Issue 14 of Film for the Collector magazine, published December 1989, contains three articles about the Convention. Derann changed the format of the Convention Dinner as the first feature explains; there’s also a short report about charity fund raising at Blackpool, and finally Derek Simmonds reveals the lengths that go into organising the Convention.
Since Derann Film Services took over the organisation of the Northern Film Collectors Convention in 1985 it has been the tradition to hold an Evening Dinner the night before.
This has been well received by the collector in general and from that very first dinner, where THAT’S DANCING was premiered (and Movie Maker’s John Wright was the guest speaker), the event has gone from strength to strength. For the Last three years the dinner has been followed by a host of illustrious guest speakers; BOB DANVERS WALKER of Movietone fame, MICHAEL PERTWEE the Hollywood scriptwriter and RAY HARRYHAUSEN, one of the most famous of all special effects men.
1989 saw a change in format and for once the guest speaker was dispensed with. With the release of THE JOLSON STORY on 8mm, its premiere at this year’s Blackpool Convention, a cabaret featuring Jolson impersonator Steve King was arranged. Ably supported by Peter Lindup, the whole evening was well received as you can see by the photographs on this page. During the evening Derann sent members of its staff around the tables to sell raffle tickets in aid of the “Children in Need” appeal and even the hotel’s barmaids took to the stage and raised even more funds for this deserving cause! Certainly a “Night to Remember” – roll on next years BIG FANCY DRESS PARTY…
CONVENTION CLEAN UP !
“CHILDREN IN NEED BENEFIT FOR 2nd YEAR”
For the last few years the BBC Television “CHILDREN IN NEED” campaign has coincided with the Northern Film Collectors Conventions held in Blackpool. Last year at the Saturday evening dinner prior to the convention, Derann ‘auctioned’ several copies of our FILM FOR THE COLLECTOR magazine which had been autographed by the guest speaker, Mr Ray Harryhausen. This, along with a general ‘whip-round’ raised some £290.00 for the charity. This year Derann offered a Colour TV as a raffle prize, donating both the TV and the proceeds to the charity once gore. The whole exercise was a tremendous success, the final figure being just 60p short of £500.00! Next year we shall be looking for even more…
BLACKPOOL BEHIND THE SCENES
by Derek Simmonds
Since Derann took over the running of the Northern collectors film convention, five years ago, it has become the most popular of all film conventions, its size and the number of collectors who visit the convention confirms that fact.
No one can even begin to imagine the planning and hard work that goes into the running of this annual event. It all starts in January. Ged, Dave and myself sit down and start to work out a format for the convention that is yet some 10 months away. The dealers rooms are carefully planned, not only to ensure that the dealers who attend have a workable area, but ensure that the collectors can get to the various stands easily. Security of stock has to be taken into consideration. The ease of unloading dealers goods from their cars and vans, all this is carefully considered and planned. Next a detailed plan of the hotel is drawn, and a booking form for dealers tables is sent out to every dealer who attended the previous convention.
Around February we start work on the evening dinner arrangements, how many rooms we can have from the hotel, etc. costing are carefully worked out, when this is done a booking form is roughly drawn, have we made it clear enough for the collectors? Will they understand it? Everything has to be taken into consideration. We give it the ‘thumbs up’, art work is prepared, printing plates are made, and Ged then prints off around 10,000 booking forms. Why 10,000 you may ask? Remember that we send out the booking forms in about three newsletters plus we also give them out at all the conventions that we attend.
A visit to the hotel is the next item on the agenda, this year we arrived to find they had altered the lay out of the hotel, so it was back to the drawing board (it all adds to the fun of organising this popular convention!). At this stage Anne gets involves with the proceedings visits the hotel to find out what rooms have been allocated to us, to sort out the plan for the evening dinner and the costings for the rooms and meals. The hotel is constantly altering and improving the facilities and like everything else prices are increased each year so everything has to be worked out on a strict budget. Anne first of all works out how many single and double rooms the hotel have allocated us, a plan is then drawn up of the allocated rooms and also the evening meal seating arrangements. At this stage we send out booking forms to everyone on our news letter, a dealer booking form also goes out to all dealers. From this moment, bookings start to arrive on an almost daily basis, both for rooms and the evening meal. Special requests also start to arrive, some collectors stay from the Friday to the Monday.
Bookings are taken in strict rotation, and problems do arise when we get requests from someone who wants to be seated with another collector who may have sent in his booking weeks earlier, and the table that he has been placed on at the meal is now full, however these small hiccups are soon overcome and as the great weekend gets nearer, so does the work load. We begin to plan the new film releases for the convention, and the search starts for an after dinner speaker. The new releases seem simple enough, this year we have decided on JOLSON STORY and ALIENS, the negative and sound track for Jolson was ordered from the States and in fact arrived in late March, plenty of time one would think, but the time September arrived we had still not received what we considered to be a satisfactory check print from the labs.
The problem was that Columbia had sent an ungraded negative, and this meant that every single scene had to be graded for colour. Aliens turned out to be a living nightmare not with the colour grading but with something completely different. The only available materials for us to use was a 35mm neg being held in Germany, no problem we thought, get the neg over and the labs will make a reduction 16mm neg for us to print from and the quality will be superb. The 35mm neg arrived from Germany in September, only to find the complete credits were in German, so it was back to 20th Century Fox who advised us that the labs in Germany has assured them that the English credits were in fact on a separate reel.
The English labs checked again, there was definitely no English credits, meantime they made a negative from the material they had. I went and collected this from the labs, and started to re-cut into suitable lengths for 8mm, matching the picture with a sound track we had made from an English print. When this was completed, we were still without any English credits, telephone calls and FAX’s were flying back and forth from England to Germany, there was now only three weeks before the convention. Suddenly a message arrived from Germany to say they had found the credits on a shelf in the lab. They were flown over, and Fox pulled out all the stops by sending them by motorbike from their offices in the West End to the labs at Denham. Rank made a 16mm neg of the credits and sent them by courier to us at Dudley, I then matched the English credits to the sound track we had, spliced them onto reel one and drove with them to London.
Now all we needed was a check print of the whole thing and also the bulk to sell at Blackpool. With only days to spare the check print arrived, it was recorded and viewed the same evening, a hurried phone to the labs advising what corrections we needed was made and the order for the bulk given. Now the days were ticking by, but Rank pulled out all the stops, worked all night to produce the prints, we then worked flat out to record, split and box them. Hey presto we did it and Aliens made its debut on 8mm at Blackpool.
Whilst all this was going on in the day I was busy working evenings making up the programmes to be shown during the convention, the actual film programme was completed on the Friday evening prior to being shown on the Saturday and Sunday at the convention.
And whilst all this is going on, Ged and Dave are both frantically designing and printing the exclusive menu cards and programmes that are distributed over the weekend!
The week before the convention, Mike and Paul very carefully work out what stock is needed, to do this they erect a table and stack the stock exactly as it will be displayed at the convention on the day. Example; if we give ourselves, say, eight tables, then they work out exactly what will fit on those tables, they also see what is selling, and try to take enough stock. Of course one can never get it 100% right, but on the whole this system works well, by the way they use this for all film conventions that we attend.
Next job on the agenda is to hold the final staff meeting, each member of staff is told what stand he or she will be looking after, last minute suggestions are talked about. (Whilst all this is going on, remember we are still running a store that is open to the public eight hours a day).
At long last the time arrives to collect the hire vans, we get these on the Friday around 3.00pm. They are loaded, being careful not to overload (we got caught out doing this one year and ended up paying a fine).
Saturday morning arrives, and off we go to breezy Blackpool. We arrive about 12.00 noon, the first job is to set up the cinema, this year we changed around the set up, the screen was placed on the stage. Next job is to wire and check the sound, we always get lots of compliments about our sound quality at the convention, it is all very carefully thought out, with John (our technical manager) doing all the wiring. We normally use two amplifiers, one feeding the back speakers, for effects and the other feeding the two front speakers, we never use a graphic equaliser. Whilst we are busy doing this, Anne and Sue put the menus on the tables and also the After Eight mints, or whatever we have purchased. Normally we finish just in time to get to our rooms, have a quick wash and change, and get back downstairs to mix with our guests.
Blackpool Film Collectors' Convention 