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National Interest Picture Productions
National Interest Picture Productions was a British film production company set up in 1925 by film director Albert E. Hopkins and cinematographer Reginald Wyer. Based in Wardour Street in London's Soho district, it was originally called Publicity Pictures and at first concentrated on producing animated advertising films, short entertainment films, and music features.''British Film and Television Yearbook'' (1952)"HOPKINS, A. E. C." Volume 4, 178. The company developed a technique for producing color motion pictures, known as "Spectracolor". Their 1936 film adaptation of Gounod's opera '' Faust'', which was filmed in spectracolor, was one of the earliest colour motion pictures made in Britain. However, according to Richard Fawkes, writing in ''Opera on Film'', "not even that distinction could save it from being dire. ''Faust'' has gone down as being the worst operatic film ever made." Two other spectracolor films were released that year, ''The Midshipman'' and ''Railroad Rhythm'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reginald Wyer
Reginald H. Wyer BSC (1901–1970) was a British cinematographer. Among his notable early credits were ''The Seventh Veil'' (1945) and ''Quartet'' (1948), ''So Long at the Fair'' (1950) and ''Four Sided Triangle'' (1953), the last two of which were directed by Terence Fisher. He joined Fisher again in the mid-1960s for two low-budget science fiction films: ''Island of Terror'' (1965) and ''Night of the Big Heat'' (1967). He was often credited as "Reginald H. Wyer" or simply "Reg Wyer". Selected filmography * ''The Unholy Quest'' (1934) * ''The White Unicorn'' (1947) * '' Tread Softly'' (1952) * '' The Happy Family'' (1952) * '' Never Look Back'' (1952) * ''Carry on Nurse'' (1959) * ''Night of the Eagle'' (1962) * ''Unearthly Stranger'' (1963) * ''The Informers'' (1963) * ''Rattle of a Simple Man'' (1964) * ''Night of the Big Heat ''Night of the Big Heat'' is a science fiction novel written in 1959 by John Lymington. It tells the story of an unnamed British island that i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wardour Street
Wardour Street () is a street in Soho, City of Westminster, London. It is a one-way street that runs north from Leicester Square, through Chinatown, London, Chinatown, across Shaftesbury Avenue to Oxford Street. Throughout the 20th century the street became a centre for the British film industry and the popular music scene. History There has been a thoroughfare on the site of Wardour Street on maps and plans since they were first printed, the earliest being Elizabethan. In 1585, to settle a legal dispute, a plan of what is now the West End was prepared. The dispute was about a field roughly where Broadwick Street is today. The plan was very accurate and clearly gives the name ''Colmanhedge Lane'' to this major route across the fields from what is described as "The Waye from Uxbridge, Vxbridge to London" (Oxford Street) to what is now Cockspur Street. The old plan shows that this lane follows the modern road almost exactly, including bends at Brewer Street and Old Compton Street ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was developed from farmland by Henry VIII in 1536, when it became a royal park. It became a parish in its own right in the late 17th century, when buildings started to be developed for the upper class, including the laying out of Soho Square in the 1680s. St Anne's Church was established during the late 17th century, and remains a significant local landmark; other churches are the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory and St Patrick's Church in Soho Square. The aristocracy had mostly moved away by the mid-19th century, when Soho was particularly badly hit by an outbreak of cholera in 1854. For much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation as a base for the sex industry in addition to its night life and its location for the headquarte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Color Motion Picture Film
Color motion picture film refers both to unexposed color photographic film in a format suitable for use in a motion picture camera, and to finished motion picture film, ready for use in a projector, which bears images in color. The first color cinematography was by additive color systems such as the one patented by Edward Raymond Turner in 1899 and tested in 1902. A simplified additive system was successfully commercialized in 1909 as Kinemacolor. These early systems used black-and-white film to photograph and project two or more component images through different color filters. During 1930s the first practical subtractive color processes were introduced. These also used black-and-white film to photograph multiple color-filtered source images, but the final product was a multicolored print that did not require special projection equipment. Before 1932, when three-strip Technicolor was introduced, commercialized subtractive processes used only two color components and could repr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rachel Low
Rachael Low (6 July 1923 – 14 December 2014) was a British film historian, best known as the author of the seven-volume ''The History of the British Film''. The daughter of the cartoonist Sir David Low,Richards, Jeffrey. "Introduction" to Low's ''The History of British Film 1896–1906'', London: Routledge, 1997 948 p. v she gained her BSc in sociology and economics in 1944 from the London School of Economics, and her doctorate from the University of London in 1949. She published, in seven volumes between 1948 and 1985, ''The History of the British Film''; this examines, in exacting detail, film production in Britain from its origins in 1896 until 1939. She was awarded a Research Fellowship by Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, to facilitate her work on the later volumes of the series. Film critic Matthew Sweet has criticised Low's "tyrannous influence" on the writings of subsequent film historians. Legacy The annual Rachael Low Lecture was established in 2007 in her ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faust (opera)
''Faust'' is an opera in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play ''Faust et Marguerite'', in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's ''Faust, Part One''. It debuted at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859, with influential sets designed by Charles-Antoine Cambon and Joseph Thierry, Jean Émile Daran, Édouard Desplechin, and Philippe Chaperon. Performance history The original version of Faust employed spoken dialogue, and it was in this form that the work was first performed. The manager of the Théâtre Lyrique, Léon Carvalho cast his wife Caroline Miolan-Carvalho as Marguerite and there were various changes during production, including the removal and contraction of several numbers. The tenor Hector Gruyer was originally cast as Faust but was found to be inadequate during rehearsals, being eventually replaced by a principal of the Opéra-Comique, Joseph-Théodore ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Fawkes
Richard Brian Fawkes (31 July 1944 – 7 January 2020) was an English writer and director. Early years Fawkes was educated at the Royal Masonic School, Bushey, then spent eighteen months as an instructor at the Outward Bound School in Kenya with Voluntary Service Overseas. A graduate of the University of Wales Lampeter (BA English Honours), he joined the BBC as a general trainee in 1967. Career Leaving the BBC in 1971, he joined a commercials production company before going freelance as an Assistant Director for such people as Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Hugh Hudson, Cliff Owen and Jack Gold. His many film credits as a director include the award-winning Channel 4 series ''Tom Keating on Painters'', ''Circle Within the Square'' (which won a prize at the Mesa Festival, Florida) and ''The Original Three Tenors'', a documentary about Caruso, Gigli and Björling presented by Nigel Douglas. His stage credits include ''Waltzing in the Clouds'' (Covent Garden Festival) and ''A Dog' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of Britain and British Empire, its Empire during the First World War. The museum's remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914. As of 2012, the museum aims "to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and 'wartime experience'." Originally housed in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, the museum opened to the public in 1920. In 1924, the museum moved to space in the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, and finally in 1936, the museum acquired a permanent home that was previously the Bethlem Royal Hospital in Southwark. The outbreak of the Second World War saw the museum expand both its coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reg Hill
Reginald Eric Hill (16 May 1914 – 1999) was an English model-maker, art director, producer, and freelance storyboard artist. He is most prominently associated with the work of Gerry Anderson. Early life Born on 16 May 1914, Hill started his working life during the 1930s in the display department of a London wholesale grocer before progressing to a role of advertising designer. He obtained a private pilot's licence in June 1939. Hill served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, spending time at Benson in Oxfordshire as an airframe fitter instructor. After the war ended, he was posted to Germany and, on his return, flew an Avro Lancaster from Germany to England. Post-war After returning to England, Hill joined National Interest Picture Productions as a designer for British Army, RAF and other government-made films, working as a model maker and animator. He also used his artistic and design skills as a commercial artist creating paper cut-out model books (three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerry Anderson
Gerald Alexander Anderson (; 14 April 1929 – 26 December 2012) was an English television and film producer, director, writer and occasional voice artist. He remains famous for his futuristic television programmes, especially his 1960s productions filmed with " Supermarionation" (marionette puppets containing electric moving parts). Anderson's first television production was the 1957 Roberta Leigh children's series ''The Adventures of Twizzle'' (1957–58). ''Torchy the Battery Boy'' (1960), ''Four Feather Falls'' (1960), ''Supercar'' (1961–62) and ''Fireball XL5'' (1962–63) followed later, both series breaking into the U.S. television market in the early 1960s. In the mid-1960s Anderson produced his most successful series, '' Thunderbirds''. Other television productions of the 1960s include '' Stingray'', ''Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons'' and ''Joe 90''. Anderson also wrote and produced several feature films. Following a shift towards live-action productions in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christie's
Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François-Henri Pinault. Sales in 2015 totalled £4.8 billion (US$7.4 billion). In 2017, the ''Salvator Mundi (Leonardo), Salvator Mundi'' was sold for $400 million at Christie's in New York, at the time List of most expensive paintings, the highest price ever paid for a single painting at an auction. History Founding The official company literature states that founder James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie (1730–1803) conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766. However, other sources note that James Christie rented auction rooms from 1762, and newspaper advertisements for Christi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The London Gazette
''The London Gazette'' is one of the official journals of record or government gazettes of the Government of the United Kingdom, and the most important among such official journals in the United Kingdom, in which certain statutory notices are required to be published. ''The Gazette'' is not a conventional newspaper offering general news coverage. It does not have a large circulation. Other official newspapers of the UK government are ''The Edinburgh Gazette'' and ''The Belfast Gazette'', which, apart from reproducing certain materials of nationwide interest published in ''The London Gazette'', also contain publications specific to Scotland and Northern Ireland, respectively. In turn, ''The London Gazette'' carries not only notices of UK-wide interest, but also those relating specifically to entities or people in England and Wales. However, certain notices that are only of specific interest to Scotland or Northern Ireland are also required to be published in ''The London Gazette ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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