Conclusion: Anatomy of a Film Studio

Abstract

This chapter brings together the arguments advanced in the book concerning how a materialist, ‘tectonic’ focuses on a major, surviving film studio during pivotal years of its lifetime set in train an infrastructure that contributed to its longevity as a major international film studio that is still operating. It constitutes a test case of how a micro history of such an enterprise augments and on occasion revises established historical interpretations. It reflects on the contrasting experience of Denham, Britain’s other premier studio also opened in 1936, but which was closed by Rank in 1952. Why Pinewood survived, it is argued, is rooted in the post-war years, the development of the studios’ physical and material infrastructure and practices, and the experience of producing films within a culture of constraint, key areas which have featured as the book’s central themes.

The fortunes of the Rank Organisation were characterised by a dramatic turn-around from incurring ‘massive losses’ in the late 1940s to recovery and relative stability for most of the 1950s.¹ As a vertically integrated company Rank was able to offset losses in production with profits from cinema exhibition. The closure in the late 1940s of smaller studios linked to the Organisation including Shepherd’s Bush, Islington, and Highbury, ensured that production was concentrated at Denham and Pinewood. Then, following Denham’s closure in 1952, Pinewood was in a dominant position to service remaining active production companies.

As this book has demonstrated, Pinewood’s robust physical infrastructure and facilities, seen from an aerial view shot in 1958 in Fig. 7.1, were central to its longer-term survival. The studios were owned by the Rank Group until 2001; Shepperton and Teddington Studios were subsequently absorbed as part of the ‘Pinewood Group’, a British-based, multi-national facility with overseas operations in Toronto and in the Dominican Republic. In 2016 Teddington was demolished and the site used for new housing.²

Fig. 7.1

Aerial view of Pinewood Studios, 1958. Alamy stock images

As argued in previous chapters, the immediate post-war years were pivotal in enabling Pinewood to survive crises that had more devastating effects on other studios. While the dominant historical narratives have privileged the fluctuating fortunes of the Rank Organisation and rise and fall of particular production companies, focusing on Pinewood as a physical entity highlights the significance of embedded, infrastructural elements which impacted its longevity. Put simply, Pinewood’s design, architecture, equipment, technical innovations, labour, and studio culture enabled it to ride out shorter-term crises. A comparison between the studios’ layout in 1945 and 1966 (Fig. 7.2) shows that the basic structure remained the same, but there had been notable additions: a special effects stage; a stills room; a scene dock by the generating station; a projection tunnel off stage ‘E’; two small stages, an assembly bay next to the plasterers’ and carpenters’ shops; film vaults and a few more storage rooms. The original physical arrangement and size of the site as purchased in the 1930s had proved very durable, enabling the studios to easily extend as features such as devising and servicing special effects became essential.

Fig. 7.2

Pinewood layout 1966, Elizabeth Grey, Behind the Scenes in a Film Studio (London: Phoenix House, 1966), pp. 1–2

Analysing a key, relatively short period but from a longue durée perspective has allowed Pinewood to emerge as a highly significant, material entity; the studios’ have been brought into visibility. A tectonic approach as used here emphasises how studios can be thought of as containing multiple zones of collaborative activities, adaptable materials, and spaces that shift from production to production. While studios often recede from visibility to make way for the illusion of cinema, they are emphatically material sites embedded in the histories of technology and architecture, quasi-utopian designs on efficient labour, and moments of political and economic crisis and transformation. Shaped by designers, planners, and engineers, studios are engines of novelty in industrial production methods, generating unconventional and even revolutionary creative practices. Conceptualising Pinewood in this way highlights it as a site of experimentation in areas such as production design; set construction; new technologies and workshop spaces for the creation of special effects.

Even though Denham was a major facility with the largest floor area of stages in Britain (110,500 square feet compared with Pinewood’s 72,000), these factors were influential in explaining the studios’ contrasting fates. Visitors to Denham, when Alexander Korda was in control, would have been struck on approaching the studios by the sight of the signature logo ‘London Film Productions’, with each word proudly emblazoned in a plain, symmetrical modernist font on each of the main stages’ external structures. The logo was notably absent in later years to reflect Rank’s ownership, as shown in an aerial view of Denham Studios in 1948 (Fig. 7.3). Removing it seems to have robbed Denham of its established ‘narrative image’ of state-of-the-art modernity; perhaps this was a prescient harbinger of Denham’s untimely demise.

Fig. 7.3

Denham Studios, 1948. Alamy stock images

The timing of the closure of Denham was influenced by additional factors. One consideration, following the establishment in 1949 of the National Film Finance Corporation (NFFC), was the government’s decision to make Rank one of three groups to benefit from an additional NFFC provision in 1951 known as ‘The Group Scheme’. After an initial plan by NFFC Chairman Lord Reith that was further developed by J. H. Lawrie, managing director of the NFFC, and producer Michael Balcon, this was designed to finance films made by three groups of independent production companies. The first and largest was British Film Makers (BFM), a holding company associated with Rank’s General Film Distributors which guaranteed 70% of the finance for at least six films to be made at Pinewood.³ The remaining capital was provided by the NFFC, thereby spreading the risk with the object of providing ‘a programme of sufficient size to enable profits and losses of individual films to be evened out, thus ensuring a reasonable measure of stability’.⁴ Each production team received an annual fee and a percentage of any profits which, in the spirit of the scheme, would not be distributed until they had been used to cover losses on other films made by the group. The intention was also to provide steadier studio employment and make economies through using common services. The Final Test (Anthony Asquith 1953) was a notable film co-produced by British Film Makers and ACT Films, the company established by the trade union in 1950. Although it was the only ACT film to be shot at Pinewood, many Rank employees were involved in other, lower-budget films produced in subsequent years.⁵ The second group was associated with Elstree Studios and ABPC, the other large combine, and the third catered for less established producers making short films and second feature films at Beaconsfield Studios. The bolstering of the large circuit-owning companies however caused concern. Sir Wilfred Eady at the Treasury, for example, feared the scheme would provide films for their own studios rather than prioritising the needs of non-associated independent producers. He regretted that an earlier plan for a single group led by documentarist John Grierson had not been adopted.⁶

The Group Scheme however helped Pinewood at a strategic point. It bridged a gap during a difficult time when lower and mid-budget films were losing money, and until Rank’s resources could be fully deployed to re-establish a more stable momentum. The BFM group included notable filmmakers including Anthony Asquith, Edward Baird, Betty Box, Thorold Dickinson, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Ronald Neame, Peter de Savigny, and Paul Swoskin. The scheme funded fourteen BFM films in 1951–2 but when these were unprofitable Rank ceased its operations; the whole Group Scheme was wound up in 1955. Even so, some of the BFM’s funded films have subsequently gained reputations as significant British films including The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony Asquith 1952) and BFM’s highest box-office success The Card (Ronald Neame 1952).⁷ The centrality of Pinewood to the Group Scheme’s structure emphasised confidence in its pivotal role in the recovery of the British film industry. As Chapman has noted: ‘It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Rank saw BFM as an easy source of end money that reduced its risks in offering distribution guarantees to independent producers’.⁸ That this occurred at a time when the Rank Organisation was rationalising its operations, and the fact that Denham played no part in forward planning, indicates the shift in the balance of power between the studios that was taking place.

Rank’s decision to close down production at Denham was explained as necessary so that production could be carried out ‘more economically’ at Pinewood.⁹ When news of Denham’s closure was announced, Tom O’Brien, general secretary of NATKE, appealed to Prime Minister Clement Attlee that the studios should be requisitioned.¹⁰ But the government had already decided against Lord Reith’s recommendation for state control of studios, opting instead to accept the reality of the combined power of Rank and ABPC. As a civil servant at the Board of Trade commented: ‘As long as the present set-up in the film industry exists, there is no doubt that in one way or another producers must work through the Rank and the ABC distribution organisations and any lasting settlement of production problems must either recognise this fact or set out on some much more drastic measures’.¹¹ When Henry Strauss, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, was asked in the House of Commons in May 1952 about the leasing of Denham to EMI, a non-film producing company, he replied that since Denham’s closure Pinewood was being used ‘more efficiently’.¹² The passing of such an iconic film studio was justifiably lamented by many, not least the Association of Cine Technicians, for the loss of jobs that resulted. In 1953 an auction consisting of 4,000 lots was held of the former studios’ ‘entire contents’ including cameras, sound projection, and cutting equipment, as well as props, furniture, and other key articles.¹³ The film laboratories at Denham remained as a working facility until 2014. When Rank ceased co-financing productions at Ealing in 1955 production was further concentrated at Pinewood.

Pinewood also benefited from another newly available financial incentive—guarantees of completion provided by the company Film Finances that had been incorporated in March 1950. The guarantees gave banks and other lenders financial security against films in which they had invested going over budget or schedule. John Croydon, a former production manager who had worked for Gaumont-British, Ealing and Rank, scrutinised projects presented to Film Finances in the early stages of development, commenting on the feasibility of scripts, proposed budgets, and other logistical issues. Guarantees were not offered until such pre-production plans and budgets were approved, and during development and shooting the company continued to monitor progress.¹⁴ The Woman in Question (Anthony Asquith 1950), shot at Pinewood, was the first film guaranteed by Film Finances. The film came in £18,362 under its £129,986 budget. Savings had been made in part because the start of shooting had been delayed, during which time each shot was planned in detail so that when shooting commenced the process was very smooth.¹⁵ In its first year of operation, Film Finances guaranteed eight films shot at Pinewood. This was more than any other studio, making up nearly half of the eighteen films guaranteed in 1950–51, and demonstrating Rank’s readiness to take advantage of new opportunities.

Pinewood exploited this and other schemes as it adjusted to challenging vicissitudes which affected the film industry over the following decades. While many studios took on, and were eventually used for television production, Pinewood’s commitment to film remained a constant, especially in the 1960s when it facilitated large-scale American productions as well as the lucrative James Bond franchise. The Rank Organisation’s diversification of interests in this period included radio manufacture and records. In addition, the profitable merger in 1956 with American company Haloid Photographic to form Rank Xerox to some extent enabled Rank’s film interests to be subsidised. A sign outside the studios in 1957 (Fig. 7.4) shows them clearly identified with Rank’s famous ‘man-with-the-gong’ trademark familiar to millions of filmgoers.

Fig. 7.4

Pinewood Studios logo and exterior view, 1957. Alamy stock images

During the 1970s and 1980s precarious financial conditions were alleviated by the success of large-scale international productions. In 2000 the Rank Organisation sold Pinewood to a management team led by Michael Grade and Ivan Dunleavy. When Shepperton merged with Pinewood in 2001 the studios consolidated and expanded their reputation as state-or-the-art facilities. The aim was ‘to increase their flexibility and enhance their capacity to service every size and type of film and television production’.¹⁶ While the two studios had been the largest in the UK before the merger, afterwards together they constituted ‘a mega media-city’ able to pitch for and accommodate high-budget productions. While publicity emphasised larger-scale filmmaking the flexible structure, with soundstages of varying sizes, could cater for smaller-scale productions as well as television.

Film studios continue to develop worldwide. Pinewood’s expansion has seen it develop its global network at a time when the future of how film production is undertaken is being profoundly affected by developments in virtual production and Artificial Intelligence. Many technical procedures for set design and established cultures of expertise are being impacted by an increasingly virtual workplace environment. Many technical employees will need to be re-trained and re-skilled as film studios adjust to changes which are already underway. How the Pinewood Group manages its own transition will in part be influenced by its long-standing reputation for innovation and flexibility. An increasingly hybrid workforce will produce films made up of new roles such as virtual production and visualisation supervisors, LED engineers, as well as existing roles in film and games/visual effects expertise. As it experiences another tectonic shift, Pinewood will need more than ever to rely on its durable design, established and emerging technical infrastructures, and maintain a resilient studio culture which this book has argued was formed out of a different set of challenging circumstances in the 1940s.