Time for us to tune into TV and film
Editor, I am one of the few people who lives in the Midlands who works in the international film and television industry. I have worked in Budapest, the Dominican Republic, the USA, Germany and Ireland, as well as at Pinewood Studios.
I am a member of BAFTA, The British Film Designers Guild (based at Pinewood Studios) and the Chairman of the Art Department Branch of the film union BECTU (also based at Pinewood Studios.)
Official figures published by the British Film Institute’s Research and Statistics Unit reveal that film production reached £1.55 billion, 3% up on 2020, while high-end TV production soared to £4.09 billion, nearly double prepandemic 2019 levels. Thanks to lack of interest from Birmingham City Council this region gets next to nothing of this investment.
I have written to Andy Street, Steven Knight and various members of Birmingham City Council and their Planning Department. The former gentlemen are both supportive, but Birmingham City Council seem to want to trivialise our industry and downgrade it as a “cottage industry”. Our indifferent planners have needlessly, “planned away” both Pebble Mill Studios and the former ATV/Central Televisions Studios to make way for mediocre buildings that could have been easily built elsewhere.
There are no plans for television studios in the proposed BBC Tea Factory development, it will be as bereft of TV studio-based content as is The Mailbox.
Birmingham’s much-vaunted independent local television service now is broadcast from studios in Leeds! The largest sound stage in the Midlands is FBN Studios, in Redditch (which is about the size of the George Lucas Stage 1 at Elstree Studios).
The middle average annual salary in the Greater Birmingham area is in the region of £31,000, whereas the middle average annual salary in the UK film industry is £47,000.
Which would your readers rather have?
The global movies and entertainment market size was valued at 90.92 billion dollars in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 7.2% from 2022 to 2030. Most British Regions (and the Republic of Ireland) are expanding their building of sound stages to cope with demand.
I hope that our local planners will wake-up and catch-up...
John West, BFDG, by email