Working Title Trip

Dear Blog

5:50am: I woke up, it was incredibly early, and I was very tired.

5: 57am: I had a shower and as a dried my hair I smacked my head against the ceiling. Ow. I then recover and get dressed.

6:10am: I go downstairs and have breakfast, Kellogs Crunchy Nut® as per usual.

6:17am: I walk down the road and wait for Miss Purser. I wait for 7 minutes and still no car. I hope she hasn’t forgotten, that could prove problematic.

6:25am: Miss Purser turns up finally and we go to college with a near death count of: 1 Pigeon.

7:45am: We get on the bus and I find a seat at the back not much leg room quite disappointing.

11:30ish am: Arrive at Working Title Pictures and greeted by Deborah Hayward. She led us to a theatre room where we talked to Tim Bevan. At first he described the role of Working Title in the film industry, All funding for staff and development of the projects comes from Universal Pictures their partner companies. WT often have over 50 projects “on the slate” at any one time and make averagely produce 3-4 pictures a year.

One of the first things he said was “Film is big big f@*£ing business.” This was in response to a question about piracy and what was being done about it. He said that they were looking into a new type of online film viewing service which reasonably priced could help the film industry with the issue of piracy.

He talked about what it was like working between films of two very different styles which was entertaining but occasionally had difficulties.

He talked about his favourite part of the process being both at the start of the production when the script has been written the cast are all on board and until that moment the film has the possibility to be the best film…until it starts.

We then talked to Sarah Jane Wright who was in charge of production, and one of the projects that is being worked on at the moment is Anna Karenina a film with a budget of around £17,000,000. She talked about how they need to be able to keep the cost down so instead of lying all over the world and doing the scenes on location, they filmed in Hungary. Hungary has the ability to look like many places across the world, for instance they can film in Budapest for scenes that take place in Italy or London. Also there is up to a 20% tax rebate in Hungary if the filming costs are kept under £20,000,000. So again this makes it much cheaper to film.

We also talked to Steve Hally. He has been in charge of the theatre room we were in for 16 years. And it was interesting as he has seen the change that had occurred over the time he was there from 16mm film to digital, and when instead of spools and reels of film he has to now use a computer to play these films.

We then got a chance to talk to one of the interns called Harriet Spencer (No second name was provided) who talked about how she first discovered she wanted to be in either film of theatre at university. She took a year off and became involved in different parts of the film industry, but afterwards applied for a job as a runner at Working Title and after a month’s unpaid work she was offered a full time job there and has been working on research recently for new television programmes which are being released or “Ones to watch”. I felt the information was useful because becoming involved in film as a career is something that interests me.

1:15pm: We left the studios after an impromptu and very entertaining talk by the writer of Borat, Bruno and Ali G. Who spoke of slightly strange and nostalgic times working on set. I got chicken teriyaki for lunch, it was quite expensive but I was full after and it tasted great.

1:30pm: We realised we were lost in the depths on London, scared and worried we had no way out. So Johnny asked for directions.

2:15pm: We arrived at the Wallace Collection and had to wait for teachers who were slightly late (tut-tut). We walked around looking at paintings and the underlying messages from them. Also trying on armour along the way.

3:10pm: After trying to make friends with some locals we discovered the natural hostility that somewhere like Hackney provoked. We were attacked from the left flank and had to defend ourselves, our main defence was to close the curtains but after realising that a traffic jam was impeding out escape we had to take the beating even after some pillow fumbling issues and some unnecessary provocation they launched a second attack, after a high speed chase and a high dosage of paranoia we were safe.

7:40pm: We returned to college, battered and bruised but alive, we did lose some good people that day but they shall never be forgotten.