Yorkshire as a filmic location. The
same goes for Morrissey’s Stagereel
company in Liverpool which aims to
develop local crew and talent.
With many of the producers working
in the area - away from London -
there is a sense of creative bravery, of
promoting an area for the sake of loving
it and living there, of wanting to create
an environment in which film production
can really flourish. And that it truly has
and continues to do so is no surprise:
“Right now. This is where the work is,”
says a proud and busy Mellor.
It’s no longer just about London,
film productions are prospering
in Yorkshire and the North West.
Tax incentives and hard-working
film offices have made a real
difference to the regions’ film
and television industry, but its
more than just the money that
makes the area so attractive
to producers. With a wealth of
stunning locations and talented
crew, Yorkshire and the North
West are fast becoming two of the
most coveted filming destinations
in the UK.
When it comes to Yorkshire, Kay Mellor
has promoted the region almost single-
handedly. Having attracted widespread
attention for her superb television
series The Syndicate and In The
Club (recently on BBC One), she has
established herself as one of the UK’s
most accomplished writer-directors
with a production company, Rollem
Productions, based in Leeds.
With strong ties to the city and
Yorkshire as a whole, Mellor has
witnessed firsthand the changes
happening apace. “15 years ago
nobody was shooting here”, says Mellor,
who credits Screen Yorkshire’s £15m
Yorkshire Content Fund, the largest
of its kind in the UK, as the driving
force. A sentiment echoed by Syd
Macartney, who worked as a director
on three episodes of The Syndicate:
“The area has changed considerably
over the past 12 years.” Today there
are a slew of resources available to
ensure production activity remains high
and, despite the inevitable competition
over resources brought on by such
exposure, Mellor feels “incredibly proud
that people want to come here, to my
homeland, to film.”
Locations that inspire a creative
industry
For Mellor, it is precisely that
attachment to the area that is the real
reason for working in Yorkshire: “I
believe that pieces of drama have some
sort of geography and have some sense
of place - that place for me is here, in
Yorkshire”, says Mellor. “When I am
writing I don’t think of the south but of
here. I know the people and I know the
surroundings - it’s my home.”
This attention to place creates an
emotional richness that is evident in
everything Mellor does. Her body of
work to date has been wide-ranging:
more recently she has replaced her
modern-day Leeds for that of the 1950s
and encountered some challenges
along the way. When filming A
Passionate Woman, her feature-length
period drama for BBC One, “we were
limited to where we could shoot, there
are pockets of places,” she says,”but
things have been modernised - TV
aerials, satellite dishes and the like.
Other locations, however, like Roundhay
Park, are exactly the same as they
were.”
As for staying on top of new locations,
she admits it can be a challenge: “With
increased production, it has become
difficult to constantly find new places
and not put the same locations on
screen”.
“We used to have the cream of the
crop,” she says, “now there are more
and more companies looking to use
the same locations.” It then becomes
a matter of working with her location
manager, Ben Hepworth, to find places
in Yorkshire to match the locations in
her mind’s eye.
However, Yorkshire is not alone in
witnessing a surge in production
activity. Such is the quantity of filming
across the Pennines that the moniker
‘North West New Wave’ has cropped
up, used to describe a number of indie
features and shorts being made in the
region. Don’t Worry About Me, the
first theatrical feature of actor-turned-
director David Morrissey (The Walking
Dead, The Driver), is one of them. And
it makes sublime use of Morrissey’s
Liverpool hometown to reveal how we
might find beauty and friendship in the
most unexpected of places.
“One of the reasons for producing
Don’t Worry About Me in Liverpool was
that this was a low-budget film and we
used Liverpool as the third character
in a love plot”, says Paul Morrissey, the
film’s executive producer. Liverpool
has “tremendous locations on offer,
from the iron men of Anthony Gormley’s
Another Place on Crosby beach to the
Anglican Cathedral; the Liverpool Film
Office really facilitated access to these
locations without which the film would
not have worked,” says Morrissey.
With the highest number of listed
buildings outside of London, Liverpool
has some sought-after heritage
locations that have seen it stand in for
London in Sherlock Holmes and New
York in Captain America.
“We picked Liverpool because of
the availability of creative resources.
Morrissey says. “The council has a
fantastic dedicated Liverpool Film
Office to help productions from both
within and from outside the city in
securing locations and working with the
local amenities.”
Pro-active film offices across the region
have contributed immensely to the
creative film focus on the area, which
has already been gaining exposure due
to MediaCityUK and the BBC moving to
Salford in 2011.
For Syd Macartney, who recently shot
the third series of Last Tango in Halifax
across the North West, the accessibility
of the locations is the real draw. “There
is not the same filming fatigue that you
have in London,” he says. “People are
very open to you filming in their house,
their shop, especially if it’s a show
they’ve heard of.”
Stepping up the game
The area is in high demand. In addition
to stunning and diverse locations, the
availability of creative resources has
increased manifold in the past decade.
The crew bases are getting “better and
better as productions flood in,” admits
Macartney. “Perhaps it’s the Northern
spirit, but they work hard in tough
conditions and work well as a team.”
“There is a wealth of talent up here,”
echoes Mellor. And she should know,
the work of her company extends
beyond production, to investing in local
talent and intensively promoting
By Emily Wright
Location on half p ge ad_Layout 1 23/09/2014 15:30 Page 1
Why we love to
film ‘up north’
David Morrissey on
Crosby beach filming
‘Don’t Worry About Me’
16
Filming In yorkshire & the north west
