Tonight, 10th February 2017, Bournemouth opened up it's new Odeon cinema to the public within the BH2 complex. With my own Boy Wonder (Andy) at my side, we experienced The Lego Batman Movie in the isense auditorium. This is not a review of the movie - it's a review of the cinematic experience. One other caveat: I am not reviewing the food here. I'm not prepared to buy cinema food or drink at the extortionate prices they demand. As such, i'm not best placed to tell you if the hot dogs, nachos, pick 'n' mix or fountain drinks are of a better quality or price than elsewhere. Personally, I take my own bottled drink and soft food (no crunching!). I do, however, think that taking pizzas into the cinema is a bad, stinky idea.
The trailers
My first observation is that the place is geared up to sell you food and drink. Having entered the main foyer there's a Costa coffee, drinks fountains, popcorn stands, nachos, sweets and more. You enter via an escalator if coming up from Bournemouth Gardens or at ground level if via the main road opposite the Moon in the Square pub. Immediately on your left there's a bank of 7 or 8 ticket machines for you to print pre-booked tickets or just to buy some from scratch. There were a few staff hovering around if you needed help; I'm not sure what you'd do if you wanted to pay by cash or couldn't work the machine - possibly via the food concession stand?
Having bought your tickets and foods, it's through a ticket checkpoint and then up another escalator to the floor where the 10 screens are. It's very open-plan and space-age. The corridors are quite dimly lit but there are big numbers on each screen to help direct you. On this first floor you can also buy a drink from the bar and some 'pizza and plank' food. I couldn't see how much the food was but the pizza itself didn't look very substantial. There's a great view of the gardens from the window in the bar area. Kids were in there too, so I guess it's not an age-restricted thing.
The main feature
As I've already mentioned, we opted to see the movie in the isense auditorium (facts are below). You access it along a curved corridor with a huge video screen on one side which was showing some sort of forest scene. When you enter the auditorium the size of the screen really hits you - It's BIG! We were five rows back from the front and any nearer would probably be a strain on the neck and eyes. We had standard seats rather than those fancy leather recliners as advertised in some of the online stories. We also had cup holders rather than tables and it was nice that they weren't sticky from too many Coke spillages.
The projection was, as you would hope, crystal clear and the enhanced sound VERY LOUD. When they did the promo ad for Dolby Atmos to show off its capabilities you really did feel the Earth move below your feet. Unfortunately, watching a U certificate film at a teatime meant we had chattering kids with legs swinging into the back of your seat, but I can hardly blame Odeon for that.
Is it worth paying the extra money for isense? You pay an extra £2.50 for the privilege. Honestly, I'd save it for the one or two times a year you want the optimum experience - the next Star Wars or Bond movie perhaps. For regular movies (and they were showing 50 Shades Darker next) I can't see isense adding much, unless you want your on-screen orgasms to shake your world that much stronger!
Fun Facts
BH2 is Odeon’s new 10-screen cinema, replacing the ABC and Odeon cinemas on Westover Road.
It’s largest screen is in the 340-seat iSense auditorium, which has Dolby Atmos sound using 56 individually-controlled speakers. This means that sound is not just around you, it’s over and below you.
The screen is approx. 55 foot x 23ft.
In the screens that have recliners there is a £2 surcharge for these seats.
Final thoughts
It's a purely functional building, but it looks and feels fine. It's airy and light in the main areas and will hopefully be a popular destination for tourists and locals alike, being well placed near the beach and town centre. It's a bit sad that all the posters on the walls are now digital rather than the old fashioned paper quad posters clipped inside illuminated displays. But that's progress for you I guess.
And as the lights are switched off at the Odeon
Cinema in Bournemouth on February 9th 2017, it signals the first time since June 1937 that no cinema
has been open on prestigious Westover Road, ‘Bournemouth’s Bond Street.’
It’s a bittersweet feeling, as the buildings are beautiful
and I have so many happy memories of spending afternoons and evenings there in
the ABC (later the Cannon in 1983, then the MGM from 1992 before reverting to
ABC again in 1996) and the Gaumont (Odeon from 1986). On February 10th, the new cinema
opens in central Bournemouth – a flagship cinema for the 21st
Century, complete with luxuriant auditoria, pin-sharp projection, and in its
premier iSense screen the latest immersive Dolby Atmos surround sound.
Don’t get me wrong, I embrace new technology and look
forward to the enhanced picture and sound, raked seating and being able to book
a specific regular seat. The older cinemas have been deteriorating for some
time – the conversion job of the Odeon from 2 screens to 6 was not entirely successful,
with the walls being too thin and allowing sound spillage from neighbouring
screens. Seats were past their best and the cinemas were strange shapes with
poor sight lines. And yet the ABC Screen 1 was magnificent to the end. A
perfectly shaped auditorium with huge curtains across its curving screen.
My first film I recall on Westover Road was the inauspicious
When the North Wind Blows starring Dan (Grizzly Adams) Haggerty in the mid-70s.
Greater things were to come, and here are my magnificent seven Westover Road movie memories:
1. The Pearl & Dean adverts – It felt like they went on forever, and they were SO random, but the adverts that followed the catchy Pearl and Dean jingle are indelibly etched on my mind. From the politically incorrect ‘too orangey for crows’ Kia-Ora to ‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’ to Vic Lawton’s Motor Body Repairs – ‘Oooh madam, we’ll soon have your body so bee-utiful again!’ they were a crackly, mismatched, block of 70s or 80s consumerism in one compact hit. They still show those awful ads for hot dogs (I think they were Westlers back in the day) but they still look horrible and cost an arm and a leg.
Image loaded onto cinematreasures.org by Len Gazzard
2. The
underage viewing – Is there anything more exciting than watching a film
when you’re not actually legally old enough? Instead of the ‘U’ or ‘A’ films,
it wanted to see the ‘AA’s (14 or older) and for those ‘X’-rated treats – you
had to be 18. My first underage film should have been Blade Runner in summer of
1982 – I was 13 ½ and you had to be 14 - but the woman at the ABC was having
none of it. I had to wait many years for its re-release to finally see it in
its widescreen splendour. Instead, I walked up the road that same day and was
allowed to see the equally AA-rated Who Dares Wins (featured in the photo above!) a pretty ropey Lewis
Collins SAS actioner. Other ‘illegal' AAs that year included Firefox, Conan
the Barbarian and Fame (yes, really!). Frustratingly, a couple of months before my 14th
birthday they increased the age from 14 to 15 with the introduction of the new
15 certificate – grrrr!My first ‘18’
cert film was A Nightmare on Elm Street (the original) which I went to at the
Odeon when I was 16. I brazenly lied about my age, smugly walked in, sat down, opened
my glasses case and realised I’d left my specs at home! So, I sat in the front
row, squinting my short-sighted eyes into some sort of focus as Freddy Kruger
sliced his way through Johnny Depp and co.
3. The queuing up the alleyways– Back in the day, because
you couldn’t buy your tickets in advance, either online or by phone, you had to
queue up and take your chances. This meant that for blockbusters like Star Wars
or James Bond movies you invariably had to queue up outside the cinema, which
then snaked round into one of the alleyways that linked Westover Road with Hinton
Road. And you waited. If you were lucky, you would get in to the next
performance, but if you weren’t, you had to stay in that queue while the film
played and hopefully got in for the next one. I remember queuing like this for
around five hours to see The Spy Who Loved Me.
4. The double and triple bills – While
this still happens in some rep cinemas, the double bill (or double feature) or triple bill is a
thing of the past for modern cinemas, quite simply because you don’t make as
much money. Sure, there’s the odd ‘marathon’ or over-nighter when a new film
comes out in a franchise, but I’m talking about the Star Wars Trilogy or double
bill – the first three Star Trek movies in one day - and even more fascinating, the weirdly
unrelated programmes. For example The Amazing Spider-Man TV movie and Sinbad
and the Eye of the Tiger, or Smokey and the Bandit and The Conquest of Earth (three
edited episodes of Galactica 1980), and even Buck Rogers in the 25th Century along
with Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack. Great value for money too!
5. The non-smoking side – Even now,
when I walk into a cinema auditorium I tend to favour the right-hand side. I
think this is because from a very early age I conditioned myself to sitting
there because that’s the ‘no smoking’ side. Contrary to what common sense and
basic science would suggest, there’s evidently an invisible force field that
sits dead centre of the auditorium and prevents toxic tobacco smoke from
drifting across to the right side? Well, no actually, your clothes still came
out stinking of fags until smoking was finally prohibited.
(Image by Dusashenka from Flickr album ABC Cinema)
6. The restaurants/bars – Both the
Odeon and the ABC had upstairs bars/restaurants. However, I really can’t
remember being old enough to go in to them or seeing them actually open. The
Odeon’s catering space was actually turned into a small 140-seat auditorium in
1995, six years after the downstairs was split into four screens. The ABC’s
still existed as a redundant space right up to when it closed, typically only used
as a reception area for events/premieres.
7. The Continuous performances –
Nowadays you watch a watch, the lights come up, you leave and the popcorn boxes
are swept up. Back in the day you went in as and when you pleased. The
performance times were more of a guide rather than clearing out times, meaning
that you could watch the first performance of the day and stay in to watch it
again, as I did on a couple of occasions (Battlestar Galactica and Clash of the
Titans for sure). I also saw the last twenty minutes of Jaws 3D before sitting
through the trailers and support programme and then the start of the film. I
needn’t have bothered.
Like
they say, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, and I apologise if I misremembered
anything. Of course, the greatest fun was raving about the movies afterwards
and saying ‘Remember that bit when…?’ So a big shout out to all family and
friends who made the trips even more exciting, with honourable mentions to fellow
cinemagoers Andy, Richard, Michael, Jim, Craig and Claire.
Master of Horror John Carpenter is facing a tour schedule that would scare the fainthearted. But then, this is the man who brought Halloween mainstay Michael Myers into our nightmares and established a synth sound that still resonates today. He may be in his sixties but he’s pretty laid back about what the year is likely to bring and is looking forward to hitting the road to perform to his fans.
Take a look at the reviews of successful recent movies like It Follows and Midnight Special and you’re likely to find mention of the soundtrack channelling John Carpenter or being ‘Carpenteresque’. His is a style that’s synonymous with 80s synth sounds – repeating motifs overlaid with ominous chords – and not only did it influence his fans, it clearly resonated with composers who are now providing homage to this soundtrack sub-genre in their own work. And while one might reason that the resurgence in the distinctive sound might be down to the lack of new product, nothing could be further from the truth.
In February 2015 he unleashed John Carpenter’s Lost Themes, an album of tracks for movies that never existed. Quite simply, these were snippets and sketches from movies-yet-to-come, or would only ever live in your mind. A collaboration between the composer, his son Cody and godson Daniel Davies, the album made enough of an impact to warrant a follow-up a year later, and this time they’re taking the show on the road.
While this might be his first tour, it’s not the first time that John Carpenter has been in a band. You might remember the music video to Big Trouble in Little China featuring a performance by Coup de Villes with Nick (The Shape in Halloween) Castle and Tommy Lee (Halloween III) Wallace supporting Carpenter. He chuckles at my suggestion that this new tour is really a front for getting a reunion of the group, conjuring up images of ‘The Blues Brothers’ antics in getting the band back together. “Yeah, that’s it,” he deadpans. But did the experience of working with the Coupe de Villes help ground his expectations of what the forthcoming tour might bring. “I have no idea what to think. I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” he confesses. “I have no idea. I’ll just take it as it comes. It won’t always be perfect and it won’t always be great. It’ll be up and down… but we’ll see.”
We caught up with the composer in the week that La-La Land released its 30th anniversary edition of Big Trouble in Little China and his first gig on the tour officially sold out at LA’s Bootleg Theater. If ever he had any doubt that there was an audience for these gigs, this surely put that fear to rest? “Well, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.” It’s an optimistic caution that will be prevalent during our conversation. As we go to press, Los Angelinos still have the opportunity to grab a ticket to see the show at the Orpheum Theatre in June.
The tour is evenly split between major cities in the US and European venues including Germany, France, Italy, Iceland and Greece. Tantalisingly, the London gig falls on October 31st – what better way to spend your location for Halloween? – while the German gig is part of Oberhausen’s Weekend of Hell Festival.
Let’s pause for a moment – the composer has gone from never touring before to 30 gigs in a year. In fact it grew from 26 to 30 in the two days between me looking at the schedule and could well have grown by the time you read this. “That’s quite a schedule isn’t it?” Carpenter offers. “Quite a lot of time on stage, but there are interruptions along the way.” As opposed to the lengthy ‘living from a suitcase’ press junkets he’s previously experienced. “It’s not as intense as talking about the same movie, all day, every day. We’ll perform for a few days, have a week off and go back again. That should make things a little easier… I hope,” he chuckles.
International tours of this nature don’t just ‘happen’, so what was the catalyst? “It started off with my son and godson who said ‘Hey, why don’t we tour this?’ I spoke to my wife and she said ‘You’d better do it’ and then it just grew…and kept on growing… and here we are!” For someone who has always had a passion for music, it would be easy to assume that Carpenter had always held a desire to tour, and this might the last chance to do it. “On no, not at all,” He gently corrects me. “It was just an opportunity for me… at my age… to go out with my kids and play. And why not?”
It’s not unusual for a performer to bemoan the fact that the crowd are only there to hear a certain signature song, and that must be true for many of the fans who have purchased tickets to hear the main themes from Halloween and Escape from New York. But with a tour that spans seven months isn’t there a chance that Carpenter himself will tire of playing the soundtrack of a certain Haddonfield serial killer for the umpteenth time? “Oh no, I don’t see THAT happening,” he counters. “Hey, it’s going to be fun. THIS is all fun.” Ask him what tracks the band will be playing and he’s understandably tight-lipped, but does reveal the likely ratio split in the material. “I would say it’s 75-80% soundtracks and 20-25 % from the Lost Themes albums.”
Fellow band members Cody and Daniel are co-composers on the Lost Themes albums and by being one step removed from the original movie soundtracks they are able to be impartial and suggest improvements for the live performances. “They help with everything,” Carpenter clarifies. “They help adapt [the score] to make it work well live. Hey, we’ve got a six-person band on the stage.” Inevitably, concessions need to be made between what can be recorded in a studio and what sounds good performed live, but this doesn’t trouble him. “You have to adjust for a live performance – it can’t be exactly the same. You have to make certain changes, but it’ll be close – it’ll be as close as we can get it.”
Carpenter has a presence on social media, boasting active accounts on both Twitter (nearly 120k followers) and Facebook (over 260k followers). In a recent post he asked his Facebook fans to let him know what tracks they’d like to hear performed live. The 700 comments were a great way to confirm what he probably already knew were the favourites (Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13), while less expected was the request to include the underscore from the deleted bank robbery scene from Escape from New York! “Ha, yes, I saw that,” he recalls. So does it amaze him that out of EVERYTHING in his oeuvre, that one track should be singled out? “Does that amaze me?” he repeats the question. “Everything amazes me now. I’m just so happy to be around doing this.” And of the immediacy of social media? “It’s a wonderful thing, but it’s not going to influence what I do,” he confesses.
In April 2016, Sacred Bones released John Carpenter’s Lost Themes II, a follow-up to the previous album which re-established ‘the Carpenter sound’ to a chart audience. The composer recalls how it all happened “The story for the first one is that Cody, Daniel and I were ad-libbing some music that we’d put together and created what was a basically a score sampler.” The tracks were composed and compiled over a number of years. Cody had previously scored his father’s ‘Cigarette Burns’ and ‘Pro-Life’ episodes of Showtime’s Masters of Horror, as well as contributing music for Vampires and Ghosts of Mars. Daniel, among other projects, had co-scored horror feature Condemned. “I’d got a new music attorney who asked me if I’d got anything new,” Carpenter senior continues. “I sent her this stuff and four months later I had a record deal [with independent label Sacred Bones Records]. It was that simple,” he shares.
Popular enough to create demand for a sequel, the new release was put together at greater speed – something that Carpenter is used to (he famously had one day to score Assault on Precinct 13 and three days for Halloween). He also directed the music video for lead track Distant Dream, his first directing gig since 2010’s horror flick The Ward. As with most contemporary releases, Lost Themes II has also been released as a limited edition vinyl – in raspberry swirl! The fact that both Lost Themes albums are sequenced with a Side A and a Side B I wonder if Carpenter yearns for the days of the 12-inch record, or is he happy to embrace the latest digital mediums? “I love ‘em all!” he emphasises. “Vinyl reminds me of the old days. But it doesn’t matter what the format is – everything’s good when it involves music.”
John Carpenter’s father, Dr Howard Carter, was a music professor and a founding member of The Nashville Strings. It’s little surprise that John has such a passion for music, which he has passed on to his son. “I grew up with music. It’s always been there,” he states matter-of-factly. I recall an incident the previous week on public transport where someone’s cell phone rang in a packed train carriage – it was the main theme from Halloween? Does he witness events like this, and what does he make of a 38-year-old improvised score still making its presence known today? “Yeah, that also happens to me! My wife (producer Sandy King) has it on her phone, but that’s fine - it’s ALL great.” But surely that’s just being too modest?
Disasterpeace’s score for It Follows and David Wingo’s for Midnight Special have a sound that critics are very quick to describe as ‘Carpenteresque’. Is imitation the greatest form of flattery and is he happy to take the compliment? “I’ll take any compliment anyone want to give me,” he admits. But is it lazy journalism to compare any 80s throwback synth score to Carpenter’s work. “Man, I don’t really know. I just do what I do, and that’s a particular sound on a synthesiser. Other than that I don’t really know what it [the comparison] means.”
Carpenter has frequently described his greatest music influence to be the great Bernard Herrmann. I ask him what that legacy was. “I think that everybody has learned THE Bernard Herrmann chord. Other than that, it’s that every one of his scores just was a signature for the movie. The only person close to him in modern times is composer Hans Zimmer; his scores provide a signature – he’s amazing.”
Looking back at his early movies in the mid-1970s it’s astounding to see that John Carpenter not only wrote the movies, he directed them and composed the scores.
Was self-composition out of necessity because there was no budget for a composer, or was it a choice job that he wanted to hold onto for himself? “I was there, saying ‘I don’t have any money for this.’ I could do something simple but make it SOUND big with the synths.” In much the same way that Carpenter uses anamorphic lenses to give his movies a widescreen feel, he used synths to make the films sound like they cost more than they really did. “That’s something you’re always trying to do,” he reasons. “It was just me trying to service those movies, to support the big scenes and give them some feeling.”
Official video for Distant Dreams for Lost Themes II
While Carpenter predominantly scores his own movies, on occasion he handed over duties to others – Shirley Walker for Memoirs of An Invisible Man, Jack Nitzsche for Starman and Ennio Morricone for The Thing. Was it hard to do this when he himself could have tackled the task? “I never thought like that. A lot of the time it was such a big project and I needed that help. In the case of Morricone… I got to work with Morricone!” The Italian maestro recently had two of his unused tracks from The Thing soundtrack used in Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. Does Carpenter feel that music should transfer between movies in this manner? “I haven’t seen The Hateful Eight. He used the same tracks? Hmm, he’s done that in other projects too.” So, it’s not something that he would do? “Who me? Oh no, that’s just not my style.” Being a huge western fan (and writer of TV movies Blood River and El Diablo), might we one day get to hear a western score by him? “I don’t know.” Pauses. “There’s probably one resting in there somewhere.”
Our time is drawing to a close, so a couple of quick-fire questions. At the end of the tour, and after a well-deserved break, might there be a Lost Themes III? I couldn’t say one way or another. You never know,” he offers. What’s coming up next? “I’m working on several things but I can‘t share any of them with you right now,” he apologises. But he’s not planning on retiring any time soon? “I’m semi-retired now, but I’m loving life,” he laughs.
I sign off with the promise to catch up with Carpenter and the band at his London gig on Halloween, looking forward to hearing the date-perfect rendering of his seminal score. “Oh, really?” he mock teases at the suggestion he wasn’t going to play it that day. I warn him, in the words of Brit pop band the Kaiser Chiefs, that if he doesn’t play the track then I predict a riot. “Oh, OK, I’ll remember that,” he suggests, making a mental note, though somehow I think that Michael Myers’ theme was always going to be present and correct this October. Official John Carpenter website
This interview original appeared on FSMO. Subscribe now to the industry's premiere film music resource.
With
Star Trek’s 50thanniversary
here, it feels like a good time to reflect on just why this sci-fi
franchise means so much to me for six important reasons.
1.Mego
action figures: My first sci-fi toys– A
good couple of years before Palitoy released their 3 ¾” Star Wars figures in
the UK I was given a 8” Mr Spock figure by my parents. I loved it. A Klingon,
Captain Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and The Keeper (Balok the puppet from The Corbomite
Maneuver) followed in due course, but how I loved the removable phaser and
communicator. Even when McCoy’s leg broke at the knee and I had to Sellotape it
solid, nothing diminished my love for these toys, which were also compatible
with the Mego Planet of the Apes figures, thus allowing a crossover of the
franchises some 40 years before IDW’s comic book.
2.1971
Star Trek annual: My first sci-fi book– In hindsight, the World Distributors Star
Trek annuals we’re pretty poor. They seemed light years away from the show that
I was watching on TV, but they were in full colour, unlike what I was watching
on our small black and white set. And I could read the stories whenever I
wanted. I didn’t have to wait for the next episode to be shown on – this was
Star Trek on tap. The 1971 one was acquired for me second-hand from a jumble
sale but it was a great alternative to my other comics and kid literature.
3.Tony
Todd interview: My first professionally published interview– Having read starburst as a child I
finally felt that I’d made it when my first interview was published in the
magazine. Interviewing the Candyman actor at the 1997 Starfleet Ball in
Bournemouth, the experience was exhilarating, Todd was an affable guest and
there was a real thrill seeing the article in print with my name next to it. 19
years later and the thrill of interviewing a guest is still with me.
4.Leonard
Nimoy interview: Meeting my hero– Of
all the people I have ever interviewed, Leonard Nimoy is the one where I was
most star struck. Even as I was asking the questions, inside me I could
feel the inner fanboy screaming ‘Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! Ultimately he
was just, of course, an old man with a hearing aid, answering questions
he’s heard umpteen times before. But he was gracious enough to treat me as if
he’d never heard them before. They say you should never meet your heroes as
they are bound to disappoint. Nonsense. You just need to choose the right
heroes. When he died in February last year I shed some big tears. I felt like
I’d been robbed of a part of my childhood.
5.Patrick
Stewart: My first
official licensed interview – While meeting the good Captain Picard
was not my first Star Trek interview, it was the first to appear in the official,
Paramount-licenced Star Trek Magazine. What a buzz in seeing this as the lead
cover story and knowing that this was being sold around the world. Mr Stewart
(not yet a Sir) was at the Starfleet Ball in Bournemouth and I caught him in a
break between photo and autograph sessions. He asked for a drink – it wasn’t
tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Reality kicked in.
6.Star
Trek Experience: My new wife’s first Klingon encounter– A mere two days after
our wedding in Vegas, Justine and I visited the Star Trek Experience in the Las
Vegas Hilton. We squealed as Borg implants dug into our back during Borg Invasion 4D, we gasped as we materialised onto the bridge of the Enterprise in The Klingon Encounter, we ate tea in Quark’s Bar, marvelling at the menu which included s alas
called Sulu Toss. Sadly, its shut down 2.5 years later in September 2008,
just before the new films revitalised the franchise. As you’d expect, we also
did the behind-the-scenes tour, and Justine’s first printed document with her
new surname was a certificate proclaiming that she’d survived the encounter.
And
that’s just the tip of the warp nacelle. I’ve also watched over 700 episodes,
13 movies, read countless articles, books and comics, interviewed 50 actors
within the Trek-verse (including George Takei, Brent Spiner, Kate Mulgrew),
collected Weetabix cards, attended exhibitions, conferences, conventions and
concerts, and gone as Spock in fancy dress (not cosplay, that didn’t exist as a
phrase back then). I’ve also written a 20,000 word history of the first 40
years of star Trek. As you can see, Stark Trek and me - we’ve got history.
It would be reasonable to think that all location shooting for
Broadchurch takes place in or around West Bay in Dorset, home of those
imposing cliffs that feature in the show’s marketing. But you’d be wrong in
that belief, as a lot of the filming actually takes place on the northern coast
of Somerset in Clevedon, some 70 miles north of its Dorset cousin.
Clevedon is a Victorian seaside town overlooking the Severn
Estuary, sitting 13 miles down from Bristol and 10 up miles from
Weston-Super-Mare, just off the M5. Many people visit for the famous Grade 1 listed
pier (featured in movie Never Let me Go and One direction’s video ‘You and I’) but
our eyes are on the Broadchurch trail and six key locations NOT found in Dorset.
1. Broadchurch parish church and cemetery - Starting at Marine
Lake it’s a quick walk along the coastal path (Poet’s walk) to St Andrew’s Church, a 12th
century structure with sprawling graveyard that looks out to the estuary. Many
scenes form both seasons one and two of the show were filmed here, notably
Danny Latimer’s funeral and subsequent exhumation. Depending on the day you
visit you may be able to go inside, but it was locked on the Saturday afternoon
we called by.
2. The Latimer house – Bear south from the churchyard, cross
the small Land Yeo river and you’re on Marshall’s Field recreation ground where
you’ll soon spot the Latimers’ house on the perimeter. Many scenes have been
filmed looking out of the kitchen window and across the green to the steep
bank. The Latimers’ house is privately owned, so do respect their privacy.
3. Amusement arcade – Loop back to Salthouse Fields play park
and skateboard park behind Marine Lake carry on north up towards the pier. You’ll
find a tiny amusement arcade on your right which is where the Latimer’s had a
game of air hockey in their brief moment of fun. I was going to take a photo
but the controller/overseer looked a bit formidable...
4. Jack Marshall’s newsagents – Possibly the greatest
difference there has ever been between the exterior and interior of a
newsagents – 70 miles! With exteriors in west Bay and interiors in Clevedon, there’s
some time rift going on here! Continue north form the amusements, past the bandstand
and turn right directly opposite the pier (though it is itself worth a stroll).
At 16 Alexandra Road you’ll find Alexandra News – you can’t miss it as they
have stills with cast members in the window.
5. Broadchurch Echo office – Turn left onto Bellevue Road and
follow it round until it becomes Hill Road. Here’s the Broadchurch high street where
the families walked in the re-enactment of Danny’s disappearance. The newspaper
offices are actually The Food Market @ Seeley’s, an indoor market which sadly
was derelict when we visited.
6. The Traders Hotel – Directly opposite the newspaper’s office
is The Trader’s hotel where David Tennant’s Hardy and stayed in Season 1 and the
defence team stayed in series 2. It's actually a former Lloyds bank. Interiors were filmed up the coast, along Wellington Terrace to Walton
Park Hotel.
So there you have it, a whistle stop tour of Clevedon’s many
Broadchurch locations. Come for the Broadchurch locations but stay for the atmosphere
and spend some time in the boutiques, coffee shops and art shops.
For a Doctor Who fan, getting the chance to watch some
location filming up close and personal is surely there on the bucket list? You get
to see a scene or two played out in front of you, your favourite characters are
in full costume and you might be able to grab a selfie and autograph or two. But by its very nature, you can’t plan for it, and that’s what makes the experience
so sweet.
Crashing a location shoot relies on being in the right place
at the right time. Having booked tickets for the Cardiff leg of the Doctor Who
Symphonic Spectacular some four months previously, it was always a hope that the
visit would tie-in with some filming, but what were the chances of finding out
in good time, and what if they were in a private location or the studio those
days?
I’d already been alerted that filming had taken place on
Friday 22nd May at Canal Park, sitting somewhere between Cardiff Bay
and the city centre. This felt like awful timing – why couldn’t I have been
there that day? But then the word on the street was that filming at the location
would continue on the Bank Holiday Monday (the same day as the concert) and
minutes away from my hotel.
And so, at midday on 25th May I joined a crowd of
around 30-40 fans, locals and tourists in watching a series of takes focusing
on the TARDIS as The Doctor (Peter Capaldi), Clara (Jenna Coleman) and Osgood
(Ingrid Oliver) said their farewells. I won’t spoil any more of the story
points which have already started circulating, and the BBC had already revealed
in advance that Osgood was returning for this story.
The playground location has previously appeared on the show
in Army of Ghosts and where Rose spotted the ‘Bad Wolf’ graffiti in The Parting
of the Ways. This time round a mysterious alien ‘paw print’ had been added to
the park signage. Friday’s filming had centred on a Zygon attack in the season
9 two-parter by Peter Harness, today it was all about fond farewells. What
really strikes you about watching filming is just how long everything takes,
just how many people are involved, and how the lighting crew are constantly compensating
for the changing light – filling in, blocking and adding light sources where
required as clouds break or the sun shines.
As has previously been said many times before, Peter Capaldi
loves his fans. In the 2.5 hours I was present he came over and saw fans at the
barrier on four occasions, signing autographs and posing for photos. He took time
to talk to everyone, asking where they’d come from and generally being as nice
as you’d want him to be. Jenna Coleman and Ingrid Oliver also visited the fans
and were equally polite, though understandably it was Peter who was doing the
lion’s share of the work. I’d met him twice before, but seeing him kitted in his
Doctor gear made it extra special.
I can’t wait to see how the scenes appear in the final episode
once edited, graded and placed in the right part of the running time. Unfortunately
the actors were working until 11pm that night so wouldn’t get the chance to
watch the Symphonic Spectacular, and they also had to work on a Bank Holiday! A
big thank you to the cast and crew for indulging this fan boy, making it feel
special to be a fan and being able to witness a part of this 50+ year old
phenomena.
On 23rd February, Icelandic composer, multi-instrumentalist and music composer Ólafur Arnalds descended on the small Dorset coastal resort of Bridport. The previous night he'd filled the main hall at London's Barbican and yet he specifically requested the 500-capacity 1920s cinema/arts venue be included on his latest tour, which also takes in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The reason? This was his homecoming gig, and yet this wasn't his actual home. But if anyone can claim to have given a town a theme, a soundtrack for its scenery, it's Arnalds.
By scoring two series of ITV's popular crime drama Broadchurch, the composer has indelibly etched his mix of weeping string quartet, dissonant trombone, wayward horns and keyboard/piano on this stretch of Jurassic coast. Walk along the quay or up the steep incline of the cliffs up from West Bay and it's Ólafur's beautiful compositions that you'll hear, and that's why hundreds of locals and fans dragged themselves out on a cold and wet Monday night. Of course, the added attraction was the way that the gig had transformed itself from being just a date on the tour to being a local première of Broadchurch's season finale.
Coincidence or just serendipity? Whatever the reason, the opportunity was taken to show the last episode on the big screen, with the added glamour of series star Jodie Whittaker introducing it.
Series creator and writer Chris Chibnall was also to hand, taking the opportunity to get a live audience reaction to the cheeky twists and turns he'd added to the episode - ITV News was also on hand to capture the audience's shock/awe/screeches.
But the screening, celebrity intro and media interest were just the icing on the cake. The main event was Ólafur's wonderful music and he didn't disappoint with a set of nearly 90-minutes, carefully leaving time for the stage to be struck in time for the 9 o'clock screening.
Primarily drawn from his Broadchurch scores and album For Now I am Winter, the latter includes collaborations with vocalist Arnór Dan, who also appeared on stage to perform tracks from that album, as well as So Close and So Far, the end credits songs on Broadchurch. Both Olafur and Arnór made light of the fact that only a few seconds of the tracks are heard on screen before the continuity announcer cuts in. So here was the chance to indulge in both songs in full without the interruptions.
Arnalds also played a track from the finale we were about to watch, and while it was possible to pick it out during the episode, it was competing with the on-screen drama. What we got here wasn't quite Broadchurch unplugged but Broadchurch uninterrupted - pure music without all the acting, sound effects and scenery.
The last regular piece before the encore was Beth's Theme (or Jodie's Theme, as Olafur renamed it for that night in honour of his guest). Its simple melody, underscored by the melancholy strings, is the very heart of the show's soundtrack. Grief, loss and the stirrings of hope all come through. It's the score's highlight and goosebumps mingled with sobs as the sheer power of it enveloped the enchanted audience.
Hopefully not a one-off - Olafur said he'd like to return - this was a unique event. The composer has conjured sonic alchemy - he has turned some rock into music gold. Few towns can boast their own soundtrack, Bridport and West Bay have never had it so good.
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