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MADE IN WALES
There used to be some very peppy, and oft-imitated, advertisements extolling the virtues of doing busi- ness in Wales. Nowadays they could do a lot worse than send ebullient produc- er David Ball on a promotional tour to sing the praises of the Principality. Ball, 52, founder and head of the Cardiff-based production and services company, CF1 (the name is simply based on his postcode after moving to the Welsh capital three years ago), has the zeal of a convert.
Admittedly, his father originated from South Wales but, for more than a quarter of a
century, Ball’s
spiritual
home was
Pinewood
Studios from
where, as a
troubleshoot-
ing freelance
producer, he
would set off
from leafy
Bucks for for-
eign climes
like Mexico, Namibia and Macedonia.
Now such exotic geography is plainly secondary to his new base: “Cardiff is 30 per cent cheaper than London, there’s a plethora of locations, super hotels and the emergency ser- vices are endlessly helpful,” he purred.
“Also,” and this was where Ball’s eyes narrowed to a slit, “I’d pitch my current ‘A’ list crew in Cardiff against the highest-paid Hollywood crew. If we were doing the same movie, we’d do it quicker, better... and cheaper,” he added, defying you to disagree.
Since setting up for business, CF1 has been involved in a string of pro- ductions and co-productions including the bingo comedy, House!, a rites-of- passage drama called The Testimony Of Taliesen Jones, a claustrophobic chiller Alone and a medieval thriller, Anazapta. More of those, and CF1’s prolific future plans later.
What first wooed him to Wales? “I was invited to produce Up ‘N’ Under because none of the other producers were bondable. I was shown this impossible budget and told them they couldn’t do that film for the money. They then showed me all the con- tracts, and I was amazed. ‘Okay, we’ll have a go,’ I said, adding that I worked ‘teams and not egos.’ In fact, every- thing went swimmingly well and I made a lot of new friends.
Up ‘N’ Under, writer-director John Godber’s comedy about rugby, had Wales successfully doubling for Yorkshire. Ball’s next assignment made this degree of stand-in seem
positively mundane. “The
people at PolyGram asked me if I’d do Last Seduction 2, tobesetin Mexico. I looked at the script, broke it all down, and
did a budget and schedule. I’d forgot- ten all about it when, about a month later, the producer called me saying that Linda Fiorentino, the star of the original film, didn’t want to do a sequel.
“So now they want to do it as a straight-to-video for fourpence half- penny. I told them, ‘I can do it but have two demands: First, I have to shoot it in Cardiff. Secondly, you must leave me alone and let me get on with it because there’s no time for artistic whims.’ I also suggested they keep the Latin ‘feel’ by relocating the story to Barcelona.
“The result was four days of loca- tions in Barca with everything else after in Cardiff which included New York and London Docklands exteriors as well as Barcelona interiors. We shot the whole thing in 29 days, and by four o’clock on the final day we’d nothing left to shoot and were embarrassingly
under budget. If you can spot me the join where it isn’t New York, then show me. It was bloody clever, and done for nothing,” said Ball.
So on the back of all that, CFI was formed with Ball’s then pregnant part- ner, Eliane, one of the founding mem- bers as head of development along with financial controller John Davies and facilities man Jon Wilkin, as well as Ball himself, an accountant by training.
“When Eliane suggested we move to Wales, I said ‘yes’ very quickly because I’d already gone grey with corrupt bondsmen and the like. We saw early on that Cardiff was more user-friendly and much less stressful, not to mention having a great deal of potential as a film production base.”
The present and future of CFI are somehow inextricably linked with the experienced past of Ball whose colour-
ful global adventures in the film trade would fill a book – ranging from Creepshow and The Curse Of The Crystal Eye (“which would cost me a home and a marriage”) to Dust Devil and Welcome To Sarajevo (“our plane leaves on August 21 and you’ve got to have the film in the can not one day later,” he warned director Michael Winterbottom).
It’s probably fair to say that noth- ing could faze him these days. An early test came with The Testimony Of Taliesen Jones, co-starring Jonathan Pryce, the late Ian Bannen and young- ster JP Macleod, which had to be dras- tically re-edited after the first assembly.
“The film had been the dream of the American producer Ben Goddard and it hadn’t been delivered at first. I told Ben he must walk away for six weeks and that ‘Trust me, I will give
Photos: inset left (l-r):John Davies, Rick Wakeman, Phil Claydon, David Ball, Peter Thornton on the set of Alone; main: still from House!; and right, stills from House!, The Testimony of Taliesen Jones, Anazapta and David Ball talking with Larry DeWaay.
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