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Uncovering 'The Galaxy Britain Built'

2017-12-18T15:41:17+00:00

Ok, I’ll get this out right now. I’m a bit of a Star Wars fan. Well, not just a bit, but a big fan. In fact, I was born on May the 4th (as in May the 4th be with you – now known as Star Wars day!) in 1977, the year the movie was released. And I have always loved the films.

Let me take you back to 1983. I was six. I was only a baby when the first one, A New Hope, was released and just 3 when the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, was in cinemas. So here I was, an excited six year old, about to see The Return of the Jedi with my dad at the flicks in Southend.

It was awesome! I sat in the third row, staring wide eyed at the screen, as my childhood heroes battled it out with Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett and Imperial Stormtroopers. On the way home, my dad bought me an Ewok action figure. It was a very special day!

Fast forward, or rather jump into Hyperspace, and I’m on a train heading home from filming for ‘Inside Out’ in London. It’s February 2016. And I’m idly flicking through my phone, as is the norm now for many of us, whiling away a tedious journey. And all of a sudden I see that Luke Skywalker, aka, Mark Hamill is doing a talk with the Cambridge Student Union, following the huge success of the franchise’s reboot, with The Force Awakens. Right! Here’s my chance to get an interview with the legendary Jedi.

To cut a long story short, it never transpired. But it fired me up. I had always wanted to make a documentary about Star Wars and maybe, just maybe, I would be able to do it.

I knew I couldn’t do it alone, so, just as he was about to studio direct the lunchtime news, I put it to one of my best friends, Matt Wildash. ‘How do you fancy making a doc about Star Wars?’ His eyes lit up! He’s just as big a nerd as me when it comes to Star Wars. It was a no brainer. He was in.

We pitched the idea to the powers-that-be. It was to be a film about the British people behind the biggest movie franchise of all time. Growing up I’d always believed it was a Hollywood blockbuster, every frame shot in LA. Turns out that’s just half the story. It was more an Anglo-American co-production.

Preview of The Galaxy Britain Built - Droids, Darth Vader and Lightsabers, ��̳ Four

The first thing we filmed was Star Wars Celebration in London in the summer of 2016. Basically a massive fan convention. We filmed and filmed. Three days solid. To be honest we didn’t know how much we’d get further down the road. So we got loads in the can.

But this was just the beginning. I managed to find an address of the Oscar winning Costume Designer, John Mollo. It was an old address, but the letter was forwarded and a few weeks later, the Director, cameraman and myself were in his study. In front of us, his original workings and sketches from the 1970s. All of which depicted what would eventually be seen on screen. As a filmmaker it was brilliant, as a fan, it was awesome!

David with costume designer John Mollo

Then, Elstree. The home of ‘Strictly’. But in the 1970s it was home to the filmmaking talents of George Lucas and his team, bringing the Galaxy to life. We filmed in the very studios which were home to ‘The Millennium Falcon’ and ‘The Death Star’. I also interviewed the Production Supervisor, Robert Watts there, a charming gentleman with many great stories to tell.

Robert Watts

Production then stalled, as the Director and I had to concentrate on our day jobs. We were doing a lot of the documentary in our own time and it soon became clear, this was fast becoming a labour of love.

In early 2017, I had my work cut out, tracking down more of the original team. After long days and nights, with many conference calls to people in California, we were up and running again.

We set about the bulk of the filming. 10 days bouncing around North America and sitting down opposite the British filmmaking talent of yesteryear. The Art Director, Les Dilley, who went on to work on Alien and Raiders of the Lost Ark. A charming, modest man with an Academy Award, but who still can’t believe it happened to him. Then, Peter Beale, the Executive in Charge of Production for 20th Century Fox. He’s a man with legendary tales of ‘creative’ cast lists and battling against studio deadlines.

It was an exhausting but incredibly exciting trip. Then, back in London, we met the Set Decorator, Roger Christian, who was over in the UK from his home in Toronto. He regaled me with stories of building sets with aeroplane junk and shared with me the secrets of how he made the lightsaber itself. He calls it the ‘Excalibur’ of the film:

Well, after months in the edit suite, The Galaxy Britain Built is finished and ready for transmission. And what a privilege it has been to work on. They say never meet your heroes. But sometimes, just sometimes, they can be very wrong.

'The Galaxy Britain Built: Droids, Darth Vader and Lightsabers' airs on ��̳ Four on Thursday 21 December, and on iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast.

Relocating ��̳ Studios and Post Production

2014-06-06T11:35:57+00:00

��̳ Studios and Post Production is a commercial subsidiary of the ��̳ which provides studios, post production and digital media services to the broadcast industry. In this post, technical development manager Danny Popkin writes about his work on one of the biggest projects he’s been involved with at ��̳ S&PP.

I am in charge of studio technology projects at ��̳ S&PP, including technology upgrades or moves. In this post, I wanted to explain how we've gone about moving equipment and services from Television Centre to Elstree, and give a sense of what's on offer to the ��̳ and other production companies and broadcasters at our new base.

Why we refurbish studios

First though, it's worth explaining some things about our work which may come as a surprise to some. Television studios don't maintain themselves and given that they are a part of a fast-moving technological environment, they're frequently in need of refurbishment and technical upgrades. This was the case at Television Centre where we were refreshing, on average, one studio every year. Across 8 studios it was about a 7-year cycle of partial or complete refurbishment. On top of that were standard upgrades and change of technology - for example, the movement from tape to disc-based technology or the move to different IT systems. Over the 30 years I've been involved in TV, we've moved from 4:3 to 'widescreen', standard definition to HD for example. Originally everything captured in a TV studio could be sent easily down half a mile of copper wire. As we've moved to digital and now HD, the capacity of those copper cable links have got shorter and shorter. We can't send it down the same length and expect it to come out the other end. So even that core element – the copper ‘wire’ has had to be upgraded to something which is fit for purpose.

For many years the ��̳ had to develop its own technology and the ��̳ used to have departments that would build and test things. The expansion of the media market and the consumerisation of goods has meant the ��̳ doesn't have to do that anymore. Commercial organisations are developing new technology all the time. All we have to do is buy the equipment based on our need and what’s best for us. In that way, we have to follow fairly rapidly the movements of manufacturers because the organisation wants to get the benefits of efficiencies the industry can provide us with. ��̳ Studios and Post Production has been recognised as being at the forefront of that for the ��̳ over many years – it’s an important part of our work for our clients.

Moving to Elstree

Last year when ��̳ Television Centre was closed for redevelopment, ��̳ S&PP’s CEO Anna Mallet wrote about our plans to move to Elstree and our longer-term return to a refurbished TVC, to re-open Studios 1-3.

We already had a base at ��̳ Elstree - it’s where we provide studios and post production services for EastEnders and operate our Elstree Studio D, similar in size to Studio 1 at Television Centre and home to shows like Sky’s A League of their Own, which we make for CPL Productions.

Whilst Television Centre is being redeveloped, we needed to find new studio spaces to offer our production customers, so we approached Elstree Studios across the road and it was agreed that we would run Stage 8, Stage 9 and at times the enormous George Lucas stages. Stage 8 and Stage 9 were effectively film stages, built in the 1960s and they had barely had anything done to them since, so would require considerable work to get them ready for our TV clients.

The refurbished Stage 8 at Elstree

Fast refurbishment – turning film stages into TV studios

I was heavily involved in the move from TVC to Elstree and the upgrade of our new site. It was the single biggest project I've been involved in, one which was completed relatively cheaply and really quite fast. But it was a project which came with some unusual demands. For example, we didn't get formal confirmation that TVC was closing until about nine months before it actually shut. Although we'd done some preliminary work on plans for the move, we couldn't get cracking on the rest of it until we knew for sure that we were leaving and when that would be. Once we knew, we started in earnest in August 2012. The budgets were roughly set very quickly and we were underway.

Unfurnished film stages (like Stage 8 and Stage 9 that we were moving into) are effectively just empty boxes and have nothing in them. They also tend to have wooden floors. We needed to upgrade the floors so TV cameras could run smoothly over the top. Lights and hoists needed fitting out too (film stages tend to light scenes from the floor up, whereas TV studios light from the ceiling down), so we needed to install what we call a ‘saturated lighting grid’. We decided to make use of a monopole hoist system (this helps us easily flex the lighting arrangement, and turn studios around faster in between productions) but that in itself meant that hardware needed sourcing to kit out the studio. Additionally and very importantly we needed to install TV production galleries (film stages don’t have these installed!).

We worked in partnership with Elstree Studios, who co-funded the works, which also included improving facilities for production teams and talent – for example refurbishing dressing rooms, green rooms and production office space.

At the same time as the Elstree Studios refurbishment works, we also upgraded our own ��̳ Elstree Studio D to support large live event shows such as 2013’s Children in Need and most recently ��̳ News election 2014 coverage.

Election coverage at ��̳ Elstree

How we’ve re-used equipment

In terms of equipment we decided to basically lift and shift production galleries and technical kit from TVC to Elstree. Most of the equipment was moved apart from our ageing glass monitors and SD kit, so that made us entirely flat screen and fully HD, bringing the spec of the equipment production staff could use really up to date. We re-used equipment wherever possible - we brought a number of gallery desks with us for example and reassembled them at Elstree and we even brought across make-up mirrors and the dressing room key fob system! We also used the move as an opportunity to enhance the systems as well, standardising our system layouts and configurations making it easier to move staff between stages, and simpler for freelance staff to understand. All of our sound galleries now boast the same Studer Vista 8 desks, upgraded to the latest hardware and OS, utilising stageboxes to minimise studio box wiring.

For me, one of the most impressive elements about the project was the speed at which we worked. We had confirmation that the move would go ahead in summer 2012 and ��̳ Studios and Post Production was fully up and running in Elstree by March 2013 at the same time as maintaining studio services at Television Centre right up until it closed, making shows like Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, When Miranda Met Bruce and Madness Live: Goodbye Television Centre. We sometimes take these things for granted, but in short, that’s running three different studio sites, with a limited staff base, while two of them are going through significant refurbishment and the other is gradually closing down. No easy feat!

New HD production galleries

A few months after we were up and running at Elstree Studios, we also installed new HD production galleries alongside the George Lucas Stage 1 and 2 – making it the biggest studio space in Europe with permanent HD galleries. It’s since successfully hosted big entertainment shows like Strictly Come Dancing and The Voice.

With all of the refurbishment works, by using our own in-house technical and engineering expertise we were able to repurpose and reuse technology and equipment from Television Centre and save on cost.

What programme makers say

Moving to Elstree was unlike anything else we’d delivered in my time at the ��̳. What was essential was lots of planning and a pragmatic approach in order to carry it through. This resourcefulness is something Anna picked up in her blog post in Christmas of last year.

It’s been a big success though. Since we started operating here, we have supported over 45 different programme titles, including shows like Pointless, Children in Need, ITV’s The Chase and even Channel 4’s Winter Paralympics coverage, which amounted to nearly 80 hours!

You can hear from Pointless Series Producer John Ryan about his experiences at Elstree in this short video.

John Ryan, Series Producer of Pointless talks about the show's move from TVC to Elstree

Returning to Television Centre

Looking ahead, we’ll be going back to three studios at Television Centre and I’m looking after the technical fit out for that.

The priority that remains for us is to install equipment which is, as far as we possibly can make it, future-proofed. So, another important part of my work is to look carefully at the industry and see where the trends are going and what's going to get bigger - for example, 4K (or correctly Ultra High Definition TV). Future generations of TVs will be considerably 'more' than the current 4K, offering the viewer a far better experience than just more pixels, with better colour rendition, higher dynamic range and higher frame rates as well as smart TV features. So anything we buy in will need to take into account that increased consumer need. We’ll also need to think about how we’ll deliver UHDTV in the future. The industry hasn’t as yet settled on a solution for that yet, but when it has ��̳ Studios and Post Production will be there, making sure we’re making the very best available for our clients and for the audience.

Danny Popkin is Technical Development Manager, ��̳ Studios and Post Production.

For more information please visit the ��̳ Studios and Post Production website.

��̳ Studios and Post Production at Elstree

2013-12-17T10:57:58+00:00

Since I last wrote on the About the ��̳ Blog back in March of this year, ��̳ Studios and Post Production has had a busy time of it at its new base here in Elstree. Now at the end of 2013, I wanted to use this post to explain what we've been up to, give some insight into how we've made our migration out of Television Centre work and take a peek into plans for our return.

But first, an explanation of what ��̳ Studios and Post Production is and does:

��̳ S&PP is a ��̳-owned commercial company, providing facilities to make programmes and manage media. Very simply we operate studios - 'the boxes' - where TV programmes are made. We carry out post production, making sure the content 'comes together' in the right way. Our Digital Media Services also do quality checking and prepare and deliver content for transmission or distribution. Very often programmes have another life after broadcast and they also take material from deep in a broadcaster's archive and help re-purpose it for a future digital life. In short, ��̳ S&PP is involved in nearly all of the TV production process - following the entire lifecycle of the media asset, from creation to archive.

Working with independent media companies and other broadcasters

As well as providing studios and post production for some of the ��̳’s flagship shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, EastEnders and Children in Need, we also work with a range of independent production companies making programmes for other broadcasters – for example CPL Production’s A League of Their Own for Sky and ITV’s Your Face Sounds Familiar - and with content owners – like Imperial War Museums, helping them preserve and maximise the value of their material.

We're based at ��̳ Elstree, where we help make EastEnders and have our Elstree Studio D (larger than Studio 1 at Television Centre), and at Elstree Film & TV Studios, where we've worked hand in hand with Hertsmere Council, who own the business, to transform the site. We’re also in Bristol at The Bottle Yard Studios, where we help Endemol make Deal or No Deal for Channel 4 and our Digital Media Services team are in South Ruislip in West London. This blog focuses on what we’ve been up to at Elstree.

Working hard to make something brilliant

At Elstree, there's a real sense that we're at the heart of making television: there is an air of glamour about the place with EastEnders recording 50 weeks of the year, plus a constant stream of other shows in production. [At the time of penning this post, C��̳'s Friday Download is shooting its Christmas special in the same studio episodes of That Puppet Game Show was recorded, Pointless (pictured above) is in Stage 8, House of Fools is in Stage 9 (pictured below) and Strictly is in the George Lucas Stage].

In November when the live Children in Need show came from ��̳ Elstree the whole site came alive: there was a huge buzz, lots of creativity, lots of celebrities, lots of concerts, lots of humour and lots of teams working together to really pull the whole thing off. For me, that is the reality of television: lots of people coming together and working hard to make something brilliant.

Migrating to Elstree and transforming the site

Even though we were of course sad to leave Television Centre back in March (we've already started planning our return to the site in 2015), what ��̳ Studios and Post Production has achieved on the Elstree site is impressive. Working closely with Hertsmere council, we've turned two medium size stages into professional TV studios with laser-levelled floors and purpose built galleries, we've installed production galleries alongside the supersize George Lucas Stages and refurbished all the dressing rooms, green rooms, make up and wardrobe areas. We've really made it work for creating television here, bringing big shows previously produced at Television Centre and transferring them to an entirely different site and in many cases, improving facilities for production teams. And what's inspiring for me is that every day of every week I see this site come more alive and be more energised because we're here doing what we do.

Over the next few weeks, you'll be able to read in more detail about what we've done at Elstree and how we're preparing for our return to Television Centre from Technical Development Manager Danny Popkin. But in this post I wanted to introduce how we've made the move to Elstree work.

The project for 'migrating' to Elstree started a year ago. Moving a business that had been in Television Centre for 30 years was a massive undertaking and it wasn't until quite late on that we knew the details of when and how we were going to move. The move happened while we were still operating TVC studios and doing big shows like Strictly, Later with Jools Holland and Goodbye Television Centre right up to the last minute. The organisation was also going through a restructure (necessitated by leaving TVC) so there was a lot going on.

So, in setting up services here at Elstree there was a large degree of pragmatism. People came together and said to one another, 'this is where we are: a lot of us are sad to be leaving Television Centre for a bit but we're up for the challenge of Elstree; we're up for creating something really good here. And that is reflected in our solutions: the way some of the technology has been refurbished and repurposed; how equipment originally installed at Television Centre has been moved to Elstree and used with other existing equipment and made to work at a new location. And it's not just what you see in the studio, it’s what you see 'at the back' - wiring, technology and facilities. It was an extremely complex thing to deliver and is testament to the creativity and ingenuity of the teams that work at ��̳ S&PP. They're passionate about what they do. And that work was completed on time and on budget too.

Making Strictly in Elstree

From day one of the migration planning phase we were thinking about Strictly Come Dancing. It's one of those productions we've had the privilege to work on for many years. It galvanises everyone within ��̳ S&PP. So front of mind was the need to really deliver for the Strictly production. Strictly is not a programme where you want there to be any risks taken at all. As well as making the stage look wonderful for the cameras, we also had to consider all the backstage facilities and the technical provision for production teams. There's been a huge amount of planning which has gone into that to make sure that all of those elements are in place. We spent some time with members of the Strictly production team in the last few weeks of the 2013 run. You can see what Executive Producer Louise Rainbow and Lighting Director Mark Kenyon made of their Elstree experience in the video below.

Louise Rainbow and Mark Kenyon talk about making Strictly Come Dancing at Elstree.

Many of these considerations are the kind of thing TV audiences wouldn't necessarily see or think about when they watch the programme, like the state of the dressing rooms or creating TV galleries for what is now the largest studio in Europe with permanent TV galleries. But they are crucial to a well-run show and a quality end product. We were constantly thinking, 'how can we make this sing' in terms of production facilities? Being at Elstree Film & TV Studios gave us an opportunity to think about how we could offer the very best facilities and when Strictly is on there's a palpable sense of vibrancy and an energy there now. I really do think that since we've been here we've brought something to the site working very collaboratively with the other organisations based here.

Returning to Television Centre in 2015

Beyond 2013 and 2014, we are returning to Television Centre. Planning is already underway and we're getting excited about what the refurbished site is going to be like. It will, of course, be very different from how we left it. It will be a multi-use site which in itself brings opportunities and challenges in equal measure. We started the planning work on this months ago, working very collaboratively with the new owners Stanhope, the ��̳ and ��̳ Worldwide to ensure what we go back to is going to be fantastic.

As I wrote back in March, we'll be going back to Studios 1, 2 and 3, but what we're having to do is completely re-imagine how that section of Television Centre is going to work. Before we had a broader footprint across the entire site. Now, everything is going to be part of our 'zone' - all the areas around those studios. So we're having to spend a lot of time thinking about how we can optimise those areas of the building to include dressing rooms, production offices, TV galleries and audience areas, all the time making sure there's a real sense of 'flow' on the site. Most importantly we want to make sure that when people come back they feel they're returning to something great rather than coming back to something where we've just closed the door and opened it again. It's also an opportunity to really take forward the Television Centre site. We'll be putting new technical equipment into the galleries and also refurbishing a lot of the other 'ancillary' production areas.

The galleries will be upgraded: right now we're thinking about what the future TV standards are going to be and how we can create facilities with that flexibility for the future. You should see very flexible, configurable galleries bringing together existing equipment we already have and supplementing that with new technology.

An inspiring place to work

Even when the studios are quiet or there aren’t high-profile shows being made, there’s an air of excitement along my route into the office, down the corridor which lines the many studios here.

It’s then I see all the pictures on the wall of all the films and TV programmes that have been made here – the heritage of Elstree. A place associated with the greats of both media. For me, that brings a little glamour to my day.

��̳ Studios and Post Production is a fantastic company staffed by a group of people with huge energy and a real 'can-do' attitude, who have grown up with the ��̳ and care passionately about all our customers. I feel privileged to work with people who really care about what they do. That is really inspiring.

Anna Mallett is CEO, ��̳ Studios and Post Production

Visit the ��̳ Studios and Post Production website
Read Ann Mallet’s blog ��̳ Studios at Television Centre from 2015
Read also Television Centre in the ��̳’s own words
And 'That's Entertainment': bringing Strictly 2013 to our screens

About the ������̳ Feed

Uncovering 'The Galaxy Britain Built'

Relocating ������̳ Studios and Post Production

������̳ Studios and Post Production at Elstree

About the ��̳ Feed

Relocating ��̳ Studios and Post Production

��̳ Studios and Post Production at Elstree