Irvin Leisure Passes Screen Test
Perhaps someone in the film industry can tell me what exactly it is about Ghost Trains at the moment? In recent weeks there have been a rush of bookings (well, three anyway) to deliver Ghost Trains to studios, where they are taken apart and adapted for film shoots. To be honest, one of these does not sound like a Disney production because it was entitled “Thongs of Praise” or something like that, so will not be watching that with the kids, but the others were perfectly normal!
As always, prior to any booking we visited the studios and met with the production team to discuss exactly which from our wide range of Ghost Trains they would want. Then we took them back to look at the options available to them and how we could reduce their costs by using existing features to give the effects they want. This involved advice on which panels could be most easily removed and other features that we could add from stock to provide the impact they desired. At all times during the filming we had our specialist staff present to assist in the building work that they needed and to operate the equipment, and in this way the filming was completed in minimum time and therefore with minimum cost.
Another venture in which we were delighted to participate was the filming of parts of “The Lost world of Mitchell and Kenyon” with Dan Cruickshank, the well known historian and TV presenter. Mitchell and Kenyon were pioneers in the film industry and actually worked within fairgrounds during the Victorian era, where they would go ahead of the fair, film local people leaving their factories and workplaces, then set up a mobile Cinema in the fair and charge those same people to come and see themselves on the big screen! Sort of Big Brother concept really.
Dan had got hold of a lot of the films of the early fairground rides, and we replicated similar rides whilst at Kingsbury so that he could shoot from our fair. We also assisted in getting some of the descendents of the fairground workers shown in the Mitchell and Kenyon era to speak about their Great Grandparents from personal experience.
The photo at the top of this page is from the Mitchell and Kenyon film stocks. Some of us would have preferred a photo from Thongs of Praise, but there you go! This is after all a family website. Blast!
