"We are dedicated to cinema history – not the films, but the buildings they were and are shown in. Many of us are film buffs, of course, but what unites us is a fascination with the architecture, design and commercial history of cinema exhibition."
- Cinema Theatre Association website
I became a member of the CTA for research for The Cinema Complex documentary I was developing at the time.
I've always been fascinated by cinemas and cinema buildings, hence why I wanted to make a documentary about them, so becoming a member of the CTA was a natural fit for me.
I was only a member of the organization for one year. I decided not to renew my membership after that because developing The Cinema Complex was becoming less and less of a priority for me... and, to date, remains an unrealized project.
As part of my annual membership, I received seven CTA bullet magazines and one Picture House magazine, which is the CTA's main publication.
The publications are impressive and to a very high standard, it's clear to see the CTA is a labour of love for the staff you run it.
The Bulletin magazine contains bi-monthly updates, pages and pages of details on new and old cinemas, details on new cinema theatre publications, campaigns to save historic cinemas, letters from other CTA members, industry news and member obituaries... There's a lot!
I was always amazed by how much information was crammed into each Bulletin edition. For a film and cinema enthusiast, it's very nourishing to realize that cinema buildings that no longer exist can still provide such a wealth of education and enjoyment.
This labour of love and wealth of information is taken to a whole other level with the annual edition of the CTA's annual magazine, Picture House.
Whereas the Bulletins are much more stripped down and simplistic in their presentation, Picture House has the polish and effort of a full-fledged magazine.
Unlike the Bulletins that supplied a multitude of brief updates and information about cinema buildings new and old, Picture House selects a few of them and expands on the histories of their buildings, the people who ran them and the patrons who used them.
I read each publication when I first received them, but now they are just taking up space and gathering dust. I'm thinking of sending them back to the CTA because that would be a better way of recycling them.
The very first piece of editing I ever did was when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. I tried to create a new James Bond film by cutting together different pieces of the Sean Connery Bond films.
I've been a massive James Bond fan since first seeing all the films on a television marathon at the age of nine. When DVD format first launched in the UK, one-by-one, I collected all the James Bond special edition DVDs.
It was the DVD set that created the OO7 logo on their spines...
I managed to acquire the full set, minus the tin case.
The special edition James Bond DVD collection was very important to me. Not just because it meant that I owned my own copy of each Bond film that I could watch whenever I wanted, but because each DVD came loaded with extra special features.
All these extra goodies, which included making of documentaries, franchise featurettes, audio commentaries and original advertising, were a gold mine of film education.
At the time, the James Bond DVDs were slightly ahead of the other DVDs on the market, because they were the only ones offering such a wide range of immersive bonus content. Ultimately, my Bond DVDs were my first exposure to the moviemaking process.
I gained an introduction to filmmaking from my Bond DVDs and it was an education that opened my eyes to studying Film Studies and making my own film content.
So it's not surprising that the first piece of filmmaking I would attempt would be a James Bond project.
This was at the very tail end of the VHS era and I used to have a TV VHS combo with a DVD player plugged into it.
You can see my old TV VHS combo and DVD setup...
I was ten years old when this picture was taken.
Anyhow the gold DVD player I had was not copy protected and it was possible to record what the DVD was playing onto a VHS tape.
Then, one day, I had the idea of creating my own Bond film from all the bond films I had collected.
Creating the edit
I created my edit by stopping and starting the recording VHS while I searched through the current DVD or swapped DVDs for the next desired clip.
I wanted my new James Bond film to feature only one actor as James Bond. I settled on the Sean Connery James Bond films because he had six films (seven if you include the unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again) and therefore a lot more footage to work with.
Equally, I could have used Roger Moore because he has seven Bond films. But, by this point, I had started to read the original Ian Fleming James Bond novels which had educated me to take the James Bond character more seriously... and you just don't get that gritty and brutish character in the very camp Moore films.
Daniel Craig hadn't yet made his debut in the Casino Royal at this point, Timothy Dalton only had two films to work with, so that led me back to the Connery films.
The structure of the edit
I don't recall putting much planning into the full structure of my edit. I just knew that I would follow the typical James Bond film formula of... exciting pre-titles sequence > title sequence > mission from M > heading out on the mission... so on and so forth.
I also didn't even know how long my eventual edit was going to be. I already had the first couple of minutes planned out in my head. Beyond that, I was just going to keep building it until I had something I was happy with. After all, if there was something I was not happy with, I could just rewind the VHS tape and record a new clip over it.
Basically, I just made it up the edit as I went along and I only got about ten minutes in before I gave up on the whole thing.
What I did manage together was...
Section 1: Pre-title sequence (from Thunderball)
Section 2: Title sequence (from OO7 Racing PS1 game)
Section 3: Spectre briefing scene with Blofeld (from Thunderball)
Section 4: Bond coming out of lift and walking along corridor to Moneypenny's office (from Dr No)
Section 5: Bond coming into MoneyPenny's office > going to crisis meeting with M and the other OOs > Personal briefing with M in M's office (from Thunderball)
Problems with the edit
The first problem I encountered is that I realised I couldn't use any of the title sequences from any of the Bond films. I wanted to create an original Bond film so I needed an original title sequence. As with my DVD player, I could also use my television to record whatever my Playstation 1 was playing, so I recorded the title sequence from the OO7 Racing game.
The OO7 Racing title sequence is far from a perfect fit because it immediately breaks my one Bond rule by featuring Pierce Brosnan's Bond. Plus, it's not a title sequence in the traditional sense because it doesn't contain any titles or graphic Bond girl imagery; rather, it's just a montage of Bond car clips from the films.
However, it was the only so-called title sequence I had access to that wasn't assigned to any of the other Bond films or Bond film videogame adaptations. So the OO7 Racing title sequence was included.
As I built my edit, it quickly became obvious that it fell apart from the lack of consistent continuity between visuals.
A clear example is between the clip of Bond exiting the lift and going over to the door to moneypenny's office (from Dr No) and Bond entering Moneypenny's office (from Thunderball)...
Bond's clothes are completely different between edits
Connery has physically aged and put on more weight between edits
Bond's jump into his hand between edits
I only wanted to include that short clip of Bond exiting the lift and walking over to Moneypenny's office because it was something we had never seen in any of the other Bond films. We've only ever seen Bond already in Moneypenny's office or entering through the door into Moneypenny's office.
In hindsight, it's no surprise we have never seen that elevator or corridor show up in any other Bond film... it's a completely useless piece of visual information. Even if deleted that short clip from Dr No, it would not upset the point or narrative of the film, because that hallway clip serves absolutely no narrative purpose. It is literally just filler.
But I thought the hallway clip was a quirky little detail that amused me, so I included in my edit.
The cuts between footage and soundtrack were also very jarring because all I had to work with were a record and stop button, I didn't have access to editing with digital editing software.
Finally, I realised that it would actually be really hard to construct a consistent narrative that makes sense from lots of clips with unchangeable visuals and audio from different films that featured different plots and character names.
This is why I gravitated towards using the narrative spine of Thunderball. But the problem with using Thunderball is that I was just creating an enhanced version of Thunderball, opposed to an original Sean Connery Bond film.
So I dropped the project after cutting together about 14 minutes.
My Bond film edit
I no longer have the original VHS copy, but I have recreated my basic edit for this blog post...
Takeaway
I learned a lot from that brief first editing experience. Especially in regard to continuity and maintaining visual and narrative continuity.
This thinking was very much in my mind when I was making my first film, The Better Villain, and later when I was making my first student films for my BA (Hons).
That crazy and hugely impractical idea I had to make an original Sean Connery James Bond film may not have come fully to pass, but I'm still glad I went through the process of trying to do it.
I'm also especially glad that my first editing experience was with the James Bond films because I've always loved the Bond films and will always be grateful to them for getting me investing in the filmmaking process.
