Page 23 - Film Facilities & Studios Almanac_ok

Kevin Moriarty Managing Director
Photo left: The indomitable Peter Ustinov and inset above: A film studio setting to quench the sternest of thirsts.
studio facilities
ADVANCING ARDMORE
Celebrating more than 40 years of film-making in the Wicklow Hills
W ithin a ten mile radius of Ireland’s Ardmore Studios there are mountains, moorland, forests, lakes, rivers and beaches. Just a 20- minute drive away - or, if you prefer, a more leisurely coastal jaunt on the transit railway - is the
throbbing capital city of Dublin.
No wonder then that Ardmore, at the foot of the rolling Wicklow Hills, con- tinues to be such a lure for international film-makers beguiled not just by the range of in-house facilities, including five sound stages, and nearby locations to die for but also an imaginative tax
incentive policy.
And though a slight question mark
currently hovers unnervingly over the
long-term future of that Government ini-
tiative, Ardmore itself shows no sign of
a very healthy present roster of production ranging from full length features and television series to com- mercials and the ever present music video promos.
No-one knows better about the typical va-et- vient of a studio facility than Kevin Moriarty, who has been running Ardmore for the past nine years. In fact, he’s been connected on and off with the studios for almost quarter of a century ever since returning to
his native Ireland in 1974 after a spell in London at the producers’ association.
Moriarty, an accountant by training, has been around long enough to see Ardmore evolve through various guises from its one time status as The National Studios Of Ireland to brief Hollywood own- ership under the aegis of the once all-conquering MTM (as in Mary Tyler Moore) production company, behind shows like Hill Street Blues and St Elsewhere.
Nowadays it’s Irish owned once more with three shareholders: Paul McGuiness, manager of the rock band U2, financial adviser Ossie Kilkenny alias “accountant to the stars”, and Enterprise Ireland, a state venture cap- ital company.
Says Moriarty: “When I became chief executive [and later managing director] in 1990, Ardmore was pri- marily just a facility company.
“You are then as good or bad as the current production environment which inevitably ebbs and flows.” In that period, the studio paid host to films like The Commitments, Far And Away, Into The West and In The Name Of The Father.
Then the new tax incentives burst on the scene in 1993, partly in response to lobbying by industry
groups including the likes of Moriarty.
“Once we had that political initiative there was
an altogether better financial environment. Through 1994, 1995 and 1996 there was a whole range of pro- duction activity from major movies like Braveheart to miniseries such as The Old Curiosity Shop. We were very busy and it was a golden period.
“With that level of activity it also meant you could more easily justify capital development. In fact continued over
flagging with