Lights, camera, action in Warwickshire
A NEW commercial initiative aimed at attracting more film and TV production companies to film in Warwickshire is about to start.
Film Warwickshire has been set-up to provide promotional, representation and onsite management services to location owners across the county to enable them to attract feature films, TV dramas and other media production activities to shoot on location.
Backed by creative property consultancies, SPACE-2 Consulting, Film Warwickshire will promote locations to UK and international producers and directors as well as provide advice on and access to production bases and support services. Film Warwickshire will also target commercial and editorial photographers.
Film Warwickshire will provide location managers, photographers, producers and directors access to its extensive online collection of locations which will constantly be updated by Film Warwickshire’s team of researchers.
The organisation will be working closely with the newly established Creative England, the dedicated support agency for the creative industries outside London and a British Film Institute-delegated body for the distribution of National Lottery funds for film in the English regions.
Warwickshire has already had some success of late in attracting film and TV crews into the county. film and TV locations. The Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick was used to film the Shakespeare Code episode of Dr Who and Compton Verney was the setting for some of the scenes in forthcoming feature film Gambit featuring Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz and Alan Rickman.
Leamington Spa was used in the popular sitcom Keeping Up Appearances and currently Clarendon Square is doubling for Eaton Place, London, for the second series of Upstairs Downstairs.
Film Warwickshire’s offices are in Kineton, close to the new British Film Institute National Archive in Gaydon.
Meanwhile, two venues in central Birmingham have been used to film a major new drama series for BBC Two set in the 1930s.
Dancing On The Edge, written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Stephen Poliakoff, follows a group of black jazz musicians as they find fame within London’s upper class society.
Filming has taken place in the Ballroom in the Grand Hotel on Colmore Row and the Banqueting Suite in the Council House on Victoria Square. The venues were used as the setting for the ballroom and the lobby of the hotel in which the band performs.
