Yesterday we learned that a performance project on which we had been working seriously since August will not get broadcast funding. This was to have been a television version of a thrilling production that I admired immensely in the theatre earlier in the year. Although we saw this as a continuation of our work with Hamlet (2009), Macbeth (2010) and Julius Caesar (2012), this time it was not a Shakespeare play.
When we proposed the idea the broadcaster responded with initial enthusiasm and asked the director and I to budget and schedule a screen version. We brought the cast and creatives on side, found a date that could work in everyone’s diaries and started to plan the details of the filming. But now we’ve been told that there’s not the money to make it – despite its two and a half hours bring budgeted at less than half the cost of an hour of standard television drama. Such things, of course, happen all the time, but I am struck by how rarely they are discussed, either in journalism or in academic writing – and I have been wondering quite why that should be the case. read more »
Congratulations to our colleague Keith Griffiths, producer for our sister company Illuminations Films (along with Mark Burke for Warp X) of the Peter Strickland-directed feature Berberian Sound Studio. This is Screen Daily on the film’s success last night:
Berberian Sound Studio scooped the biggest haul of trophies at the 15th British Independent Film Awards but was beaten to the Best Film prize by Rufus Norris’ drama Broken. Berberian Sound Studio won four awards including Best Director for Peter Strickland and Best Actor for Toby Jones. It also won Best Achievement in Production and Best Technical Achievement for the work of Joakim Sundstom and Stevie Haywood on the film’s sound design.
Empire has the full list of winners and nominees, and Steve Rose for the Guardian has a new interview with Toby Jones. Illuminations Films is our sister company, run by Keith and Simon Field, that specialises in producing distinctive and imaginative feature and short films, installations and multi-platform projects, both fiction and documentary; more will be revealed when the company’s parallel website goes live next month. The pressbook for Berberian Sound Studio can be found here courtesy of distributors Artificial Eye and the DVD and Blu-ray are released in the UK on 31 December. Finally, here’s the 90-second trailer:
I am indebted to Stuart Ian Burns (@feelinglistless) and his estimable Hamlet Weblog for pointing out that – remarkably – BBC Worldwide has made available in full on YouTube seven plays from The BBC Television Shakespeare. Made between 1978 and 1985, the 37 plays in this series are often dismissed as under-cast and under-rehearsed studio-bound turkeys. A number of them, however, are far richer than that – and almost all have points of interest. I am going to write further about the plays and this initiative from Worldwide, but these are links to the productions online now (and you have to put up with four or five adverts in each stream): As You Like It, The Tempest, Hamlet (above), Macbeth, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice and Othello. Across the jump are many more links from the past week, one about Shakespeare, some concerning television and many to do with neither (with H/Ts to @UCLAFTVArchive, @TylerGreenDC, @KeyframeDaily and @emmafgreen). read more »
For yesterday’s post I scribbled some notes about our filming this week for the research project Shakespearean London Theatres. With a company of nine actors we have been staging scenes from four early modern plays and filming both the rehearsals and the scenes themselves. It’s been fairly stressful and at the same time a lot of fun, and it has been particularly interesting to see (and hear) how words that may seem to a degree impenetrable on the page make perfect sense when spoken. All of this is one strand of six short films, to be completed next March, that will also feature contributions from academics and elements of archive material. Read on for further notes from Thursday, Friday and today. read more »
So, you know, what does a producer actually do? Well, judging by the paucity of posts this week, when he’s filming he certainly doesn’t have time for his blog. Since Monday we have been shooting short drama scenes for the research project Shakespearean London Theatres (ShaLT), and for this producer the past four days have included hanging an actor (intentionally and safely; see above), making a lot of coffee, finding locations, finding crew, recasting a major part with less than twenty-four hours notice, acting as a first AD, composing and sending out call sheets, explaining the project (over and over), disbursing petty cash (and collecting receipts), sourcing swords and worrying – a lot. Worrying about money, worrying about whether everyone is warm enough (they haven’t been), worrying about noise, and most of all worrying about time. Oh, and directing the films. We have one further day of rehearsals today, and then our last drama shoot tomorrow morning. So maybe now I have time to tell you a bit about what we’re doing. read more »
Time was in our house when the Advent calendar was the centre of the world right through December. But now our eldest, Nicholas, is studying at Ningbo in China (and blogging his time there), his brother Ben is reading geography at Nottingham, and even their sister Kate is in the process of putting away childish things. So forgive me if transfer my Advent attentions here with recommendations (albeit three days late) for three daily online offerings: A Bach Christmas calendar from BBC Radio 3, Sonnets for Advent from Blogging Shakespeare, and the 2012 Hubble Space Telescope Advent calendar from The Atlantic. read more »
At London’s The Photographers’ Gallery there is a compelling exhibition called Shoot! Existential Photography (until 6 January). Trouble is, the idea behind what’s not in any case a great title is a bit tricky to explain. Here’s the gallery’s set-up:
In the period following World War I, a curious attraction appeared at fairgrounds: the photographic shooting gallery. If the punter’s bullet hit the centre of the target, this triggered a camera. Instead of winning a balloon or toy, the participant would win a snapshot of him or herself in the act of shooting. Shoot! Existential Photography traces the history of this fascinating side-show – from its popular use at fairgrounds to how it fascinated many artists and intellectuals in its heyday, including Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre [that’s the two of them above], Man Ray and Lee Miller. read more »
While I have been reading (and enjoying) Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-55, a major new book by Sarah Street from BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, two key posts have appeared that render a touch redundant what I might have written. Samuel Wigley posted at the BFI an introduction to the book, A glorious adventure: colour films in Britain – with wonderful images (including the one above from the wartime docudrama Western Approaches, 1944). Then earlier this week Luke McKernan drew together numerous strands of scholarship about colour film in a major post, How colour works, with a cornucopia of additional links. So before you go any further, look up those two pieces.
What I can offer here are complementary clips culled from YouTube of eighteen British films made in colour between 1925 and 1955. These are embedded below, annotated with quotes from and thoughts about Sarah Street’s book. Read on for some vividly colourful treasures… (and wait a moment – or refresh – if the clips do not immediately appear). read more »
So keen was I – and am I – to see Phyllida Lloyd’s new production of Julius Caesar at Donmar Warehouse (until 9 February) that I booked tickets for the first preview. The production stars, among others, Harriet Walter, Frances Barber and Cush Jumbo (above, in rehearsal). That preview was to have been Thursday night, but then the team decided that they needed more time and the first preview was cancelled. So I am re-booked for 12 December and like the rest of you I have to make do with the press previews, which include Can an all-women Julius Caesar work? by the Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins; Shakespeare’s sisters force their way into the Bard’s boys’ club by Matt Trueman for the Independent; Women trouble in Evening Standard; and an interview with Harriet Walter with What’s On Stage. Meanwhile, I have been collecting other links on other stuff, and offer this week’s mid-week selection here, with thanks to @emmafgreen, @brainpicker and @UCLAFTVarchive, among others. read more »
One of the ways in which I’m keen to continue refreshing our blog is by beginning to make better use of selected – and updated – reprises from our archive. There is a good deal of interesting stuff buried away in there and each week I intend to revive an earlier post, starting today with one from May 2011 that was pegged to the opening of The Hepworth Wakefield. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects, this gallery has proved itself as a spectacular success, and until 3 February it has on show a well-received presentation of The Hospital Drawings by Barbara Hepworth. Richard Cork in the Financial Times described this as ‘a superb show’, and said that in these ‘redemptive images, the surgeons’ devotion to their tasks ends up charged by an almost sacramental significance’. read more »
