Shepperton Studios
The Shepperton Studios are a movie studio in Shepperton . It is one of the most historically important studios in the UK and is still in operation. Films such as The Way Up (1958), Alien (1979), Gandhi (1982), The Crying Game (1992) and Life (2017) were made here.
The beginnings
In 1931 Norman Loudon , a Scottish businessman, bought the Littleton Park estate and 240,000 square meters of land on the Ash River in Shepperton. Loudon had no experience in the movie business, but he had a thriving company called Flicker Productions that made photographic flip books. Loudon decided that Littleton Park would be a great place to expand into film production and founded a new company in 1932, Sound City Film Producing & Recording Studios . In the same year the studios produced three short films for MGM and two feature films, Watch Beverly and Reunion City .
At the end of 1934 the demand for the studio area was so great that it had to be expanded on a large scale. After the renovation, the studio was reopened in 1936, now with seven production halls, twelve editing rooms , 3 cinemas, a warehouse for production design and workshops. The main building was now run as a hotel and restaurant.
Probably the best-known Shepperton film from this period is French Without Tears (1939), a Terence Rattigan film adaptation with a screenplay by Anatole de Grunwald .
Special tasks in World War II
At the outbreak of World War II, Shepperton was rated a safe place by the War Department, as it is 14 miles from central London . It was overlooked that a few kilometers beyond the Ash, the Vickers-Armstrong factory produced Spitfires and Wellington bombers - a primary target for the German Air Force. The film work was interrupted again and again by bomb alarms, and sometimes wrongdoers fell on the studio premises. After the factory was actually hit, the War Department hired Shepperton Studios. The set designers now made imitations of airplanes, cannons and even airstrips that were used in North Africa to deceive the German reconnaissance.
After the war
In 1945, Norman Loudon announced the reopening of the studio, although he intended to retire from the film industry within 12 months. In the same year Sir Alexander Korda ended his brief association with MGM and bought London Film Productions. London Film acquired a controlling interest in British Lion Films, and in 1946 a 74% majority in Sound City (Films) Limited and the Shepperton studio for £ 380,000. The company's new name was now British Lion Studio Company . It became a determining factor in English post-war film.
One of the first films to be made in Shepperton under the new direction was an Oscar Wilde adaptation, An Ideal Husband (1947), produced and directed by Alexander Korda. During the 1940s, Korda managed to secure a long-term film grant loan of £ 3 million from the National Film Finance Corporation (NFFC). However, by the 1950s, the losses were so great that in 1954 the NFFC called the loans and appointed a bankruptcy trustee . In 1955 the insolvent company became the new British Lion Films Limited.
British Lion Films
The main function of the new company was not the production of films, but rather film distribution and financial guarantees for independent film producers. Several filmmakers were represented on its board of directors, such as Roy and John Boulting , Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat , all of whom also made films for the studio. In the 50s, films were made here that were more likely to be seen as auteur films than those of the earlier period under the strong dominance of Korda.
Richard Attenborough and Bryan Forbes with their production company Beaver Films introduced a new method of pre-financing - fees were only paid after the film was released. It managed to make films like The Angry Silence (1960) for only £ 97,000. Bryan Forbes shot from his own book The L-Shaped Room (1962), produced by Attenborough and James Woolf . Both are examples of films dealing with the changing social and economic climate in England in the 1950s. Realism became the catchphrase of the New Wave in British film. Room At The Top (1958), directed by Jack Clayton or A Kind Of Loving (1962), Billy Liar (1963) and Darling (1965), all by John Schlesinger , fall into this genre .
In early 1961, British Lion and Columbia Pictures jointly founded BLC-Films, which was to take over the marketing for both companies' films in Great Britain. BLC Films existed until 1967.
In 1963, British Lion Ltd. announced that they had repaid £ 600,000 of the government loan.
sale
Despite the partial repayment, the government decided in 1964 to privatize the company and sold it to a group led by Michael Balcon . Income plummeted in the first year and Lord Goodman replaced Balcon . Despite the difficult circumstances, further successful films were produced, including two Pink Panther films and The Day Of The Jackal (1973) by Fred Zinnemann .
In October 1973, a live concert by the band Genesis was recorded in the Shepperton Studios . The film, shot on 16 mm material, was long lost and was bought and digitally restored a few years ago by a group of Genesis fans. The resulting DVD Shepperton the 16mm film is mainly distributed in Genesis fan circles.
In 1978 the rock group The Who shot the concert scenes for the documentary The Kids Are Alright in Shepperton . This was the last live appearance of drummer Keith Moon , who died that same year. Richard Attenborough's most famous films were made here: Young Winston (1972), Gandhi (1982), Cry Freedom (1987) and Chaplin (1992). 1978-79 Ridley Scott shot his somewhat different science fiction film Alien (1979) in great secrecy .
In 1984 Lee International took over the studio for £ 3.6 million and invested in renovations and new workshops that were built in 1987.
It was during this period that the Company of Wolves (1984), A Passage To India (1984) and Kenneth Branagh's first production, Henry V (1989) were made. In the 1990s, Neil Jordan's Oscar winner The Crying Game (1992), Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) and The Madness of King George (1994) were created here.
Acquisition of Shepperton Studios
In January 1995 the brothers Scott, Ridley and Tony took over Shepperton. In 2001, Pinewood Studios , famous for the James Bond films, bought the studio to attract budget productions. Both studios want to keep their identity despite the merger, although they are run together.
In 2004, one share of Pinewood-Shepperton was launched in London. In 2005 Teddington Studios was bought. Together, the studios now have 41 production halls, including 6 digital television studios, audio post-production, cinemas, grounds for outdoor recordings, one of Europe's largest outdoor water tanks and a hall for underwater recordings.
In the 2010s, several large-scale productions were filmed at Marvel Studios in Shepperton, including Thor - The Dark Kingdom , Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Age of Ultron .
Web links
- Official website of Shepperton Studios
Coordinates: 51 ° 24 '24.8 " N , 0 ° 27' 54.6" W.