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British Transport Films
British Transport Films was an organisation set up in 1949 to make documentary films on the general subject of British transport. Its work included internal training films, travelogues (extolling the virtues of places that could be visited via the British transport system – mostly by rail), and "industrial films" (as they were called) promoting the progress of Britain's railway network. It was headed by Edgar Anstey until 1974, and from then until its demise by John W. Shepherd. Initially, it made films mostly for the British Transport Commission, but after that organisation was broken up in 1963 the majority of its films were for the British Railways Board. However it also made films for London Transport Board, London Transport, the British Waterways Board, the travel company Thomas Cook & Son and the coach company Thomas Tilling. Output Their first film was Berth 24 concerning the operation of Hull Docks. Many of the unit's films celebrated the running of Britain's nationali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industrial Film
Sponsored film, or ephemeral film, as defined by film archivist Rick Prelinger, is a film made by a particular sponsor for a specific purpose other than as a work of art: the films were designed to serve a specific pragmatic purpose for a limited time. Many of the films are also orphan works since they lack copyright owners or active custodians to guarantee their long-term preservation. Types of sponsored film The genre is composed of advertising films, educational films, industrial videos, training films, social guidance films, and government-produced films. While some may borrow themes from well-known film genres such as western film, musicals, and comedies, what defines them is a sponsored rhetoric to achieve the sponsor's goals, rather than those of the creative artist. Sponsored films in 16mm were loaned at no cost, except sometimes postage, to clubs, schools, and other groups. America's largest companies - AT&T, DuPont, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, Republic Stee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snow (1963 Film)
''Snow'' is a short documentary film made by Geoffrey Jones for British Transport Films in 1962–1963. Summary An example of "pure cinema", the 8-minute-long film shows the efforts of British Railways staff in coping with the 1963 United Kingdom cold wave. Production The film had its origins in primary research for a documentary about the British Railways Board. Jones' test research coincided with one of the coldest winters on record, and Jones approached BTF producer Edgar Anstey with the idea to contrast the comfort of the passengers with the efforts of the railway workmen in keeping trains going in the frozen conditions. Work began on the documentary straight after gaining approval, and Jones and cameraman Wolfgang Suschitzky travelled around the country filming scenes for the rest of the winter. The film was edited to a re-recorded version of Sandy Nelson's '' Teen Beat'' by Johnny Hawksworth, expanded to twice its original length by accelerating the tempo over the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Advanced Passenger Train
The Advanced Passenger Train (APT) was a tilting high speed train developed by British Rail during the 1970s and early 1980s, for use on the West Coast Main Line (WCML). The WCML contained many curves, and the APT pioneered the concept of active tilting to address these, a feature that has since been copied on designs around the world. The experimental APT-E achieved a new British railway speed record on 10 August 1975 when it reached , only to be bested by the service prototype APT-P at in December 1979. Development of the service prototypes dragged on, and by the late 1970s the design had been under construction for a decade and the trains were still not ready for service. The election of Margaret Thatcher brought matters to a head and she alluded to funding cuts for the project. Facing the possibility of cancellation, BR management decided to put the prototypes into service, with the first runs along the London-Glasgow route taking place in December 1981. The result was a me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
InterCity 125
The InterCity 125 (originally Inter-City 125New train speeds into service . BBC News, 1976-10-04; reproduced in the BBC "On This Day" website, accessed on 2019-05-15.) or High Speed Train (HST) is a diesel-powered high-speed passenger train built by between 1975 and 1982. Each set is made up of two Class 43 |
Public Information Film
Public information films (PIFs) are a series of government-commissioned short films, shown during television advertising breaks in the United Kingdom. The name is sometimes also applied, ''faute de mieux'', to similar films from other countries, but the US equivalent is the public service announcement (PSA). Public information films were common place in the 1950s till the 2000s however became obsolete with the closure of the COI (Central Office of Information). Subjects The films advise the public on what to do in a multitude of situations ranging from crossing the road to surviving a nuclear attack. They are sometimes thought to concern only topics related to safety, but there are PIFs on many other subjects, including animal cruelty, protecting the environment, crime prevention, how to vote at a general election or how to fill in a census form. Many of these films were aimed at children and were shown during breaks in children's programmes during holidays and at weekends. M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robbie (Public Information Film)
''Robbie'' is a 13-minute-long film made by British Transport Films in 1979 and revised in 1986. Although it is not strictly a Public Information Film, it is often considered to be so by fans of the genre. The film, which was shown in schools all over Great Britain, is based around a young boy suffering a disfiguring and/or fatal accident when he trespasses on a railway line, with three different versions being made to demonstrate the dangers of both electrified and non-electrified lines. When it was first released, all three versions were narrated and introduced by Peter Purves, later replaced by Keith Chegwin when the films were revised. ''Robbie'' was written and directed by Ronald Dunkley and produced by James Ritchie. It was a replacement for the controversial and extremely graphic ''The Finishing Line'', and was itself later replaced by a more modern film called '' Killing Time''. Plot All three variants of the film show Robbie, a young boy of about 8 years old with a k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Finishing Line
''The Finishing Line'' is a short film produced in 1977 by British Transport Films, warning about the dangers children face on railway lines. Although it is not strictly a public information film, it is often considered to be so by fans of the genre. It was broadcast in its entirety several times on television, but was so controversial that it was replaced less than two years later by the slightly less graphic ''Robbie''. It won at least two creative awards: Certificate of Appreciation (Top Category) and Oberhausen Mention at the Festival of Youth Paris. The film was also shown in several schools by invitation. Plot The voice-over of a headmaster tells his students that he knows that some of them have been playing on the railway, and that they should know about the dangers as well as saying this quote "''The Railway is not the Game Field''". A young boy is sitting on a railway bridge wall. As the boy ponders on his thoughts, he pictures a school Sports Day-style event being h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Watkin (cinematographer)
David Watkin BSC (23 March 1925 – 19 February 2008) was an English cinematographer, an innovator who was among the first directors of photography to experiment heavily with the usage of bounce light as a soft light source. He worked with such film directors as Richard Lester, Peter Brook, Tony Richardson, Mike Nichols, Ken Russell, Franco Zeffirelli, Sidney Lumet and Sydney Pollack. In 1985, Watkin won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on ''Out of Africa''. He received lifetime achievement awards in 2004 from the British Society of Cinematographers and the cinematographic-centric Camerimage Film Festival in Łódź, Poland. In ''Chariots of Fire'', he "helped create one of the most memorable images of 1980s cinema: the opening sequence in which a huddle of young male athletes pounds along the water's edge on a beach" to the film's theme music by Vangelis. Early life and career Watkin was born in Margate, Kent, England, the fourth and youngest son of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cinematographer
The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the photographing or recording of a film, television production, music video or other live action piece. The cinematographer is the chief of the camera and light crews working on such projects and would normally be responsible for making artistic and technical decisions related to the image and for selecting the camera, film stock, lenses, filters, etc. The study and practice of this field is referred to as cinematography. The cinematographer is a subordinate of the director, tasked with capturing a scene in accordance with director’s vision. Relations between the cinematographer and director vary. In some instances, the director will allow the cinematographer complete independence, while in others, the director allows little to none, even going so far as to specify exact camera placement and lens selection. Such a level of involvement is less common when the director ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Waterloo Railway Station
Waterloo station (), also known as London Waterloo, is a central London terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Underground station of the same name and is adjacent to Waterloo East station on the South Eastern Main Line. The station is the terminus of the South West Main Line to via Southampton, the West of England main line to Exeter via , the Portsmouth Direct line to which connects with ferry services to the Isle of Wight, and several commuter services around west and south-west London, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. The station was opened in 1848 by the London and South Western Railway, and it replaced the earlier as it was closer to the West End. It was never designed to be a terminus, as the original intention was to continue the line towards the City of London, and consequently the station developed in a haphazard fashion, leading to difficulty finding the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger (; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for ''Midnight Cowboy'', and was nominated for the same award for two other films ('' Darling'' and ''Sunday Bloody Sunday''). Early life Schlesinger was born and raised in Hampstead, London, in a Jewish family, the eldest of five children of distinguished Emmanuel College, Cambridge-educated paediatrician and physician Bernard Edward Schlesinger (1896–1984), OBE, FRCP, who had also served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a brigadier, and his wife Winifred Henrietta, daughter of Hermann Regensburg, a stockbroker from Frankfurt. She had left school at 14 to study at the Trinity College of Music, and later studied languages at the University of Oxford for three years. Bernard Schlesinger's father Richard, a stockbroker, had come to England in the 1880s from Frankfurt. After St Edmund's School, Hindhead and Uppingham School (whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Scott
Sir Peter Markham Scott, (14 September 1909 – 29 August 1989) was a British ornithologist, conservationist, painter, naval officer, broadcaster and sportsman. The only child of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, he took an interest in observing and shooting wildfowl at a young age and later took to their breeding. He established the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge in 1946 and helped found the World Wide Fund for Nature, the logo of which he designed. He was a yachting enthusiast from an early age and took up gliding in mid-life. He was part of the UK team for the 1936 Summer Olympics and won a bronze medal in sailing. He was knighted in 1973 for his work in conservation of wild animals and was also a recipient of the WWF Gold Medal and the J. Paul Getty Prize. Early life Scott was born in London at 174, Buckingham Palace Road, the only child of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott and sculptor Kathleen Bruce. He was only two years old when his father died. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
