Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 192)
TUESDAY 13 MAY 2003
MR TIM
BEVAN, MR
ERIC FELLNER
AND MS
DEBRA HAYWARD
Q180 Mr Bryant: But Canal Plus in
France has played an enormous role?
Mr Fellner: Enormous, but they
have—
Mr Bevan: They are paying the
price for it at the moment unfortunately.
Mr Fellner: But a lot of it was
politically motivated.
Q181 Mr Bryant: Say more.
Mr Fellner: Well, we are not part
of the process so we cannot be absolutely 100% sure of what happens,
but in a number of meetings we had with the executives at Canal,
it was made quite clear that the Government expected them, in
a certain way, to continue their substantial investment in French
film making.
Q182 Mr Bryant: But Channel 4 seems
to have gone in the other direction?
Mr Fellner: I do not know whether
Channel 4 produced the—
Mr Bevan: Canal Plus is actually
a pay cable station. It is not a free to air broadcaster which
Channel 4 obviously is.
Mr Fellner: Because of the politics
there.
Q183 Mr Bryant: Sky Satellite has
not gone in that direction—BSkyB.
Mr Fellner: Exactly.
Q184 Chairman: Can I just interrupt
there because perhaps our witnesses can actually explain something
to me that I fail to understand which reaches a wide agenda and
that is this; there was a recent box of DVDs of classic Ealing
comedies. Those were put out by AOL Time Warner subsidiary. They
had on them, at the beginning of the movie, Canal Plus logo. How
did that come about?
Mr Fellner: Because they bought
the library that owned the Ealing films. The library was Pathé.
So that is how. Fargo goes out under MGM. MGM had nothing
to do with the making of Fargo.
Q185 Mr Bryant: One of the other
things that you referred to was British crews, British actors,
British ideas and I wondered whether, when you look at some of
the successful British films over the last decade, some of them
have been, in some sense, quintessentially British and I see now
that you are doing a film called Wimbledon. I wonder, once
you have done cucumber sandwiches and Pimms and English weddings
and funerals and once Mrs Brown and the Royal Family is
done, what other brands will there be to do?
Mr Bevan: There are a lot of place
names to go, you know. We did very well out of the first one,
Notting Hill, and we have only got as far as SW19 so—
Mr Fellner: Westminster is in
the pipeline.
Mr Bevan: But it would be very
expensive.
Ms Hayward: We actually have got
another brand in the pipeline, as it happens, which is Marathon
actually, which is about the London Marathon. But I mean we do
not consciously set out just to find what is a British brand.
It does not focus down as easily as that really.
Q186 Mr Bryant: But British actors
and British crews, what is the unique selling part of that?
Mr Bevan: Well, if we can use
British crew on a picture, we will. On bigger movies it always
comes down to cost and what we have discovered on the bigger films
is that we can be very competitive with anywhere around the world
simply because we have as good, if not better, technicians and
we can get through things quicker. We have a fantastic visual
effects world here which I think is absolutely part of the future
of British film. There are several companies in England which
are on the cutting edge of visual effects.
Q187 Mr Bryant: But we have had some
people before us worrying about whether we will still be able
to say the same about our technical competence in 10 or 15 years
time and you were saying something about—
Mr Bevan: I would not agree with
that at all. For instance, I am working on this picture Thunderbirds
at the moment which has several hundred visual effects shots,
all of which have been by Frame Store which is a British fairly
mature company, it is 20 odd years old now and I would say that
they are on the verge of being really well competitive in terms
of they do big sequences from all of the Hollywood pictures that
you see and Thunderbirds is the first film that they have
done entirely. But that is a big success story, that company,
and that ain't changing.
Q188 Mr Bryant: Several of the original
Thunderbird marionettes are in a cupboard in Ferndale in
the Rhondda by the way.
Mr Fellner: No, the American companies
are starting to use the British effects companies not just because
they represent better value but also they have better ideas, the
sequences they do in the films are better. They are really, really
good technicians and artists.
Q189 Mr Bryant: Could I just ask
one other question which is; the process of making a film relies
on an awful lot of co-operation on location from local authorities,
from other organisations. Is Britain good at that or not as good
as it might be?
Mr Bevan: It is getting better.
It is definitely something that we have had problems with in the
past, but we have had a run of pretty large movies that we have
made here recently, for instance Johnny English which has
just been out in the theatres; there is a big car chase in central
London and we had a great deal of help on that. And in fact, the
final sequence for Thunderbirds is a huge sequence that
just happens right outside these windows, as it happens, and there
are something like 19 authorities working with us on that and
they have been very co-operative.
Q190 Chairman: On that, when we conducted
our previous inquiry eight years ago, we recommended then that
the Film Commission system should be enhanced and it clearly has
not been, from what you say. Whereas in the United States and
Canada, for example, the number of films supposedly set in New
York City and United States cities and actually filmed in Canada
or in other cities and states in the United States are a tremendous
tribute to the Film Commission system there. Again, can you tell
us what you think we ought to do here? We did make this recommendation—
Mr Bevan: I think that there is
a direct link between tourism and what we do. The fact of the
matter is that on these big movies, where they do several hundred
million dollars around the world, that represents a lot of people
going to see these pictures and an aggressive Film Commission—because
the London Film Commission sort of enables you—what it does
not do terribly effectively is solicit movies to come here, I
think, which is what the American and Australian and Canadian
Film Commissions tend to do because they realise that tourism
and getting a big sequence in a movie are directly compatible.
So I guess it is something that is worth backing and proposing
that it has a bit more money and is a little bit more aggressive
and all the rest of it.
Q191 Chairman: Why are we so slow
on this, do you think?
Mr Fellner: There was a meeting
that your colleague, Dr Howes, arranged just recently. He arranged
a meeting to get all of these bodies together and to talk about
how they could co-operate more co-operatively and it was the first
time, I think, that somebody had actually tried to make that happen
and hopefully from that things will happen and London will be
easier to shoot in. But as Tim said, to do one sequence just down
the river and then to the Square here—18, 19 different organisations
you are dealing with and the New York Film Commission has had
years and years and years of experience of corralling all the
different authorities. They have got their own police force, they
have worked it all out and as a result, for a film maker, it is
one stop shopping. You go there, they then arrange everything
to happen—if you want to shoot on Fifth Avenue or Central
Park, whatever. And I think that if Dr Howes and others are serious
about making it work, then hopefully in three or four years time
it will be just as easy to film in London. But you are right,
it does take a commitment to make that work.
Q192 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. Enormously helpful and a great privilege to have you here.
Mr Bevan: Thank you.
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