Brighton's Early Cinema Coast


Brighton's Early Cinema

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Brighton, officially the city of Brighton and Hove,

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was in the 1820s the main terminal for ferry travel to France.

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Before the railways, it was the quickest route from London to Paris,

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which may explain its early attraction

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to a bohemian crowd of artists and free-thinkers.

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At the turn of the 20th century, they were joined by another group, pioneers in a brand new field.

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They invented something so fundamental that we use it all the time while making Coast.

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In fact, we used it just now,

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AND now,

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and now.

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These pioneers were Britain's early film-makers

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and they helped to create the modern movie, because they invented, among other things, the close-up.

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In the late 1890s, when Hollywood was little more than a citrus grove on the West Coast of America,

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the South Coast of England was a hotbed of movie-making.

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Long hours of summer daylight made it ideal,

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but the very first films were pretty static by modern standards.

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Simple records of daily life,

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these early films were known as "animated photographs".

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They captured events as they unfolded in one continuous un-edited shot.

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But George Albert Smith, a Brighton showman turned film-maker, had some new ideas.

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Frustrated by these single-shot films, he was about to transform this infant medium.

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Film historian Frank Gray is showing me how.

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What Smith did was to begin to imagine you could build a film sequence.

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Instead of conceiving of a single shot like the frame, you could move

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from that and you could look at what I'm seeing now of you,

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how you're looking at me, and also too the sense in which the sea,

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the sky, the shingle and then the kind of wider space in which we're in.

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'Just as we move OUR camera to get different shots,

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Smith did the same thing,

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'except he was the first to think of it.'

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And in this early film he shows another first, the close-up.

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So does this approach enable the director to trick the audience?

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All the time, film's always about trickery.

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You're working with a set of shots which create the illusion

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of a continuity of time and space, and I think that's why we love the medium.

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THUNDER RUMBLES

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Strange to think THIS is where the modern movie was created, around 1900.

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'It can't have been without its problems.'

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Moving the big hand-cranked cameras.

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Working with actors instead of just recording life as it happened.

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To understand the challenges they faced, we're going to try making

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a movie, using only the equipment available to those early film-makers.

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Our drama will re-create this production from 1920, an adaptation

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of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor Of Casterbridge,

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made by the ambitious-sounding Progress Film Company.

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They were based in Shoreham, a few miles up the coast from Brighton.

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We're also using one of their original locations, an old fort.

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Shoreham was a rather heady place in the 1920s.

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Glamorous London actors spent their summers here,

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a ready-made cast of luvvies for the Progress Film Company.

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'But what was it like to make films here?

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'Gillian Gregg's grandfather actually ran the Progress Studios and her mum was a child star.'

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-This is my mum.

-And what age is she there?

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Only 16. She acted under the name of Mavis Claire.

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And it's The Mayor Of Casterbridge, so this is a still taken during the filming.

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Now, if this scene here is being shot in a studio,

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where were those buildings in relation to where we are?

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Well, the best evidence I have of that is in this other album.

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This was the glasshouse where they did a lot of the filming because of all the natural light.

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The glasshouse was just down there on the shingle,

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and the studio rest and the bungalows were all along the shingle along here.

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So there was a Hollywood by the sea.

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-Yes, I think it was.

-What did your mum talk about when you got her onto the subject?

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She talked a little bit about The Mayor Of Casterbridge, and they

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went over to Dorchester to meet Thomas Hardy who watched the set.

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Really?! Thomas Hardy?

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-Yes, Thomas Hardy.

-Fantastic.

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I wonder how he felt, seeing his book being adapted.

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I think he was pretty pleased with it, and about my mum he said, "Mavis Claire, she is my Elizabeth."

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-Really?

-Yes.

-So he named-checked her personally?

-Yes.

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Most of the Progress Company's features have been lost, but luckily

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The Mayor Of Casterbridge has survived.

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And as an added bonus, I've got Gillian's mum's copy

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of the original script, complete with director's notes. Look at that!

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Thomas Hardy handled this script, and now I'VE got it!

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But, for our film-making experiment, the first thing I need to get to grips with is the camera.

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This looks more like a piece of furniture than a camera, John.

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Yes, this goes back to the 1920s.

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'Early cinema enthusiast John Adderley is going to help me.'

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It's the gauge that Edison patented. For lining up, what you do is you pull it around to that position

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and you can see there's a viewing system, and you can actually look through the lens.

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And it's upside down.

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Yes, yes. And you can see that's all the gubbins in here.

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Oh, it's...

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so gorgeous, though, look at it!

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We've assembled our cast of local actors,

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but there'll be no relaxing in the Winnebago for them.

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Just as in 1920, we've no electric lights, so we must make the most of the daylight.

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All we need now is a director.

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That would be me.

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OK, everyone, silence please.

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We're going to do a scene now.

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First positions, please.

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Mr Henchard, sitting down, thank you.

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That's good, keep going.

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'I have to get the cranking just right, a constant 16 frames a second,

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'otherwise the action will appear jerky, unlike the original.'

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We're burning daylight here, you know.

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And action!

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And if you're wondering about the bizarre make-up, so am I.

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The film was autochromatic, it wasn't sensitive to reds. It's more sensitive to blue, so blue comes out

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quite light, but red goes absolutely black. So that's why we put the blue on the lips, and around the eyes.

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So, in an autochromatic film, they were look a good deal more lifelike and realistic

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than they do to naked eye?

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Yes, yes, hopefully.

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We're moving the camera.

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Haven't got all day.

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'It's time to put George Smith's ideas into action, and get a new angle on the scene.

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'It's an involved process, setting up a new shot.

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'I can see why many early film-makers didn't move the camera at all.'

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-A bit faster.

-And, action!

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'But on the plus side, as this is a silent movie, I don't have to be.'

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Susie, step into the gap...

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And cut!

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That was good, yeah. Yeah, cos you let it...

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That's the first time you've said that.

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HE SIGHS There we go, wrapped my first movie, great fun.

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'The most satisfying part was that it was hand-cranked, you got a real sense of the moment being recorded.'

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It's definitely the future for me.

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We've rushed the film to the labs for developing, and at the end

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of the day, like the early pioneers, we nervously check our rushes.

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Only, the whole of Brighton seems to have been invited along.

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Look at that close-up, look!

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The cranking seems to have worked as the action is smooth. The light's good, too.

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And that autochromatic film has made the blue make-up look almost natural.

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-ALL:

-Aw!

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'80 years on from the original, it's still a crowd puller.'

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