Save The British Film Industry.Com

Property Developers Buy Yet Another Film Studio In The Too Expensive FOR FILM MAKING South-East Of England Lands.

Jonathan Stuart-Brown for Save The British Film Industry.

www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com

UPDATE APRIL 23 2012. Efforts being made to save the film studio as a film studio. The Administrators have been pressured to give time for bids to keep its historic use. We will see. The bigger money bids are from non-film use in the south-east because land values in the south-east do not lend themselves to low cost manufacture which is what successful film producing always is.

After 99 years of film making Twickenham Film Studios, where the Meryl Streep movie ‘The Iron Lady’ was filmed, is being sold to property developers.

Once again it shows the idiocy of the UK Government, film quangos and many in the industry with zip vision of how big a player the UK can be in global movie-making i.e. the very very top.

Blade Runner, the great sci fi classic, was in part made at Twickenham Studios.

The main reason the UK has any film stars and film crew in employment is the vision of people who vuilt physical film studios ON CHEAP LAND in the 1920s and 30s.  In fact Twickenham was built in 1913 just one year after The Titanic sank and one year before World War 1. When England was the manufacturing world leader, the only cheap land was in the south-east. Therefore the studios were built in the south-east. This land is now no longer cheap. it is now the most expensive in Europe and The USA. So it is no longer economic to manufacture films there as opposed to other commercial use. No surprise that Twickenham like 80% of Elstree  has been sold off. The fact much of ‘The Italian Job’ was made there in the 1960s is irrelevant to 2012.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17094943

The opportunity is now to build new physical  film studios on the cheap lands the UK has in 2012. These are now in the lands which were too expensive in the 1930s but now there are Government, regional and EU grants to take them for free.

But the SOUTH EAST ONLY film quango mafia resist this at all costs to preserve a tiny elitist five star hotel first class travel lifestyle all on the public purse. They fear a genuinely big employer, big volume UK wide industry. They know once physical film studios are built outside the south-east, this will spring up as local private entrepreneurial capital is diverted from takeaways, corner shops, car washing companies, restaurants to film production.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9091171/Cherished-piece-of-film-history-lost-as-Twickenham-Film-Studios-close.html

Meanwhile Twickenham Studios, home of ‘Michael Caine’s 1960s ‘Alfie’ and ‘the Italian Job’ is gone by July. The Beatles, ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ with Albert Finney, ‘Absolute Beginners’, ‘Little Voice’ were made there. It has been used for movies such as ‘Elizabeth: The Golden Age’, ‘Sleuth’ and ‘My Week With Marilyn’, Meryl Steep Oscar nominated ‘The Iron Lady’ and was not just living on past glory. The work was available but the attraction of making immensely bigger profit from other commercial use based on sky high land values in an Olympic property bubble were too big to ignore. Pinewood Studios is taking over the work which Twickenham had already booked in.

http://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/9538838.After_99_years_of_movie_magic__Twickenham_Film_Studios_put_up_for_sale/

The rub once again is that you build film studios on cheap land NOT expensive land because the land values are not reflected in the product produced in what is a manufacturing industry. We know this description of the industry upsets many elitists who regard themselves as a branch of The Royal Family, but it is absolutely accurate. Film making (unlike theate) is just part of the manufacturing industry. We already have one excellent Royal Family and do not need another.

What we need are men of vision such as Dr Ralph Jupp, Julius Hagen and Lesley Hiscott. Between them they saw an ice rink which had seen far better days and turned it into the biggest film studio in the Empire until the others came along twenty years later. The later ones were inspired by their lead and pioneering success.

It survived a bomb in 1939. It had nearly got through 99 years but the fact is that the places in the UK to build film sound stages are no longer inside or next to the M25 (London boundary). It is on cheap land, usually former factory land with high rooves, sound proof walls and great electricity supply.

http://www.twickenhamstudios.com/

http://www.hollywood.com/news/British_film_studio_in_administration/17779995

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/london-s-twickenham-film-studio-292787

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/twickenham-film-studios-to-close/

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/twickenham-film-studios-in-administration-after-692202

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104187/Iron-Lady-studio-close-Twickenham-Film-Studios-falls-administration.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

So farewell to Twickenham, just like Bray Studios and just like 80% of Elstree Studios, the sale of south-east land for shops, offices and houses was too lucrative to refuse for property developer owners. Do not think that Pinewood and Shepperton can not follow suit. They are owned by property developers who – legitimately – can see that the land is always going to be worth more than the film studio facility for hire business. It is just built on land too expensive to ignore the commercial alternative.

A Government Preservation Order would be ideal, but it does not exist.

Gerald Krasner of Begbies Traynor, the UK’s leading business rescue, recovery and restructuring specialist, is dealing with the sale of Twickenham. How long before they are dealing with Pinewood, Shepperton and Teddington ?

By the way, the last line of this is well worth reading.

Louise Jury of The Evening Standard deserves full marks for calling up The British Film Institute.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-24036752-loss-making-film-studio-faces-closure.do

Jonathan Stuart-Brown

www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com