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Recent Posts by howard
2013 in Review
What a year 2013 has been for the project. We have done so much, it's easy for us to forget some of our achievements, so we thought the best way to remind ourselves would be in a neat and tidy blog post!
We started the year with hits already increasing rapidly on our short 17-minute film Staircases to Nowhere: Making Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'. We'd screened it in October at our first film season, and it had become an unexpected hit for us.
In February, we visited the village of Letchmore Heath to make comparison shots between the scenes filmed for Village of the Damned in 1959. We also visited Edgwarebury Manor and filmed shots of the building as it has appeared in countless Elstree productions including Danger Man, Department S, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and A Clockwork Orange.
We released both short films in March, as part of our second Elstree Film Season....
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In February, we visited the village of Letchmore Heath to make comparison shots between the scenes filmed for Village of the Damned in 1959. We also visited Edgwarebury Manor and filmed shots of the building as it has appeared in countless Elstree productions including Danger Man, Department S, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and A Clockwork Orange.
We released both short films in March, as part of our second Elstree Film Season.... Walter Murch and our Return to London
It's 15:30 at San Francisco airport and we are just having a last team meal before our flight.
This morning, we had the honour of being guests in the home of Walter Murch - the Oscar winning editor of Apocalypse Now, The Godfather Trilogy and The English Patient.
Walter spoke to us for over an hour about his time directing Return to Oz at Elstree Studios and we had a wonderful time. Afterwards Walter and his lovely wife showed us a short film of the "Droid Olympics" featuring a young George Lucas and a young Brad Bird!
So we leave California with a lot of happy memories and a lot of success. To have recorded interviews with Steven Spielberg, Joe Turkel and Walter Murch in one trip has been such a privilege and an honour and we owe so many people a lot of thanks:
Firstly, we clearly owe each...
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So we leave California with a lot of happy memories and a lot of success. To have recorded interviews with Steven Spielberg, Joe Turkel and Walter Murch in one trip has been such a privilege and an honour and we owe so many people a lot of thanks:
Firstly, we clearly owe each... San Francisco
We are now towards the end of our California trip; the last part of which has been spent in San Francisco.
The City is beautiful and we are in the heart of town in Union Square. It feels very Christmassy too - a giant Macy's Christmas tree overlooks an outdoor ice skating rink and there are beautiful lights everywhere.
Tomorrow, just before we fly home, we have the extreme honour of visiting Walter Murch at his home. He has generously offered to spend the first morning of his Christmas holiday with us, so that we can interview him about the time he directed Return to Oz for Disney at Elstree Studios.
I love the film and feel Walter should have been given a chance to do a director's commentary on the DVD release, so I hope our interview answers some questions about the making of the film.
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... Joe Turkel and the Griffith Observatory
This morning we all traveled to Santa Monica to the restaurant Jack's on Montana. They were the very generous hosts of our next interview - actor Joe Turkel.
Joe played Lloyd the barman in The Shining, and has the honour of being only one of two people to have appeared in three films directed by Stanley Kubrick. Joe was wonderful - full of wit, good humour and wonderful and interesting stories about working with Stanley, Jack Nicholson and the British crews at Elstree. He clearly continues to think of Stanley fondly and we all felt so sad when he told us that he never saw him again after the end of the film.
Joe was very generous with his time and so enthusiastic, and it really rubbed off on all the team. We all felt as if we had been a part of something special and unique this morning.
We really wanted to make the most of our last day in...