kaye Elliott says. “We work very closely with the owners of that and we were able to secure Pan (2015), the big Warner Bros. project that shot in there for nearly the whole of last year. There’s loads of space — amazing places like Cardington — that people just aren’t aware of.”

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MAKING A SCENE FORTITUDE 64

MAKING A SCENE

London, Iceland These buildings are in Iceland, but the snow is from the UK. Cast and crew of the TV series Fortitude talk about what it was like to shoot this British production in both countries

C

REATED and written by Simon Donald and produced for Sky Atlantic and Pivot by Fifty Fathoms and Tiger Aspect Productions, Fortitude is a dark thriller that fits perfectly into the mould of recent global TV hits to have come out of Scandinavia — except it’s British.

The series is set in the Arctic, in the fictitious town of Fortitude, based on Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, a base for Arctic exploration.

“I was keen to find a place where I could set a dark, twisted thriller that was unlike any location we’d seen recently — and that took us right up into the Arctic Circle,” Simon Donald says. “I also wanted to write

something set in a very small, pressurecooker community where people are left to their own devices and have to sort things out themselves when something goes wrong.

And finally, I wanted something that moved into a different thematic area from a traditional police procedural; I wanted to go into some dark, urgent, real-world science, and all of that ended up being Fortitude.”

“Simon and I spent time at the top of the world, very near the North Pole, researching how people lived up there; why people lived up there; how they dealt with a life unprotected from the ferocious weather and the merciless polar bears and how they endured weeks of complete darkness,” Fifty Fathoms’ Patrick Spence says. “Life in the

Arctic is not for the faint-hearted, these are frontier towns where the rules of life are quite unlike anywhere else on earth.”

It took a long time to find somewhere that could double as the Arctic, “without feeling noticeably like another country”, Spence says. They eventually found their town, Reyðarfjörður, on the east coast of Iceland, “where the crews are superb and the sense of absolute isolation was perfect”.

Except that, for the first time since records began, there was no snowfall — or even snow on the ground — for all of the six winter weeks they shot there. “So we had to bring snow to Iceland with us – from London, and re-lay it across our town and mountainsides. This was not how we had hoped to be working. But the crew — British and Icelandic, working side by side — were tireless as well as talented.”

“They had to make snow, yes, which nobody expected,” says Hollywood actor Stanley Tucci, who plays DCI Eugene Morton in the series. “It was still beautiful though, and when it did snow, it was gorgeous. I happen to like the winter so it was great.”

MAKING A SCENE FORTITUDE 65

“What was great about Fortitude was that you could see exactly how essential that location was to the tone of the piece, because the characters we’re examining throughout the series have been drawn to that place for very specific and personal reasons,” says British actor Christopher Eccleston, who plays professor Charlie Stoddart. “You don’t choose to go and live in an extreme environment like that unless you’re unusual. So what Fortitude has is a number of very unusual, original characters packed together, which for a drama is perfect. None of these people are run-ofthe-mill. They all have very strong back-stories and mystery to them, which is the stuff of drama.”

Interiors were shot back in London on 45,000 square feet of sets. “Pretty much our entire world was built from scratch by Gemma Jackson, the production designer who had also created the world of Game Of Thrones,” Spence says.

“We had a real desire to base the shoot in London,” line producer Charles Hubbard adds. “It allowed us easier access to Iceland.

The capital’s world-class facilities and crew and the UK Tax Relief for High-end Television make London a perfect fit for a production of this scale.”

Sir Michael Gambon, who plays Fortitude-based photographer Henry Tyson in the series, says he was very happy shooting in two very different locations: “Yes, I loved it. I’d be there for, say, a week and a half, two weeks, then they’d fly me back to London for a week or so, and then I’d go back,” he says. “I went back and forwards maybe six times, and every time I got there it was new again. I liked the weather there, it wasn’t too cold. And the cast were all lovely, I made lots of good mates.”

“I live in London now so the UK-based shoot has been very convenient for me,” Tucci says. “The studio is a great space that works really well and, as far as I know, it had never been used before. They’ve built some incredible sets, they’re beautifully imagined by a brilliant designer.”

Film London helped the production to find the alternative studio space in a

warehouse in Hayes, in the west of the capital, for the interiors of Fortitude’s houses, its civic centre and police station.

And while most of the interior scenes were shot in the Hayes facility, the crew looked elsewhere in the city to recreate other interiors that would match the Fortitude exteriors.

For example the Arctic clinic was actually a 17th-century mansion in Uxbridge, near Hayes; the home of the governor of Fortitude, played by Sofie Gråbøl, was a Fifties house in the southeast London borough of Bromley.

Like all the cast, Gråbøl, who plays Fortitude governor Hildur Odegard, speaks of a positive attitude among cast and crew.

“The cast was just the most lovely group of actors, and there was a true ensemble feeling throughout the shoot,” she says.

And she has praise for the people behind the scenes too: “The special effects were so well done that it was truly scary sometimes.

There was a dead body so realistic that I was relieved to see the actor it was modelled on alive the next day.”

MEET THE EXPERTS

FEATURE MEET THE PROFESSIONALS

FE AT U R E

Sarah Cooper meets some of the UK’s highly skilled film professionals who have worked on some of the biggest movies of the moment

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EHIND every production is a team of unsung heroes.

Makeup artists who start work at 5am, production supervisors averting major crises on a daily basis, special-effects teams pumping mist across fields and scores of accommodation bookers working around the clock making sure the cast and crew have somewhere to sleep at night.

When it comes to sourcing this kind of below-the-line talent, the UK continues to lead the pack. As Film London’s senior inward investment manager David Shepheard points out: “The UK has always been number one in the world for the quality of its crew and its creative people. You can hire pretty much everyone you need to make a movie locally.”

Sarah Cooper meets some of the exceptionally talented individuals and companies based across the UK and finds out what it’s like to work behind the scenes on some of the world’s biggest productions.

FEATURE MEET THE PROFESSIONALS 68

GEMMA JACKSON, PRODUCTION DESIGNER CREDITS Warner Bros.’ upcoming epic King Arthur directed by Guy Ritchie, HBO’s Game Of Thrones, series 1-3, Pivot and Sky Atlantic’s Fortitude, HBO’s John Adams AWARDS Emmy Awards for Game Of Thrones and John Adams, Oscar nomination for Finding Neverland How did you get into production design?

I went to St Martin’s art school [in London], but I realised I wasn’t philosophically a painter. I did a post-graduate in theatre design, before moving gradually into films. It was fantastic to discover that there was a medium for all my interest in the world around me and the visual things I loved.

What were some of the challenges of working on Game Of Thrones?

I was there from the beginning so I had to set the whole thing up. We had a large team with a huge number of painters and plasterers, who I have taken on to other projects. With each series there would be a new set of things to design. I loved creating the contrast between the different worlds.

How did you get the job on Warner Bros.’ King Arthur?

I read the script, worked out some ideas, did a pitch. It comes down to chemistry with you and the director. Guy [Ritchie] really liked Game Of Thrones because of the period and scale.

What does your day-to-day job involve?

There is a huge amount of prep in terms of concepting, then there is the building, which is my favourite bit and which involves daily adjustments to colour and texture, and then I’m on set every day during the shoot.

What’s good about working in the UK? I’ve worked all over the world, from Morocco to Iceland, but I love working here, because I love the teams. The artisans are fantastic, as is the general can-do attitude of everybody.

We’ve got a long history of making very well crafted films and I really do think that the UK has some of the best talent as a result.

STEVEN NOBLE, COSTUME DESIGNER CREDITS Focus Features’ upcoming horror fantasy A Monster Calls, Working Title’s The Theory Of Everything, Film4’s Under The Skin AWARDS: BAFTA nomination for The Theory Of Everything, Variety Artisan Award for Outstanding Contribution to Costume Design, 2014 How did you get into costume design?

I did a degree and worked in fashion, before

moving into styling for magazines like The Face in the Eighties. That led to pop promos, TV commercials and finally films.

What were your biggest challenges on The Theory Of Everything?

Eddie [Redmayne] and Felicity [Jones] had between 80 and 90 costume changes throughout the film, which spanned four decades. James [Marsh, director] wanted to create an emotional timeline rather than a period timeline and keep it extremely subtle and delicate, so the decades would merge seamlessly into each other.

What marks out your work?

Once I start a film, I immerse myself in the period, try to get as much reference and ideas together as possible. But I don’t stick to a period itself, I try and mix it up slightly to make it a bit fresher. You need to be taken on this journey and believe what you’re watching, so it’s about subtle things like not accessorising as much, or putting things together slightly differently. I’m a designer that thinks that costumes should be seen and not heard.

Is it easier working on contemporary films?

Not necessarily. Under The Skin, for example, was extremely challenging, even though there were very few people in it and it was modern.

But this film was Jonathan Glazer’s [director] baby and he wanted a really iconic outfit for Scarlett Johansson. In the film she goes shopping in [UK department store] Debenhams and I wanted to stay true to that, so it took quite a while to find the right outfit. For A Monster Calls I was asked to create a slightly heightened, timeless look, so I mixed up a bit of contemporary with bits of vintage stuff to create an overall modern look with a twist.

How do you decide which projects to work on?

I’m extremely passionate about what I do. I need to love the script and appreciate the director’s work and talent. When both those things come together it’s amazing.

HANNAH GODWIN, PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR CREDITS MGM/EON/ Columbia’s Spectre, Quantum Of Solace and Skyfall, Disney’s Into The Woods and Muppets Most Wanted AWARDS Production Guild Rising Star Award 2014 How did you get into production supervising?

I had a job as a receptionist in a film company in New Zealand and then started production managing commercials. When my family moved back to England, it was really about emailing my CV to people, making contacts, keeping in touch, and a few lucky breaks.

What does your job involve?

I work with the production co-ordinator and production manager on everything from hiring the crews, to looking at the budgets, negotiating on equipment, dealing with actors who have had accidents and overseeing logistics. You have to be very reactive. Everything is so mobile, we take the production office on the road with us.

Being there in person is always better when issues come up.

What’s the best thing about working on the Bond films?

They’ve got a distinctly different feel. A family feel about them. The producers care, they are very intimately involved every day.

But even on the Bond films, each one is different. I’m learning every single day.

Any logistical disasters?

We had a set that was blown away by a tornado in Turkey. Because of that we had to reshuffle the schedule to allow the location department time to reinstate it and the art department to come back in and dress it again.

Why should a US studio hire a UK-based production supervisor?

It’s important to have local knowledge. And we know how the UK film industry works here, so if a crew member is trying to tell you something we can turn around and say, ‘Hold on a minute, that’s not right’.

What advice would you give to people wanting to get into the industry?

One of our production assistants on Spectre worked in the canteen at Pinewood for four years serving coffee. He used to bring his CV in, and eventually we gave him some experience on Skyfall, then he became our rushes runner and he’s been with us ever since. It is possible, you just have to work really bloody hard.

AMANDA STEVENS, LOCATION MANAGER CREDITS Warner Bros.’ King Arthur, Pivot and Sky Atlantic’s Fortitude, Fox Searchlight’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, BBC Films/ Hanway Films/Number 9 Films’ Made In Dagenham How did you get into location management? I was a Production Runner and was desperate to work in the art department. As I hadn’t got the right qualifications I soon realised that locations worked closely alongside art so that was the next best choice!

Fortitude is set in the Arctic. What were the biggest challenges? The majority of the interior locations were shot in and around London. It meant having to find locations that looked like they were in the Arctic. We

MIKE KELT, CEO OF LONDON- AND GLASGOW-BASED SPECIAL EFFECTS COMPANY ARTEM CREDITS: StudioCanal/See-Saw Films’ Macbeth, Film Engine/Apollo Media/ Screen Yorkshire’s Hunter’s Prayer, Universal Pictures/Film4/DNA’s Ex Machina, Warner Bros.’ In The Heart Of The Sea How does Artem become involved with a project?

We get a copy of the script, we break it down, identifying all the areas which might require special effects. We explain how these special effects can be produced and roughly how much it would cost. We don’t charge for that, it’s a free service, whether they use us or not.

When we get a job, we usually spend a lot of time on set.

On Hunter’s Prayer, to give just a small example, we created a bullet wound to the leg, which had to be operated on, so we needed to be there to apply it and create a blood line.

What were the biggest challenges of working on Macbeth?

As well as needing severed bodies and limbs, Justin Kurzel [director] wanted to create a really bleak atmosphere. Huge swathes of the landscape had to be covered in a nice even layer of mist, so we were pumping it through fans and hundreds of metres of black piping to spread it out upwind so it ended up coming across the frame in the right way.

What kind of new techniques are you using to create special effects?

For In The Heart Of The Sea, we used robots to carve the 50-foot whale. We drew it up on the computer and rendered it as you would in post production. We finish everything by hand, but the robots take out the real drudgery of making something. And it allows you to present to the production a rendered image of what we’re going to make before we even start.

Are you seeing the next generation of special effects experts coming through?

The whole system in the UK is very educational and growth orientated. Artem takes a serious interest in the next generation, we pay people to come and do work experience here. Ultimately, the crews in the UK are unbelievably good, because they’ve had an unbelievable amount of training and experience.

JAN SEWELL, MAKEUP AND HAIR DESIGNER CREDITS: Working Title’s The Danish Girl, The Theory Of Everything, and Everest, Paramount’s World War Z AWARDS: Goya Award for Agora, BAFTA Award for French And Saunders How did you become a makeup and hair designer?

I spent 15 years at the BBC, where I was trained in makeup, hair and prosthetics.

After I left, I carried on working in TV for a couple of years and then started to get offered films.

How did you turn Eddie Reymayne into Stephen Hawking?

I knew how to make Eddie look like the young Stephen, but the challenge was getting the last look of the film. It was about making him look like he was shrinking, so I created different mouth pieces, and had front teeth made to slowly make it look like his jaw was dropping. We also increased the size of his ears. Towards the end I started to use a headpiece under his wig.

Eddie’s look alone was complicated, but there was also a cast of 64, as well as 3,000 extras. Felicity’s [Jones] character had to age with him. I tried prosthetics on her, that didn’t work, so we went back to changing her makeup and hair.

Does your job take you to some unusual locations?

On Everest, we went to Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp and the Dolomites in Italy. My job required creating lots of frostbite, and working with men with beards and ice and snow. We went from

Jan Sewell

“It’s not just doing makeup. It’s about how one deals with an actor whose job can be quite stressful” freezing temperatures to being back in the studio in the UK dealing with actors in the same snowsuits, which was a challenge.

You are working with Eddie Redmayne again on The Danish Girl. How did that come about?

My job is to design the hair and makeup for the whole film, but I personally do the makeup for the lead. Eddie and I got on so well that he asked me to be on his next film.

It’s not just doing makeup. It’s about how one deals with an actor whose job can be quite stressful, especially if they’ve got emotional scenes. You’ve got to know how to be around someone like that.

IAN TAYLOR-BRETT, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ACCESS BOOKINGS CREDITS: Warner Bros.’

Jupiter Ascending, The Dark Knight Rises, and Clash Of The Titans, and Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger When did you set the company up?

The company was set up in 1985, we are celebrating our 30th year this year.

What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced?

Finding rooms for the full cast and crew of Captain America in Manchester during a party political conference. Sourcing 600 rooms in Pembrokeshire for [Ridley Scott’s] Robin Hood. We have even been known to be making and changing bookings for productions on Christmas day.

Do you find accommodation throughout the UK? We deal with high-profile dramas that film the length and breadth of the country, like Wolf Hall and The Hollow Crown. Although many of the productions are based out of the London studios they often require accommodation on location. Some of the out-of-London studios, for example, The Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol seem to be getting busier and busier.

Does the UK offer favourable rates compared to other countries?

Parts of the UK can be very cost-efficient.

Hotels generally negotiate on volumes of business, and they seem more and more aware of the value of having productions stay with them.

FEATURE MEET THE PROFESSIONALS

were looking for very modernist or atmospheric locations that we could match with the locations they were using in Reyðarfjörður, Iceland.

Which locations did you use?

We had about 10 locations in London, including Hackney Marshes sports centre, which doubles up for a research centre, a modernist house in Bromley, which is where the governor of the town lives, and Hackney Town Hall, which was used for the mainland government office. We also shot at Upper Heyford airbase near Oxford, which we turned into an old Russian mining town.

What’s the best thing about your job? I love the design side of things and getting to work with designers to find visually interesting locations. Also, the amount of variety in my job is fantastic, no two days are the same.

What makes the UK a great place to shoot?

The UK has a phenomenal array of grand, majestic, state-of-the-art, architecture and we have the choice of incredible landscapes all within a relatively small area.

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FEATURE MEET THE PROFESSIONALS 70

CHRIS MILLARD, GROUP TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, PANALUX CREDITS: Twentieth Century Fox/Tim Burton Productions/ Chernin Entertainment’s Peregrine’s Home For Peculiars, MGM/EON/Columbia’s Spectre, Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Starz/BBC Worldwide Productions’ Da Vinci’s Demons What have been some of the challenges of providing lighting for a big-budget studio film like Spectre?

There was a particular car shot to do in minus-20º temperatures in Austria. They needed the ability to control the lighting that was built around the car rig, including in a 2-km long tunnel. With our product development guys, we came up with the technology to do that.

Does your job end as soon as you’ve handed over the lighting equipment?

No, we are involved all the way through. There are changes to equipment, changes to scheduling. We run a 24-hour-a-day operation out of London. We have depots around the country and globally. It’s about having the logistics, the systems in place, so if something changes, we are able to deal with it.

What marks Panalux out from other companies?

We have our own unique product development team here. We work alongside the gaffers and DOPs, so if they have a particular challenge — a tight location, space constraints at a location, an effect that a standard lighting product won’t deliver, we like to think we are uniquely placed to create a product that fits the bill. We want to be able to give the DOP the creative options needed to deliver the shot he wants.

You also work across television.

We are seeing a lot of cross-fertilisation. It means we are able to take lighting instruments that would normally be used on TV entertainment shows like The Voice and offer them for feature films. We are also working on a lot of high-end television shows that are choosing to shoot in the UK because of the tax break.

NICK O’HAGAN, LINE PRODUCER CREDITS: Ecosse Films/ Hanway Films’ A Royal Night Out, Film4’s High-Rise, BBC Films’ Dom Hemingway and Quartet What were the biggest challenges on the A Royal Night Out shoot? The film is about Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret being allowed out on VE Night. We were looking for

something that matched 1945 London, and we ended up finding an amazing street in Hull [in the north of England] called Alfred Gelder Street, which miraculously looks a bit like Piccadilly. Being outside central London meant that we could shut down the street completely for two nights without causing too much disruption. We also shot in Trafalgar Square with a 300-strong crowd, all in period costumes. We shut a corner of it and shot until the early hours of the morning. It was quite complicated, but as long as you plan it well, shooting in London can be relatively easy and feasible.

Is it up to you to decide where a film shoots?

I work closely with the producers to make that decision. For instance, we were looking at shooting High-Rise in Yorkshire because of the funding, but then we found a Seventies leisure centre in Bangor, Northern Ireland, which was perfect. We chose to shoot there because it

Nick O’Hagan

“We shot in Trafalgar Square with a 300-strong crowd, all in period costumes ...” worked both creatively and logistically.

It’s your job to bring on the crew. Does the UK have a good pool to choose from?

Yes. We’re getting better and better in the UK. We’ve got a lot more productions going on. But it also means we need to be aware of the need to keep training people.

What’s the best thing about your job?

When I was younger I wanted to be an architect. I love putting something together, which is what my job is. I don’t always need to be by the camera, but I love taking an idea from nothing and putting it on the screen.

MEET THE BFC SAMANTHA PERAHIA, SENIOR PRODUCTION EXECUTIVE, BRITISH FILM COMMISSION (BFC) PRODUCTION SUPPORT CREDITS: Marvel’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Paramount’s Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Lionsgate Television/E! Entertainment’s The Royals, 20th Century Fox Television’s 24: Live Another Day What does your role involve?

The BFC is the first point of contact for international productions on the ground in the UK. Myself and the BFC team in the UK and LA are here to maximise and support production, promote and strengthen the UK infrastructure and liaise between the government and the film and TV industry on any legislative issues that impact on production, like the UK Film Tax Relief.

You worked closely with Lucasfilm to bring the new Star Wars to the UK… There was an assumption because of the history of the project that it was going to come here, but it doesn’t work like that. There has to be a balance between value of the UK Film Tax Relief, cost of shooting and the talent and infrastructure available. They wanted to bring it here. It was very much the BFC’s job to reassure them that not only did they want to bring it here, but that it was going to be the best place for them to shoot. We worked very closely with them on crew availability, location trouble shooting as well as helping them liaise with the government.

How do you promote the UK as a place to shoot?

We offer free bespoke production support from development through to post production including assistance with sourcing key UK crew, talent, facilities and locations as well as troubleshooting. We organise Familiarisation Trips where we fly decision-makers from the US into the UK. We also took representatives from the UK’s regional screen agencies out to the US last year, for meetings at the studios and TV companies. We track projects that could potentially come to the UK and make sure we pick up the phone to them.

What happens if the UK studios are full?

Schedules move around so much, we will never just say no. We also look for alternative space. A US studio might say they need 20,000 sq ft of stage space, so we will hire a location scout or production manager to search specifically for that project. Most of the high-end TV shows have used alternative space. Sony’s Outlander uses a factory outside Glasgow in Scotland, Game Of Thrones is in the former Paint Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Wolf Hall used The Bottle Yard in Bristol, south-west England, Da Vinci’s Demons is based in a former car factory near Swansea, in Wales, and 24: Live Another Day used the Gillette Building in London.

SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS BRITISH FILM COMMISSION FUNDERS BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE (BFI) 21 Stephen Street London W1T 1LN +44 (0)20 7255 1444 www.bfi.org.uk DEPARTMENT FOR CULTURE, MEDIA & SPORT (DCMS) 100 Parliament Street London SW1A 2BQ +44 (0)20 7211 6000 enquiries@culture.gov.uk www.culture.gov.uk UK TRADE & INVESTMENT (UKTI) 1 Victoria Street London SW1H 0ET +44 (0)20 7215 5000 www.ukti.gov.uk BRITISH FILM COMMISSION SPONSORS GOLD PARTNERS 3 MILLS STUDIOS Three Mill Lane London E3 3DU +44 (0)20 8215 3330 www.3mills.com BBC WORLDWIDE Television Centre 101 Wood Lane London W12 7FA +44 (0)20 8433 2000 www.bbcworldwide.com HARBOTTLE & LEWIS Hanover House 14 Hanover Square London W1S 1HP +44 (0)20 7667 5000 www.harbottle.com HBO 2500 Broadway, Suite 400 Santa Monica CA 90404 +1 310 382 3616 www.hbo.com PINEWOOD STUDIOS GROUP Pinewood Studios Pinewood Road Iver Heath Bucks SLO 0NH +44 (0)1753 659200 sales@pinewoodgroup.com www.pinewoodgroup.com SAFFERY CHAMPNESS Lion House Red Lion Street London WC1R 4GB +44 (0)20 7841 4000 info@saffery.com www.saffery.com WALT DISNEY 3 Queen Caroline Street London W6 9PE +44 (0)20 8222 1000 www.disney.co.uk WARNER BROS ENTERTAINMENT UK LTD 98 Theobald’s Road London WC1X 8WB +44 (0)20 7984 5400 www.warnerbros.co.uk SILVER PARTNERS BOTTLE YARD STUDIOS Whitchurch Lane Bristol BS14 0BH +44 (0)1275 890 954 www.thebottleyard.com

COUTTS & CO 440 Strand London WC2R 0QS +44 (0) 20 7753 1000 www.coutts.com DOUBLE NEGATIVE VISUAL EFFECTS 160 Great Portland Street London W1W 5QA +44 (0)20 7268 5000 info@dneg.com www.dneg.com ELSTREE STUDIOS Shenley Road Borehamwood Hertfordshire WD6 1JG +44 (0)20 8953 1600 info@elstreestudios.co.uk www.elstreestudios.co.uk FRAMESTORE 19-23 Wells Street London W1T 3PQ +44 (0)20 7344 8000 www.framestore.com MPC 127 Wardour Street London W1F 0NL +44 (0)20 7434 3100 www.moving-picture.com WORKING TITLE FILMS 26 Aybrook Street London W1U 4AN +44 (0)20 7307 3000 www.workingtitlefilms.com BRITISH FILM COMMISSION NATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD CHAIR OF THE BRITISH FILM COMMISSION ADVISORY BOARD: IAIN SMITH British Film Commission Suite 6.10 56 The Tea Building Shoreditch High Street London E1 6JJ +44 (0)20 7613 7675 enquiries@britishfilmcommission.org.uk www.britishfilmcommission.org.uk BBC WORLDWIDE Television Centre 101 Wood Lane London W12 7FA +44 (0)20 8433 2000 www.bbcworldwide.com BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE (BFI) 21 Stephen Street London W1T 1LN +44 (0)20 7255 1444 www.bfi.org.uk BRITISH SCREEN ADVISORY COUNCIL (BSAC) 3rd Floor 14 Newburgh Street London W1F 7RT +44 (0)20 7287 1111 www.bsac.uk.com CREATIVE ENGLAND 1st Floor College House 32-36 College Green Bristol BS1 5SP +44 (0)20 8324 2311 production@creativeengland.co.uk www.creativeengland.co.uk CREATIVE SCOTLAND Waverley Gate 2-4 Waterloo Place Edinburgh EH1 3EG +44 (0)845 603 6000 enquiries@creativescotland.com www.creativescotland.com

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SAFFERY CHAMPNESS Lion House Red Lion Street London WC1R 4GB +44 (0)20 7841 4000 info@saffery.com www.saffery.com

DIRECTORS UK 3rd & 4th Floor 8-10 Dryden Street London WC2E 9NA +44 (0)20 7240 0009 info@directors.uk.com www.directors.uk.com

UK SCREEN ASSOCIATION 47 Beak Street London W1F 9SE +44 (0)20 7734 6060 angela@ukscreenassociation.co.uk www.ukscreenassociation.co.uk

DOUBLE NEGATIVE VISUAL EFFECTS 160 Great Portland Street London W1W 5QA +44 (0)20 7268 5000 info@dneg.com www.dneg.com

UK TRADE & INVESTMENT (UKTI) 1 Victoria Street London SW1H 0ET +44 (0)20 7215 5000 www.ukti.gov.uk

FEDERATION OF ENTERTAINMENT UNIONS (FEU) +44 (0)7914 397243 info@feutraining.org www.feutraining.org FILM LONDON Suite 6.10 The Tea Building 56 Shoreditch High Street London E1 6JJ +44 (0)20 7613 7676 info@filmlondon.org.uk www.filmlondon.org.uk FRAMESTORE 19-23 Wells Street London W1T 3PQ +44 (0)20 7344 8000 www.framestore.com HARBOTTLE & LEWIS Hanover House 14 Hanover Square London W1S 1HP +44 (0)20 7667 5000 www.harbottle.com

WARNER BROS ENTERTAINMENT UK LTD 98 Theobald’s Road London WC1X 8WB +44 (0)20 7984 5400 www.warnerbros.co.uk WALES SCREEN Welsh Government Creative Sector 4th Floor, Bayside St Line House Mount Stuart Square Cardiff Bay CF10 5LR +44 (0) 29 2044 4241 Penny.Skuse@Wales.GSI.gov.uk www.walesscreen.com WIGGIN 10th Floor, Met Building 22 Percy Street London W1T 2BU +44 (0) 20 7612 9612 law@wiggin.co.uk www.wiggin.co.uk UK FILMING AGENCIES

MAYOR OF LONDON Greater London Authority City Hall The Queen’s Walk London SE1 2AA +44 (0)20 7983 4000 www.london.gov.uk

CREATIVE ENGLAND 1st Floor College House 32-36 College Green Bristol BS1 5SP +44 (0)20 8324 2311 production@creativeengland.co.uk www.creativeengland.co.uk

NORTHERN IRELAND SCREEN 3rd Floor Alfred House 21 Alfred Street Belfast BT2 8ED Northern Ireland +44 (0)28 9023 2444 info@northernirelandscreen.co.uk www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk

FILM LONDON Suite 6.10 The Tea Building 56 Shoreditch High Street London E1 6JJ +44 (0)20 7613 7676 info@filmlondon.org.uk www.filmlondon.org.uk

PINEWOOD STUDIOS GROUP Pinewood Studios Pinewood Road Iver Heath Bucks SLO 0NH +44 (0)1753 659200 sales@pinewoodgroup.com www.pinewoodgroup.com

NORTHERN IRELAND SCREEN 3rd Floor Alfred House 21 Alfred Street BelfastBT2 8ED Northern Ireland +44 (0)28 9023 2444 info@northernirelandscreen.co.uk www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk

PRODUCERS’ ASSOCIATION OF CINEMA & TELEVISION (PACT) 3rd Floor Fitzrovia House 153-157 Cleveland Street London W1T 6QW +44 (0)20 7380 8230 www.pact.co.uk

CREATIVE SCOTLAND Waverley Gate 2-4 Waterloo Place Edinburgh EH1 3EG +44 (0)845 603 6000 enquiries@creativescotland.com www.creativescotland.com

PRODUCTION GUILD OF GREAT BRITAIN Room 329 Main Admin Building Pinewood Studios Pinewood Road Iver Heath Bucks SLO 0NH +44 (0)1753 651767 PG@ProductionGuild.com www.productionguild.com

WALES SCREEN Welsh Government Creative Sector 4th Floor, Bayside St Line House Mount Stuart Square Cardiff Bay CF10 5LR +44 (0) 29 2044 4241 Penny.Skuse@Wales.GSI.gov.uk www.walesscreen.com

ADVERTISERS INDEX 3 Mills Studios 58 I Access Bookings 28 I Artem 21 I Bottle Yard Studios 58 I Bradford Film Office 48 I British Film Commission Inside Front Cover I Cardington Studios 60 I Coutts 71 I Creative England 15 I Creative Scotland 22 I Creative Skillset 12 I Double Negative Visual Effects 16 I Edinburgh Film Office 49 I Elstree Film Studios 63 I Film London 5 I Glasgow Film Office 50 I Harbottle & Lewis Inside Back Cover I Heathrow Airport 3 I Highlands Film Commission 20 I Kent Film Office 54 I Liverpool Film Office 51 I Middle Temple, The Honorary Society of the 55 I Moving Picture Company 16 I Northern Ireland Screen Outside Back Cover I Oakwood Worldwide 54 I Pinewood Studios 8 I Production Guild 26 I Saffery Champness 56 I Screen Yorkshire 26 I South West Trains 63 I United Grand Lodge of England - Freemasons Hall 14 I Wales Screen Commission 24 I Walt Disney 66 I Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden 1

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