Word: studio
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Eighteen months ago, the digital-art powerhouse launched its first overseas studio in Singapore. The 170 employees come from 33 nations, and together they make sure that Luke Skywalker's animated cloak swings naturally in the TV series Clone Wars and that Jackie Chan slides effortlessly down the Eiffel Tower in Rush Hour 3. Like their colleagues back at Lucasfilm's San Francisco headquarters, the Singapore crew members work in jeans and decorate their cubicles with their favorite Star Wars action figures. But while years of experience and Yoda-level technical skill are prerequisites for joining Lucasfilm's U.S. team...
...part of a planned 105-acre expansion, Pinewood Studios Group has conceived the ultimate gated community. Amid a mix of structures that would include a Roman Coliseum, a medieval, moated castle and several urban streetscapes that range from New York's Lower East Side, to Venice's canals, to suburban L.A., to a quaint European village, the studio wants to incorporate 2,000 to 2,250 actual residences. For example, the first and last buildings of the block of New York row houses would be left empty for interior shoots. But the middle ones would house real homes and apartments...
...grounds of a 19th-century manor house just outside London, Pinewood has been used for some 1,500 movies - Great Expectations, Dr. Strangelove and Sweeney Todd among them. All the James Bond films, except Goldeneye, were shot here. In recent years, however, Pinewood and its nearby sister studio, Shepperton, have faced competition from low-cost Eastern European countries. Britain will never be an inexpensive place to make movies, but Pinewood hopes to remain competitive with this one-stop-shop concept, creating economies of scale by combing popular permanent sets with Britain's experienced, respected industry workforce...
...industry could also take a hit if the screenwriters' strike in the U.S. continues. Pinewood's already announced a $6 million loss of revenue for 2008 because the strike postponed filming of The Da Vinci Code sequel. The unpredictable nature of the movie business is why the studio has in recent years branched into television and commercial filming - only half its revenues now come from films. So it hopes that the planned permanent sets will appeal to TV producers, as well as to moviemakers...
David Reid, of the innovative ceramics studio KleinReid, agrees. "There is really a kind of primal response," he says. KleinReid's porcelain campfire set was originally envisioned as a centerpiece but is now often found in nonworking fireplaces. It evokes, he says, "a sense of memory." And who doesn't want a home filled with memories...