Flash Fiction: A Good Day to Die Hard

This week's Flash Fiction piece ran alongside the new Bruce Willis action film, 'A Good Day to Die Hard'. It was written by Garrie Fletcher.

Two friends enter a cinema, much like the one you’re in now, sit down and wait for the film to start.

Andy: So, he's saving the world again then?

Brian: No, he doesn't save the world, he does what needs to be done, you know, things the average person can't do, stuff we can only dream of.

Andy: Huh? You think I want to go round indiscriminately killing people?

Brian: No, not at all. Look, our lives are pretty dull...

Andy: Speak for yourself.

Brian: In comparison to McClane, Mr Willis.

Andy: Yes?

Brian: Well, we all need a bit of excitement, something fantastical...

Andy: Ridiculous.

Brian: If you like, but something we can lose ourselves in and forget about all this...

Andy: What? This cinema?

Brian: No. Life, the day to day.

Andy: So you're saying  that whilst I'm going about life, working like a nutter, stressing over this , that and the other I don't really want to be thinking about my job or how to be a good dad, what I really want to be doing is blowing up skyscrapers, aeroplanes and assorted European bad guys?

Brian: Well, aren't you?

Andy: Hell yeah!

Flash Fiction: Hitchcock

The second of our flash fiction pieces is also written by Stewart Derry, and accompanied the thriller 'Hitchcock', a film about the making of the famous film 'Psycho'.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Alfred Hitchcock. The film you are about to see is based on actual events in my life.

 

‘What?’ I hear you say. ‘Hitch, as the leading man?’

 

Yes! I was due a part after so many cameo appearances. You will also be introduced to a new leading lady - Alma Reville. She will, quite literally, take your breath away. She hasn’t a blonde hair on her head!

Surprised, are we? Choking on your popcorn? The master of suspense . . . losing his touch? We seem to have some film buffs in the audience. When you have made as many films as I have, it can sometimes be frightfully delicious to break the rules and confound all expectations.

I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m sure I’ll follow most of the action. After all, I played the role quite superbly many years ago.

There will, of course, be a MacGuffin. I won’t spoil your pleasure by revealing it.

By the way, if you happen to be sitting next to a pain in the asterix, be careful not to annoy them too much. They may have murder on their mind.

Enjoy!

Flash Fiction: Sammy's Great Escape

Welcome to the first of our specially written pieces from the flash fiction film project. This piece accompanied Sammy's Great Escape, one of our family films which was screened during the Easter holiday, and was written by Stewart Derry.

A magic story space can be many things: a Punch and Judy booth; a circus ring; a shadow puppet show; or an intimate theatre setting, such as this glorious cinema in Tenbury Wells.

The Regal is a rare jewel in a rather rough and tumble cinema landscape, managing to survive both a flood and the wrecking ball. Suitable film suggestions on these themes anyone? Perhaps one day someone will make a film about The Regal, with all the tears, heartache and love that have gone into making it such an inspiring setting.

It puts me in mind of the great British classic, The Smallest Show on Earth, where the old projectionist, Percy Quill, played by a heavily made up Peter Sellers, works in a battered ruin of a cinema, longing for the good old days to return. I’m glad to say The Regal has fared much better than the one in the movie.

The film you are about to see is full of fantasy and adventure; 90 minutes of ocean hokum to entertain the whole family. We all have great memories of visiting the cinema. We hope your visit today adds to them. And here’s wishing you many more!

Remember, if you'd like to write a flash fiction yourself, do get in touch, we'd love to hear from you.

Flash Fiction: Introduction

As part of our aims to increase the reach of the work we do at the Regal, we're running a number of projects this year which take film and look at them through other artforms. One of these projects is the Flash Fiction project which we're running in conjunction with the fabulous Writing West Midlands.

To launch the project, three of WWM's upcoming new authors will be writing flash fiction to go with our April, May and June film programme. For those of you who don't know; flash fiction is basically very short stories, usually under 200 words long.

Look out for the works at film showings in April, May and June. You'll usually be able to pick them up as flyers to read before the film starts.

Once the films have aired we'll be sharing the flash fictions with you here on the blog, so that you can enjoy them even if you missed that particular film.

We're also opening up the floor to any aspiring writers out there who'd like to give this a go, so if you'd like to write your own flash fiction introduction for a film then get in touch! There will be lots of openings in our July-August film programme.

Enjoy!

Regal Film Unit: Make Films Like a Pro!

If you've been to see a film at the Regal recently you'll have noticed our new trailer which runs before films, advertising the Regal Film Unit. It's a new project which we're very excited about, and judging by the amount of people talking about it, so is everyone else!

We're working with a local film production company called Flying Machine Media to provide a film project like no other. Working with industry professionals, project participants will learn everything they need to know to create their own films, from script writing and storyboarding to lighting, directing and editing.

The project has its first meeting on Saturday 8th June, and will meet most Saturdays thereafter. It's completely free, and open to people of any age or experience (though children under 11 should attend with an adult).

So, if you fancy yourself as the next Stephen Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino, get in touch!

The Mistletoe Bride - Short Film Project

Tenbury Wells is famous for its mistletoe - so much so that it has earnt itself the title of 'Mistletoe Capital of the World' according to the media. Every year, more of the white-berried plant is sold here in Tenbury than anywhere else in the country, so as you can probably guess, it's a bit of a big deal around these parts.

To celebrate the town's association with mistletoe, Tenbury celebrates each December with a Mistletoe Festival. This year, we were excited to be involved in the celebration which happened on December 1st. In the preceeding weeks, we worked with various local community groups to put together four short films based on the traditional tale of the Mistletoe Bride.

A good crowd turned up for the World Premiere of our films on Saturday 1st, including many of the cast. In case you missed the screening, here is one of the four films we showed on the day.

Enjoy!

Mistletoe Short Films: Casting Call

We're getting involved in the Mistletoe Festival in Tenbury Wells this year in lots of ways! Perhaps most excitingly, we're going to be creating some short silent films on a mistletoe theme, which will be shown as part of the festival celebrations.

If you've ever wanted to be in a film then now is your chance! Everyone is welcome, and there is no cost to take part. Actors and actresses of any age are welcome and no prior acting experience is necessary. You'll only need to come along to one session, which will be about two hours long. Parts of all sizes are available, from leads to supporting extras - and of course, as it's a silent film you won't have to remember any lines!

We'll be arranging the filming dates in November to suit the people who get in touch, so if you're interested just send us an email to hao@tenburytown.org.uk and we'll get back to you soon.

Why not bring the whole family along? Then you can all ask each other for your autographs afterwards. Who knows, this could be the start of a wonderful career...

And We're Open!

It's been a very busy week. Ten months of restoration work, hundreds of hours of volunteer time and huge support from all of you brought us to Saturday night at 6.30pm when the doors opened to some very stylishly dressed characters waiting at the bottom of the red carpet.

Our 1930s evening was a fantastic success, and we had so many lovely comments from you all about what fun you had. The Regal looked amazing all lit up for the ocassion.

Our full house danced the night away to the fantastic music of Naomi Payne's Hotsy-Totsy band, with some very impressive swing dancing going on, and we were delighted to see those who'd worked so hard on the Regal to be so pleased with their Oscar awards in our awards ceremony.

Jenni Ord from the Heritage Lottery Fund, accepting the award

for 'Best Picture' from Tenbury's Mayor Sue Corfield

On Sunday, over a hundred adults and children joined us to celebrate the Regal's 75th birthday. Everyone really got into the swing of things with the party games, with much cheering from the winners, and the rendition of 'Happy Birthday' was sung with gusto. Local baker Sue Field provided us with a delicious birthday cake which was admired in looks and taste by all.

Sarah Fellows, Heritage Access Officer, cutting the cake

Our film, Bugsy Malone, was much enjoyed by all, and we were very impressed by how many children and adults got dressed up for the ocassion! There were some excellent outfits.

Usher Stephen Butler welcomes the party-goers at the door

We also launched our CineMonkeys and MiniCineMonkeys this week, with Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone and a magical themed under 7s craft session. We'll bring you some photographs next week of craft-in-action.

So all in all, a busy and successful week! Guided tours begin next Thursday, so if you're interested in having a look around and learning about the restoration please get in touch to book your place.

Finally, we just want to thank everyone who has helped us get this far; from construction workers and contractors to our fabulous volunteers to all of you who have supported the project.

We'll be continuing to bring you information about the cinema's history for some time here on the blog and over on our twitter and facebook pages, so we hope you'll keep following us.

See you at the cinema soon!

Memories of the Projection Room

A local resident who used to work in the Regal as a projectionist brought this fantastic picture in to us and we wanted to share it with you.

It's a photograph of the projection room at the Regal in its early years. The two projectors in the picture are the original Kalee 11s which were in place at the cinema's opening in July 1937.

Some of those original features are still in the projection room today, most notably the fire shutters on the far wall. We've even still got one of those tall chairs, especially tall so that the projectionist could see down into the auditorium through the high portal you can see next to where the projectionist is standing in the photograph.

We've been recording the memories of people who have worked in and visited the Regal over the years. These audio recordings will be available on our interactive website soon at www.regaltenbury.org.uk and we're also in the process of transcribing some of them as well. A few of the people we've interviewed so far have been those who used to work as projectionists, and we thought this blog post would be a great place to share some of those little snippets about life in the projection room.

Once the films arrived, usually Monday or Tuesday, you'd go down to the cinema, and you had to take the films out of the transport cans and put them onto the spools, the projection spools, and what you were doing was to check them over to make sure that they were alright. Because the distributor would send a running sheet down with the films telling you that they'd checked them and they were all satisfactory... but you never took their word for it.

- David Griffiths

The projectors in the photograph were 'carbon arc' projectors, which meant that instead of having a bulb in them to generator light as more modern projectors do, they actually burnt carbon inside them which gave off a bright light. This is one of the reasons that projection was such a dangerous occupation - that, and the very flammable nitrate film that was used, which has been known to spontaneously combust from only the friction of moving through the projector!

Tom Dallow tells us a little about the carbon arc projectors that he worked with at the Regal;

The thing with carbons... if you let them burn too far apart, they'd go out. But if they burn too close together, the picture would go brown! So, then there used to be some fun and games if you hadn't put enough carbon in there because you'd got to get your hands in the archouse, open it up, tap them up a little bit more with something so that it'd last... they've been out many a night.

- Tom Dallow

We hope you've enjoyed this brief journey into the projection room of years gone by! We'll share some more memories of the Regal over the summer. If you've got any photographs of the Regal that we could feature here, please do let us know!

It's all about CineMonkeys!

You've probably already heard about CineMonkeys, our family film club, featuring an hour of things to make and do before a classic family film, but just in case you haven't... here's the low-down for you!

We're very pleased with our new logo and hope you like it too - it was designed by Katy from Lacon Childe School as part of a partnership project between the school and the cinema. We love the smiling monkey - look out for him at our summer events!

So, what's on? Well, we've got four great family films for you in August, each with an hour of themed craft and games beforehand;

Wednesday August 1st - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Wednesday August 8th - Happy Feet
Wednesday August 15th - The Lion King
Wednesday August 22nd - Pirates of the Caribbean

Tickets are £6 for adults and £4 for children. Some craft activities may incur an additional £1 charge.

Film fans of all ages are welcome, and you don't have to come to the craft and games session to see the film. During August, we're also showing a classic Tom and Jerry cartoon before the main feature, included in your film admission ticket. Craft sessions start at 11.30am, and the cartoon begins at 12.30pm, followed immediately by the film.

Win your way in!

We're so excited about CineMonkeys that we're giving away a family ticket (for up to five people) to each one of our CineMonkeys films. To enter the competition, just design us a poster for the film you'd like to come and see for free out of the four we're showing this August. We'll judge each week on the Monday before the film and let you know that day if you've won. There will be some prizes for highly commended entries too, so get designing!

CineMonkeys is aimed at families with children aged 7 - 12, though children of any age are very welcome. We're also running additional sessions on Tuesdays between 10am and noon for MiniCineMonkeys who are under 7, with two hours of craft and games and a short cartoon showing at 11.30am in the auditorium. MiniCineMonkeys sessions are completely free, and will feature similar craft activities and games to the following day's CineMonkeys session, but with the focus on our younger film fans.

If you've got questions about any of the CineMonkeys sessions, or if you'd like to let us know that you're coming, you can email us on hao@tenburytown.org.uk. Booking for the pre-film sessions isn't essential, but it is preferred. You can buy tickets for the films in advance or pre-order them and pay on the day - contact the Pump Rooms in Tenbury on 01584 810118 or email us.

Bringing a little cinema to you - our 8mm projector

We've had a bit of interest about that 8mm projector that we mentioned in our talks and presentations post last week, so we thought we'd tell you a little more about it.

You may remember a time when VHS video tapes were the method of watching films at home, in the days before DVDs. In the days before that, the home projector ruled the territory of at-home film-watching. There were various types of projectors that you could buy, which took different sizes and types of film.

By far the most common home film projectors showed a type of film called Super 8. This was one of a few different types of 8mm film (that's film which is 8mm wide - film in cinemas is usually 35mm, or 35mm wide). Our projector is one of those; it'll also show Single 8 film too, another type of 8mm film that preceded Super 8.

Many home films were black and white and silent, however some would be in colour and have sound. The film you can see projecting here, which is a celebration of 50 years of Mickey Mouse (recognise the Sorceror's Apprentice?) is in colour with sound.

We've collected a few titles that we can show to demonstrate how these home projectors worked to school and educational groups. They're a mixture of sound, silent, black and white and colour. These include cartoon favourites such as Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and the Flintstones, as well as a short film of one of Laurel and Hardy's adventures.

Feature-length films were impractical to show on small projectors like these and would have been very expensive, so instead film manufacturers would sell short clips of their feature films on 8mm film. We've collected examples from Disney's Pinocchio and Bambi.

If you're interested in having us demonstrate the 8mm projector for your group, let us know! We're happy to include a short talk about the Regal, film and projectors, the history of British cinemas or any combination thereof to give the projector some context. Some showings can even be provided for free, depending on the titles you wish to view, what type of group you are and how far away from us you're located.

For details of the films we can show, the types of groups we can show them to, distances we'll travel, dates we're free, costs involved and so on, get in touch. We're happy to chat about your requirements and see what we can do for you.

Talks and presentations: bringing the Regal to you

As well as keeping you in touch with the Regal's history and restoration online, the HLF project has also allowed for the creation of some talks and presentations which our staff and volunteers can bring out to you. If you're a community group, school, or similar then we'll be pleased to come along to your meetings and deliver a talk about the Regal and/or the restoration project.

Talks last approximately 45min for either Regal history or Regal restoration, or we can just about squeeze the highlights of both into an hour (if we talk really fast!). We'll provide a laptop and a projector for the presentation, we just ask that you make sure there's a screen or blank white wall to project onto, and a couple of plug sockets somewhere nearby (cups of tea are very much appreciated also!). We can adapt our talks for groups of any age, ability or prior knowledge, just let us know the requirements of your group and we'll do what we can.

We're also in the process of developing some digital resources for educational groups which will be launching in September 2012, as well as special activity sessions and projects about film, cinema and the Regal. We even have an 8mm projector and some short films, silent and sound, which we can demonstrate for your group. Ever wanted to see Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh on Super 8 film? Now's your chance!

If you're interested in having us come and chat to you, even if it's something a bit different to the talks described above, just get in touch by email letting us know what you need and we'll do what we can to help you out.

We're looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Write for the Regal!

Are you a writer, or would you like to be?

We'll be publishing various collections of fact and fiction on the themes of film and cinema, centering on the Regal, in the next year. From poetry and stories to factual accounts of the cinema's history, we're looking for authors to be involved in these exciting community-sourced projects. Our first publication, an e-booklet on the history of the cinema, is already available through Amazon Kindle store now.

There are no restrictions on age or experience to be involved, just enthusiasm for the subject! We'll select our favourite submissions to be included in final publications, some of which will be produced in digital form and some in hard copy.

If you're interested in joining in and writing something, get in touch by email, letting us know whether you'd like to write poems, stories or factual pieces, with details of any writing experience you've got and a short sample of your work (no more than 2500 words total, please, though less is fine). If you'd like more information you can write to us at the same address and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

We're looking forward to hearing from you soon!