Bristol to Glasgow

by Fi_Francombe on 01-Jan-09 14:15

It was a rude reminder of the life I thought I’d left behind when I got an office job.  The start of a 17 hour day but one that had no prospect of a caterers’ breakfast, parking vehicles, checking honey-wagons had toilet paper or any crew to banter with.  Instead I was heading for the quarterly meeting of my opposite numbers from the other 8 UK screen agencies, which was this time to be held in Glasgow (hence the early start.)

I caught the 07.00 Easyjet from Bristol to Glasgow, and landed in snow.  The runway was open, but snow ploughs were standing-by and just after we landed another runway inspection was done.  The airport bus got me to the centre of Glasgow; time for a coffee and a croissant and then into the meeting at Scottish Screen’s offices.
The meeting was well attended; not surprisingly a lot of Scottish people due to the large number of smaller film offices that make up the overall Scottish film network.  A few agencies couldn’t make it (Screen South, Screen East, Wales Screen Commission) and I was the only one from our region.

The  agenda for these meetings is generated by the screen agencies suggesting what would be useful to talk about.  We heard about a pilot scheme that the Scottish Highlands and Islands Film Commission are about to undertake that will accredit hotel accommodation for crews with a ‘Film Crew Friendly’ kitemark.  Accommodation providers will have to prove that they can be flexible with rates and services and sympathetic to the needs of crews, e.g. storage for equipment, parking, quiet rooms for use by crew working on night shoots, rates that exclude breakfast, etc.  This will all be accessible from their website and if successful the aim would be to roll it out to all the other screen agencies and film offices.

The next major agenda item was a presentation from the UK Film Council’s Information Office.  Paul Richardson talked to us about the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act, which was, if not enthralling, very interesting and useful – especially given the recent copying of our Production Guide.  I’m clearer on our responsibilities and on the rights of those asking for information under Freedom of Information, on what information we can hold on file, and how often we need to keep ‘cleansing’ the databases we have as holding out-of-date information is a no-no.  So for anyone reading this who is listed on our Guide, UPDATE YOUR DETAILS OR TELL US IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE ON THE SYSTEM ANY MORE, please.

After a quick buffet lunch we were treated to a slot by PDG Helicopters who ran through the basic things that we as screen agencies should bear in mind when dealing with enquiries from productions about aerial photography, specifically using helicopters.  A lot of it I knew from my days of working as an Associate Producer on ‘Casualty’, when we had two episodes that were very helicopter-heavy.  
The rest of the afternoon was more about the screen agencies sharing information, best practice, giving a round-up of activity in their region, etc.  Screen Yorkshire touched on the painful subject of the 600 job losses that had been announced only two days before, and I reflected on how fortunate we were that at least we’ve got a chance to fight the proposed ‘Casualty’ move whereas they had nowhere to go with the ITV announcement. Even though the screen agency had rumblings of the threatened closure a few weeks before, there is very little a public agency can do when faced with a commercial company making a cold, hard business decision.

The round-up of filming activity didn’t take long as there wasn’t that much to report.  A few feature films are in pre-production (Nanny McPhee2, Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter 7&8, Gulliver’s Travels, etc.) It was galling to hear that two productions that I have spent a lot of time on recently have gone to two other regions: ‘Married, Single, Other’ by Left Bank Pictures went to Leeds instead of us because they have a studio and Screen Yorkshire can offer a production fund, which we can’t. ‘Survivors’ is looking set to go to Birmingham as Bristol couldn’t offer the scale of high-rises and development that they needed.
Still, we’re looking very healthy for series re-commissions and that caused some envy around the table.  More of that in our Locations newsletter later this week..
So, all-in-all a really useful day as ever.  I offered that the next one will be in Bristol so other people can do a long day coming to us instead.  17 hour days used to be the norm for me, but I’ve softened in the last 18 months.  Someone asked me if I’d go back into production – judging by the recovery time and how grumpy I was on Friday the answer would have to be ‘not if I can help it!’

Fi.

Tagged:locations, glasgow, scotland

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