My time in the film industry.... Almost as bad as working in the sweet factory,

Before I started working at the Roundhouse, I had also briefly ventured into the world of film making.  And had landed myself a job as a Model Maker at Shepperton Studios, where most of the James Bond films had been made, among many thousands of other films, both good and bad.

I was really rather excited to be given this job, as I imagined it would be a very romantic sort of work, mixing with film stars and seeing how films are really made.  Well I discovered the second of those things, but most certainly not the first.

On my first day at this new job, I was greeted at the gate by the guy who was to be my boss, and taken to the Model Makers workshop and introduced to the exciting work I should be doing there...  Which turned out to be making extremely accurate short lengths of ceiling mouldings in clay, which were then taken from me, sent to the mould makers shop, where fibre glass moulds were made from my master, and then lengths of  the ceiling moulds were produced by the plasterers, sent to the paint shop and painted, and then sent on to the scenery builders, who would fix this ceiling moulding in place at the top of the walls of the set that was being built for a film all about Catherine the Great.

So as you can see, my involvement in the making of that film was not exactly intimate.

This was the first of many disappointments about how it is to work in the film industry..  Many more were to follow over the following weeks I was there.

There were a number of us Model Makers in the shed I was working in, and all of us were more or less engaged in much the same work.  We were given very accurate drawings of whatever it was that we were expected to make, and then proceeded to make these things in clay, to be sent off to the mould makers.......  And so on.  Hardly exciting or stimulating work to be honest.  Though one of us, a guy who had been there since the dawn of time, did get to make a most impressive Russian Imperial eagle for that film... I was seriously jealous of him for that one..  But working in such a place was a very hierarchical matter, and length of service was what gave rank, not skill necessarily, and as the new boy, I was very much at the bottom of the social pile, and was made to realise this at every opportunity.   Basically that part of my work was dull, unrewarding and miserable to be honest, and deeply disillusioning too, of course.

Another curiosity of this work was the number of times each day we went on strike.  There was a large bell on the wall in our workshop, and whenever it went off it meant that we were on strike and had to stop working until it went off again, indicating the strike was over.  This infernal thing went off at remarkably frequent intervals, so we were on strike perhaps 10 or more times per day...  We were never told what we were on strike for, or what the outcome of the strike was.  A very weird business.

On one or two occasions I was told to report the next day to be in the sound stage where the films were actually made...  The first time I got this order I was really excited, feeling that finally I would be in the throbbing heart of film making... But nope.. Not like that at all.   I had to be in the stage by about 5:30 in the morning, and stayed there until lunch time, and then all afternoon again.   I never did discover why I was supposed to be there, as I never had anything to do.  I just had to sit there, not making a noise all day long, while the small group of people who actually were involved in the film making got on with their work...  Unbelievably boring way to pass your days.

I still have a memory of one of those days, during which for hours and hours they filmed Catherine the Great in bed with one or other of her officers.   The screen time this day's work produced was probably about 30 seconds, but they spent the entire day getting it how they wanted it.   Most of what was happening around that bed I couldn't see owing to the gaggle of camera men, lighting guys, directors and God knows who else who were all clustered around the bed with their equipment.   About the only thing that stuck in my mind was seeing how Jeanne Moreau (who was playing Catherine) and who had on the most amazing night garments, was wearing worn out gymn shoes, one of which was poking out of the bottom of the bed all day long.

Jeanne Moreau as Catherine the Great. I think this was the bed scene with the gymn shoes

I was also startled at the incredible way they - to my mind - wasted money.  Some other film, no idea what it was - was being made there at the same time, and part of it entailed a Rolls Royce being set on fire..  So they had a number of identical Rolls Royces parked there, and one after another they were set on fire, and filmed... Tens of thousands of pounds simply burnt....  And they were all real, brand new Rolls Royces... Extraordinary, and true too.

About the only enjoyable thing in that entire experience was during our lunch breaks we used to play a sort of football with Daleks.  apparently a Dr Who film had been made there some time previously, and these Daleks were sort of left over.   They had lost their heads, but still worked fine.  Basically they were tricycles with a Dalek body on top.. So we sat in them and pedaled like mad things around the back lot, sort of pushing a football around.. that was fun to do.

Daleks

While I was there I worked (so they told me) on a number of films, but generally had almost no involvement in the actual film making, and never saw any film stars mooching around the place, just lots of really rather boring craftsmen (plasterers, electricians, carpenters, sound guys and so on.   

So I came to the conclusion that the only people who could possible enjoy film making were the camera guys, directors and lighting guys, oh and perhaps the actors too.. for the rest of us it was an amazingly dull, tedious, boring, overpaid and unenjoyable experience...  This was to be confirmed to me later when the Roundhouse was occasionally hired by film makers as a sort of unlikely studio.

Having at one time or another worked in films, TV, radio, Rock and Roll and theatre, I have to say that theatre and Rock and Roll were really the only ones I truly enjoyed, as everyone working on a production or gig was intimately involved in creating the show, the carpenters, the electricians, the stage hands, the actors, musicians and so on, we all worked together, knew each other by name, and were all aware that what we did variously was really critical to the success or otherwise of the show... Not the way it is in the film industry to put it mildly.