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CAPITAL CONFIDENCE
CAPITAL CONFIDENCE
London Film Commission keeps the movies moving - on time
The British film industry has changed so much in recent years that it is sometimes hard to remember just how things were. It was only relatively recently that you could count the number of domestically made movies reaching our cinemas on the fingers of one hand, with each successive feature carry- ing a disproportionate weight of responsibility to sus- tain the future of the business.
But in the last few years the mood has been has been lifted by a number of significant changes, one of which has to be the establishment of the London Film Commission. Until the end of June the
organisation was closely identified with
its founding director, Christabel Albery,
a successful film producer herself and
scion of the famous theatre dynasty.
Now departed to focus on feature film production once again, Albery has just been succeeded by Dominic Reid, whose background is in the organisa- tion of events such as the Lord Mayor’s Show. So size is no problem.
“The idea of a film commission in
London was something that had been
around for about 12 years before I got
involved,” Albery recalls. “I was on the
board of the British Film Commission,
and it was quite clear they were having
problems setting it up, so I threw some
ideas into the mix and somehow, with-
out putting my hand up, I’d agreed to do
it. I thought I’d be there for three
months, but it’s taken me five and a half years. Now that the commission is pretty well established I can finally go back into the creative side of the industry.”
With a dedicated staff of no more than 20 people - as well as a film officer in each of the 33 boroughs - the west London offices of the capital’s film commis- sion house a remarkable assortment of information for any budding producer or location manager. A database of buildings, locations, equipment and 25,000 crew CVs is available, free, to filmmakers and is growing all the time.
“London is a very cost competitive place to work,” Albery adds, “because 80% of the industry is based here. So the likelihood is that if you come to work here you can get your crew, you’ve got studios and facilities and everything else on tap. In addition there’s the whole question about what London looks like. We’re often finding somewhere in London to dou-
ble for Cairo, Moscow or the US. And within a 40 mile radius there are all the stately homes, country hous- es, countryside locations and villages.
“With recent projects like Sleepy Hollow and Gladiators, we found them their locations when they were going to shoot overseas. In fact Sleepy Hollow gave us just two weeks to find them something. They were fairly sure that we wouldn’t be able to find what they needed, and were thinking of going back to the States. But we worked with them from that first week- end and within two weeks had found things that they were happy with, so they stayed.”
present at the meeting getting extremely nervous, but I said that would be no problem, we could arrange something for them.
“That’s where my experience of making films proved useful, because I know that when filmmakers ask for things they’re usually exaggerating slightly. So I gambled, and of course they wanted much less than they’d asked for. All I had to do was arrange the helicopter landing by Tower Bridge, we helped with Liverpool Street Station, and the stuff at the Tate. And this started the first buzz about what the London Film Commission was able to do for a major
film in London.” Not that Albery sees the role of the Film Commission as being solely to aid filmmakers, with no thought for anyone else.
“We feel we serve both the film industry and London’s residents and the police and boroughs too. For us the most important thing is that the marriage between London and the film industry works, and that only works if both par- ties are happy.
“There’s many a time when we will take on filmmakers if they’ve done some- thing to distress neighbourhoods, because we definitely need to leave peo- ple thinking that they enjoy having film- makers around.”
If founding the London Film Commission in the first place was a major achievement, doing so without financial help from central government -
making it the only film commission in the world that is not state or government sponsored - makes it all the more remarkable. But in attracting sponsorship from 70 different companies, Albery has overseen the growth of the London Film Commission from long held pipe dream to impressive reality.
Only now is central government finally paying attention to the enormous financial and cultural ben- efits that a healthy domestic movie industry can yield elsewhere in the economy, attention that may even turn to financial help in the future.
“I think there’s a real knock on effect in tourism and other industries,” she adds, “I think the future for the commission lies in helping London remain com- petitive, and to work towards making close ties with the new Mayor’s office. My hope would be that the Mayor’s office will fund at least 50 per cent of the commission in the future.”
In the early days, Albery’s combination of charm and tenacity helped sweep away the air of apathy that regularly attended visiting filmmakers and suc- ceeded in luring prestigious movies such as Mission: Impossible to shoot in London - a seemingly impossi- ble mission in its own right.
“Brian De Palma’s team came and met us, but when they saw the book of rules about shooting in Westminster they just laughed. This stated, for exam- ple, that they could only have six parking meter bays. They said: ‘we’re not going to come here to this dreadful city. Brian De Palma’s used to closing cities, and you’re telling us we can only have six parking bays!’. “I asked for the chance to persuade them, and asked what they wanted to do. They reeled off this list which included blowing up a car outside of St Paul’s Cathedral and staging a car chase round the Houses of Parliament. I could see the borough people
Photo above: The founding director of the London Film Commission, Christabel Albery.
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