Save The British Film Industry.Com

THE VISION TO CREATE OVER  OVER 250 000 (manufacturing) FILM INDUSTRY JOBS IN THE UK.

Until 2000 Pinewood Studios, Shepperton Studios and Teddington Studios were healthily competing companies. They policed each others claims in the media and to the UK Government Departments. Furthermore, neither Pinewood nor Shepperton could quit The UK while the others remained. However, now they have been merged into one company to have a near total monopoly of UK film and TV production (from James Bond to Dragon’s Den). This can only be in The British Public Interest if the studios are required to remain in The UK employing British based workers. This is why The Government should intervene and buy a golden share if they can not persuade the Board and  leading  shareholder John Whittaker of Peel Pegasus to agree to this volountarily if 10 000 acres of UK lands and EU monies  are thrown in the pot. Lands across the UK no-one wants and no-one will use to employ anyone.

John Whittaker of Peel Pegasus looks like he will have control of the company by Thursday June 23 but thereafter he could lawfully sell it if a much higher offer was made by any third party.

Then the he new owners could stop all film and TV production within 24 minutes let alone 24 hours. They can lawfully switch from film factory for hire TO car parks, houses, warehouses, windmills, nuclear power plant, whatever they deem more profitable.

They can just sell the land as a brown field site. Then sell the global brand names Pinewood Studios and Shepperton Studios to a Chinese, Libyan, French, South African company.

Pinewood Shepperton is no different to HP Sauce and can go the same way, unless The Government intervenes urgently to address this threat.

The Government blocks obscure minor works of art leaving The UK providing countless millions to do so. Often under 1% of The UK had ever heard of these works of art.

Losing the 75 year heitage of films made at Pinewood Studios and losing Shepperton Studios to China, Malaysia, South Africa, Libya, is much more important than all these minor works of art put together.

SAVE THE BRITISH FILM INDUSTRY.com urge The Government to seize the moment to make the UK the greatest nation for film making infrastructure, investment, employment and opportunity. This can become a much greater wealth creater and employer across The UK very quickly. It can by 2015 ie the next election ..grab over 50% of all film and TV production financed by Hollywood Studios, European and Far East  film and TV companies. All sitting MPs might want a piece of this job creater on their doorstep.

This can generate an annual inward investment in The UK of over £25 000 million pounds, yes £25 billion,  and eventually create over 250 000 jobs based in Britain. Most of these are blue collar and white collar for which most people who have worked in manufacturing, administration, IT, marketing and sales can rapidly retrain.

The Pinewood Plan was to build twenty sets which would significantly cut the cost and time (as well as carbon emissions) of making a film or TV production set  any combination of  Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Venice, New York, Chicago,  New Orleans, Lake Como, San Francisco, etc

Relocated in  Wiltshire,  Oxfordshire, The West Midlands, The Black Country, Staffordshire…then  Pinewood Studios could build over 200 sets in different sites between Swindon and Coventry and Stoke including permanent sci-fi, ancient Rome, ancient Egypt with pyramids, Lagos, Bogota, Medieval Castle, Western, North Pole, Hong Kong, Dubai, Tripoli, Berlin, Munich, Moscow, St Petersberg, Madrid, Barcelona, Naples, Milan, Florence, Osaka, Mexico City, Rio de Janiro, Las Vegas, Miami, Marseille, Vienna, Zurich, Stockholm, Tokyo, Beijing, Mumbai, Dehli, Lahore, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Cairo, underwater sets, The Moon, Mars, Medieval Japan, dinosaur sets, etc. This would enable any film or TV investors in every nation and in every language to transfer production to The UK and to film much cheaper, much faster and to a much higher quality all in one site.

This can be constantly expanded around The UK by building more infrastructure at every ten miles or so until it stretches from Scotland to Cornwall.

No other country would have this integrated infrastructure.

This concentration of work in The UK would lead to technological and R&D advances which would (like CGI, blue screen, green screen) increase the quality of the film making while reducing the cost.

Moreover, by marrying the UK film industry skill and talent to the supreme Wiltshire,  Oxfordshire,West Midland, North-West manufacturing savvy, know-how and inventiveness, there will be rapid technological and assembly leaps. There will be a symbiotic synergy. A quantum leap.

The West Midlands, North West, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire have a super abundance of suitable and inexpensive industrial land, blue collar high skilled workers now enduring unemployment, and a regional hunger to share in the glamour and heritage of The Pinewood Studios and Shepperton Studios global brand names.

In the West Midlands alone, the NEC, Longbridge, the discarded Jaguar and Landrover magnificent factories, indeed anywhere in Stoke, Walsall, Coventry , Dudley, Birmingham , Lichfield , will gratefully house this ambitious expansion as Pinewood Studios 2.

James Bond being partly filmed in the West Midlands (with Pinewood Studios proposed new permanent sets for Paris , Venice , New York , Lake Como , New Orleans , Amsterdam , San Francisco , Rome, ), Star Wars, Indiana Jones will energise this West Midland region of high unemployment and media infrastructure malnutrition.

This will create an embryo of unique film factory  infrastructure from the South East to the Midlands to the BBC new centres in Media City in Salford, Manchester and Cardiff . In future years this can expand out from Wiltshire and The West Midlands and create integrated film and TV factory infrastructure from Cornwall,Devon, Somerset, Dorset to Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, North Wales, The East of England to The North of Scotland . Britain will have a unique infrastructure lead in a global creative employer.

As with canals, trains, motorways, Britain will again lead the world in the key infrastructure of the age.

Jonathan Stuart-Brown                                                                                                                                                    www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com