Big Interview: Pinewood Studios (Part 1)

Pinewood Studios is currently going through an exciting period of expansion and change, with regards to the physical layout of the studios as well as within the digitisation process and the challenges and opportunities involved.
Regional Film & Video spoke to Public Affairs Manager Mark Hamilton, Post-Production MD Giles Farley and Darren Wolfson, Group Director of Technology, on the future of the famous studios and the future of cinema.
RFV: The big news for the industry is, of course, the tax relief for creative industries, as announced in the Chancellor's budget statement.
Mark – It is something that we warmly welcome. However, the issue for us in the UK is actually dealing with the extra demand, because we already have massive capacity issues.
So certain projects that have been filming abroad, for example in Ireland or Hungary, will, we hope, now come to the UK. But we do have a problem with space, and we are desperately trying to work through problems with planning permission.
We have a case before South Bucks District Council to double the size of Pinewood, because we have been effectively full for the last couple of years, and it can be a struggle to fit in all the projects that are looking to come here. So if a new demand is indeed borne out of the high end tax reliefs, we are going to have a problem unless we build more stages and studios.
So I suppose you could say it is a nice problem to have; a challenge as opposed to a problem.
Pinewood is of course continually expanding. I understand a new facility is being planned to open this autumn?
Mark - Yes, we have been trying to expand for a few years. The land we own adjacent to the existing studios is about 100 acres, but is greenbelt land. We went through a big planning inquiry a couple of years ago and were rejected by the Secretary of State.
Our plan was to build a living and working community for the creative industries, with streetscapes of Venice, Amsterdam, Prague, Boston and New York, for example.
But the residential element ended up being a bit of a stumbling block. We have had to remove the housing element and now it is just stages, workshops and offices. We are hoping to convince the powers that be to allow us to build on the greenbelt. It is up to us to prove that we have what is known as 'very special circumstances', but we believe we have got a good case.
The trouble is that Pinewood is about 75 years old. It predates the greenbelt, which was in fact drawn around the studios and stages, and so even on the current site we are battling greenbelt issues. But we've knocked down some of the old buildings and are reconstructing.
Last year we built the Richard Attenborough Stage, which is 30,000 sq ft and the second biggest at Pinewood. Our new facility is more of the same, with stages, workshops and offices, and is being built as we speak.
It's really up to us to do everything we can on this side, regardless of whether we get the planning permission.
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