Page 37 - FILM STUDIOS CROPPED

Photo left: Elstree’s famous Vampire gals - can you name them? inset top: Head Of Studios Neville Reid inset centre: HRH Prince Charles at the recent opening of the new sound stages at Elstree.
studio facilities
BORN AGAIN
BORN AGAIN
ELSTREE
ELSTREE
The British film studio that stubbornly refuses to give up the ghosts.
A fter its recent chequered history, there were many pessimists who thought Elstree Film Studios, one time home of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars series, would never rise again let alone become once more a thriving,
vibrant facility.
Ten years ago Elstree was sold to
Brent Walker and eventually became a crumbling ruin. Even the backdrop to the famous outdoor tank where films like Moby Dick and Never Say Never Again had been shot in yester- year was sold off.
Yet today, thanks to the dogged determination of a borough council and some hard-working, perceptive individuals, Elstree has been refur- bished as a modern film studio all over again ready to attract main- stream, big-budget films.
Two new self contained 15,700
square feet sound proof stages have
just been officially opened by Prince
Charles. The number of speciality
facility houses on site - which had
been reduced to a paltry two under
previous management - has risen to 35. The restau- rant, a franchise operation, has been restored and the number who can sit down for meals is now back to the level available during the heyday of the studios.
Just four people, led by the quietly-spoken Neville Reid, now run the studios from the Andrew Mitchell administration block. Mitchell was the popular Scot who supervised the studios when it was attracting talent like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. He died just after the new Elstree regime was in place but lived long enough to know
his beloved studios had been saved from the bull- dozers. “The saving of Elstree was a good case of democracy working,” says Reid. “There was a strong feeling in the community to keep the stu- dios open. They gave a lot of employment to local people and at one time were a key part of British Hollywood. That certainly influenced the council.”
From that moment on, Hertsmere Borough Council was in a legal battle that went all the way to the High Court in order to prevent earth-moving vehicles rolling in to begin their destruction.
The vociferous campaign to save Elstree, a stu- dio that could boast it had produced no fewer than six of the top 10 box-office hits of all time, lasted
three years. It attracted worldwide publicity and the public contributed over 30,000 signatures to a petition. Such was the wave of intense feeling that a local public meeting attracted more than 700 people.
The end - of the new beginning - came when Brent Walker finally offered Hertsmere Council the studios for £1.9 million providing all legal action was dropped. One of the main orchestrators of the campaign, coun- cil official Paul Welch, a noted histori- an of the studios, was awarded the OBE for his efforts to save Elstree.
Neville Reid, who’d been with the council for five years, found himself at the helm of the new complex. He had no previous film experience but had been heavily involved in the legal
negotiations and the purchase of the studios in his capacity as head of the council’s property services.
Julie Wicks, a 20-year veteran of films and televi- sion, took over the marketing chores, while Paul Clark and Mike Scales became, respectively, studio facilities manager and communications manager.
Reid likens running the studios to that of a hotel: “If we don’t keep people happy we have failed,” he says. “Word of mouth means a lot in this business. If you have 100 people working on a film they go their separate ways at the end of the shoot. And they talk. Fortunately, since we got
continued on page 30
When Brent Walker bought Elstree from Cannon, it agreed to retain over 15 acres of the prime Borehamwood site as a film studio. A fur- ther 12 acres were sold off for a supermarket. Stages 1-5 and 10, the dubbing theatre and the cut- ting rooms were razed to the ground.
Although Brent Walker had agreed they would rebuild the complex and retain them as a studio for 25 years, the bombshell dropped when the problem-ridden company announced in September 1993 that it was closing the studios to maximise its potential.