Film chief focuses on keeping county in the picture

The scene: Bradford’s Imax cinema, the National Media Museum. The event: the screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One.

There is a ripple through the audience. Whispers of “isn’t that...?” reverberate around the auditorium, knowledgable viewers confirm to their companions that yes, Harry and Hermione are standing on the rocks of Malham Cove. The impact on the audience is impossible to measure.

Nor can we measure the reaction of Yorkshire viewers when they recognise East Riddlesden Hall in the ITV adaptation of Wuthering Heights, or the Yorkshire Post building in the Red Riding series on Channel 4.

The fact that it is impossible to turn this feeling into something quantifiable is part of the problem for Screen Yorkshire in its current position where it has to justify how important and integral to the ecology of film production across Yorkshire it has become.

The screen agency is instrumental in bringing movie and television productions to the region. It is thanks to its work behind the scenes that we see Sheffield in This is England, or Elland Road in the Tom Hooper movie The Damned United. It is also thanks to the agency that we will soon see Yorkshire locations in the Andrea Arnold cinematic re-imagining of Wuthering Heights and North Yorkshire feature in The Woman in Black starring Daniel Radcliffe.

Screen Yorkshire sunk money into many of these projects and helped all of them bring their productions here, helping to some degree with locations, crew, accommodation and a wealth of associated other services needed to make a film.

“Culturally it is very important that the whole of England sees itself in British productions and sees their lives reflected back at them,” says the agency’s chief executive Sally Joynson. “More than that, when a production comes to Yorkshire it gives jobs to crew, those crew spend money in restaurants, on accommodation, production companies pay fees for locations, there is a whole industry that comes with a production being made in a region.”

Those “isn’t that...?” moments could become much rarer in the future due to significant changes in the funding for Screen Yorkshire.

The not for profit, limited company was set up in 2002 by the UK Film Council. The organisation was charged with carrying out a number of objectives, chief among which were bringing more film and television production to the county and both spotting and developing talent in the region. Screen Yorkshire’s major funders are the UK Film Council and Yorkshire Forward. Unfortunately, both those have been scrapped, leaving the organisation in a highly precarious position.

Screen Yorkshire relied heavily on the funding it received from the UK Film Council of about £750,000 annually and contracts from Yorkshire Forward worth £10.2m over four years from 2006 to last April and a further £500,000 contract in the last 12 months.

Both those contracts run out at the end of this month, leaving Screen Yorkshire with an enormous hole and an even bigger question mark over how it moves into its future.

A mass re-organisation of the work of the nine screen agencies that currently exist around the country has been underway since last year. A new agency, Creative England, will carry out much of their work from three hubs – South, Central and Northern England, with the Northern arm based in Manchester, where the BBC will move into Media City from the end of this year.

Joynson is in bullish mood when we meet in her offices. Given that at least half of the organisation’s 16 staff are to lose their jobs in the next couple of weeks, it is surprising to see that the offices are a hive of activity. There seems to be a sense of defiance, a sense that the job still needs to be done, even if the funding of the organisation is in question.

This mood is re-iterated by Joynson once in her office.

“There needs to some sort of mechanism by which productions are able to come to the county and by which new talent from Yorkshire can find its place in the industry,” says Joynson. “We consider that there is still an important job that needs to be done and if we are able to do it, we will find a way to do that. If we thought that we had cracked it, that the industry would come to Yorkshire and make their films without us, I would close that door and consider it job finished. But it isn’t.”

While Joynson is determined, the fact is that once the funding has gone, Screen Yorkshire will need to find a new way of working. With a staff of 16, which is expected to be whittled down to about eight (some will be part-time), from the end of this month, a new model is needed.

“The future is going to be challenging, no doubt,” says Joynson. “We have been looking very hard at our future and how we develop the key services we deliver. We are looking at what the core services are and if there is another way to do those things.”

Among the most important services Screen Yorkshire offers is location support – finding the places where films can be made in Yorkshire – and supplying the people to actually make films.

Creative England will take up the slack, and in theory carry out some of the work of Screen Yorkshire. The fear is that the Northern hub, being based in Manchester, may not have as great a focus on film production on this side of the Pennines as an organisation with the name Yorkshire in the title.

In the last four years, Screen Yorkshire has brought over £82m of investment to the region’s economy and invested created 1,086 jobs.

“Over the last four or five years we have become very good at what we do. Screen Yorkshire generates millions of pounds of income, creates jobs, grow businesses and that is why we consider there is an important job still to be done,” says Joynson.

Even though we can’t measure how it feels to see Yorkshire on the screen, it is clear that we will be poorer if it disappears from view.

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