Launch of "London Filming Partnership"
by Annika Pham
During yesterday’s London Day celebration at the UK Film Centre in Cannes, Directors Stephen Frears and Gurinder Chadha where at hand to support the new London Filming Partnership, the largest single consultation London ever had between public authorities and private film companies, organisations and individuals to make London a friendlier and more competitive place to make a movie.
The Partnership is backed by Lord David Puttnam (producer of Chariots of Fire), chair of the Film London executive task force, by the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, the London Development Agency and over 80 partners including London’s 33 local authorities, the UK producers association PACT, the Production Guild, Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police.
The package of new services set up to make London -the third biggest film centre in the world- a more efficient place to shoot include:
-The first ever Metropolitan Police Filming Unit dedicated to assisting all shooting activities in the capital,
-A less bureaucratic ‘single online portal’ system to access information on London locations and arrange filming permissions, available from this autumn,
-Free use of Film London location scouts to big film productions
-No local authority filming charges for film students and short filmmakers,
-Special discounts on accommodation, parking and transport,
-A transparent fee structure for filming across all 33 London boroughs.
Film London chair and producer Sandy Lieberson said at the Cannes press conference: "The increasing competition from Latvia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, has forced us to make London a better place for filmmaking. This is only the first step to streamline this process. The next one will be to try to convince the UK government to introduce fiscal incentives like those that exist in New York (5% rebate for shooting activities in the Big Apple)".
Adrian Wootton, Chief Executive of Film London also reminded that all film and TV activities in the UK capital represent a £30.7 billion investment in the local economy and 15 local jobs secured per feature film shooting (130 films were shot in London in 2004). "We need to sustain and increase filming activities in London by 6% over the next couple of years and are determined to respond to the competition from other places in the world", he said.
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