Page 8 - Fujifilm Exposure_9 Love's Labour's Lost_ok

DREAM FACTORY
DREAM FACTORY
PeakviewingtaP aul gets to do all the fun stuff and I do all the boring stuff,” laughs Elizabeth Matthews, chief executive of Peakviewing. “He gets to go out and make the films - and I have to pay the bills!” Elizabeth and her brother Paul set-up their Gloucester-based produc- tion company, Peakviewing, in 1991 with an eye to producing TV movies for the US cable and syn- dication market. A West Country based studio selling films to the Americans? You’d think that was a daft idea, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong, though. In eight years, Peakviewing have gone from strength to strength. They’ve produced ten films, created a studio in South Africa, estab- lished a distribution arm and are just about to branch into feature films. Their latest TV movie, the fantasy adventure Merlin 2000 - The Return, had a budget of $15,000,000 and boasts a cast including the likes of Rik Mayall, Patrick
Bergin, Adrian Paul and Tia Carrere.
“Basically, we’re now up to four productions a
year,” explains Elizabeth. “By the end of next year, we’d like to be up to six, at which point we’d also like to be acquiring product for distribution... we now have about 18 full time employees, most of whom are production based, but obviously we have our own in-house sales team so that we can make, develop and then sell all our own films.”
The Matthews and their company make for a fascinating success story. When they created Peakviewing, Elizabeth was the one with all the film-making experience, having just spent five years working for the US company Consolidated Productions. Paul, on the other hand, was some- thing of a novice and was working as a concrete moulder at the time.
Somewhat jokingly, Elizabeth talks about it being her job to “nurture” Paul’s talent. Whatever
kes on the world at movie making...
the reason, Paul swiftly turned into an accom- plished writer and director: he’s written or co-writ- ten all of their films and directed five since his debut with Grim in 1995 (“A very grim experi- ence,” remembers Elizabeth. “We gave ourselves three weeks to shoot in a cave with no money to do it with. Talk about a learning curve ...”).
“Our first project was a joint venture between All American Television and S4C,” says Elizabeth, “A family film called The Christmas Stallion, it was dual-language, English and Welsh.” Written by Paul and starring Daniel J Travanti of Hill Street Blues fame, the 1992 film established a pattern which most future dual-language productions have fol- lowed: the lead actor, in this case Travanti, speak- ing a phonetic version of his Welsh lines so that an actual Welsh-speaking actor could overdub him later and it would still lip-synch.
The company continued to make dual lan- guage films over the next few years - The Christmas Reunion, starring Edward Woodward and James Coburn; and The Proposition, with Theresa Russell and Patrick Bergin. But they also branched out into other areas. Grim and Deadly Instincts (with Samantha Janus) were forays into the horror market, while 1993’s Guns Of Honour, a four hour western mini-series starring Martin Sheen, Jurgen Prochnow and Corbin Bernsen, took the company to South Africa to film for the first time.
South Africa has now become a second home for the company. All four films they’ve made since 1997 The Fairy King Of Ar, The Last Leprechaun, The Little Unicorn and Merlin 2000 - The Return have been shot there and last year, Peakviewing established a permanent 6000 square foot studio complex near Johannesburg. There they’ve teamed up with a South African director to work on a new departure for the com-
Photos from top: Rik Mayall in Merlin 2000 - The Return; scene from The Proposition
the Alien in Deadly Instincts; David Warner in The Last Leprechaun; scene from Merlin 2000 - The Return
EXPOSURE • 8 & 9