Pinewood & Shepperton – the best of times

One of the success stories of the British film industry – if by British film industry we mean all the commercial activity involving movies in the UK, rather than specifically British films – is the film studio organisation  known as the Pinewood Group, which incorporates the long-established studio spaces at Pinewood and Shepperton. In recent years, productions ranging from Les Miserables to Prometheus have been shot at Pinewood, and the biggest blockbusters of all, the James Bond and Star Wars movies, continue to be made within their cavernous buildings. In fact the current projects in both of those franchises have helped the group achieve record levels of income – Guardian report.

This prompts a number of questions for the alert film student, including this central topic of discussion: to what extent is the success of the studio good for UK films and filmmaking?

Welles’ season at the BFI and Too Much Johnson

18 months before Citizen Kane, there was Too Much Johnson, a 66-minute silent film that was made for inclusion within one of Welles’ Mercury Theatre productions. The only existing copy was believed to have been lost in a fire at Welles’ home in 1970, but within the last decade a further print of this ‘lost film’ was unearthed and its restoration has now led to a Blu-ray/DVD release in the UK (distributor: Bongo Films). Clearly not meant for theatrical release originally, Too Much Johnson has nonetheless provoked plenty of interest in those looking for evidence of the fledgling Welles style. The fact that Joseph Cotton – Kane’s long-time friend Jedediah Leland in Citizen Kane – plays the central role has added to the urge to draw comparisons between the two films. Here’s a smattering of some of the coverage:

American Society of Cinematographers website

Film Comment article

The film will also be screened as part of the Orson Welles season about to begin at BFI Southbank. ‘Orson Welles: The Great Disruptor’ runs throughout July and August, with subsequent screenings of some of the films in the provinces. A jewel among jewels in the new season is Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles a freshly complied documentary. It promises to explore ‘the enigma of his career as a Hollywood star, a Hollywood director (for some a Hollywood failure), and a crucially important independent filmmaker’.

The future of movies – some new speculation

Worth a read is Fred Wagner’s article in Thursday’s Guardian:

From Netflix to full immersion: how the future of cinema lies in our handhelds

There have been many predictions of a fundamental change in the shape and form of movies, although we’ve got to 2015 and the 90 minute feature film, established as a standard movie form in the 1910s, still sails on. Wagner notes ‘at some point we can probably expect a splintering of the industry’ as different audiences orientate to different media forms, but the existing multiplicity of platforms, also evident with the music industry, suggests to me that they will co-exist for some time yet.

Amy, characterisation and the ‘responsibilities’ of documentary film

The brewing controversy over the release of Asif Kapadia’s new Amy Winehouse film brings the question of documentary ‘truth’ and accuracy into focus. Winehouse’s father Mitch is threatening legal action because of the way he feel that he and the dead singer’s family have been represented. ‘Characterisation’ is an interesting idea in the context of documentary, where narrative is created by the assemblage of material, and the characters are played by themselves, so to speak, in clips from the archives. A sense of character is achieved by what material is chosen and how it is edited and presented. Kapadia’s excellent earlier documentary on Ayrton Senna had, for example, hinted at the driver’s playboy lifestyle without emphasising it, perhaps showing some sensitivity towards his and his family’s devout Catholicism. Amy is a franker treatment of its subject matter, advancing the nature of her parents’ break-up as a defining point in Winehouse’s troubled life. How much freedom should a documentary filmmaker have in his or her depiction of people’s lives? A lawsuit is threatened in this case, and legal action tends to be an occupational hazard of the documentarian. The Law School of the University of Pennsylvania has an on-going blog devoted to the relationship between documentary filmmaking and the law.

Of course, fiction films also depict real people, often those still alive or those whose death and legacy are contentious. Mark Zuckerberg found David Fincher’s The Social Network to be a ‘hurtful’ misrepresentation, although no legal threat materialised. Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin recognised that ‘the movie was clearly intended to be entertainment and not a fact-based documentary’, although he may be more likely to be understanding of the film’s liberties given the sympathetic treatment he receives in the film. Dramatised ‘fictions’, with their disclaimer notices and the ‘artistic license’ they plead for, are usually seen to be fundamentally different to the documentary. But celluloid portraits of flesh-and-blood characters will always provoke arguments over their fidelity to the truth, whatever that may be.

Film matters at RGS

Cineaste (noun): A person who is fond of or knowledgeable about the cinema.

This is a new site for film students, filmmakers and film fans at Newcastle Royal Grammar School.

Here you’ll find news stories, opinion, exam and syllabus matters, students’ work (films and writing).

Welcome!