Lewes Forum thread

The last post fro Castle Gate was very concillatory. However, the County made it clear to the film company that it was the company's duty to liase with traders. This was not done. What was done was the holding of a discussion with the Chamber of Commerce who today say they do not have the facilities to notify everyone. Then I would suggest they find some-one who can. They knew about it on 19th July, and did nothing. They must not escpae reaosnably worded but angry comment. I gather urgent meetings are taking place to try to start the filming at 5pm (but only after Lewes has shown its strength) or whispers abound even that they whole lot may be pulled. Lewes won't be druv and will be involved in consultations, Authority please note!

Again, very helpful, Bonzo Dog. It is honestly absurd that no-one has composed a simple email list of all the High St businesses so that all that has to be done when such a request is made is to compose an email and press "send". It does seem that there is considerable confusion surrounding whom should be contacted for permission to film in East Sussex, and it seems blindingly obvious that what is needed is a named person who is responsible for liaising with the various authorities and making sure that everyone who needs to know is notified. Googling "film permission in East Sussex" only delivers a couple of links to advice about filming on Camber Sands or in Seven Sisters country park.

There is good business to be done in arranging film locations in our lovely county - not just Lewes. This could be a significant income stream for ESCC yet it seems that our council chooses to ignore it and hack off its residents and businesses in the process.

Back to Saturday: are you saying that the filming company undertook to contact local businesses who might be affected and have failed to do so? Or are you saying that the Chamber of Commerce should have done it and didn't?

I'm delighted that discussions about moving the filming until later are now underway, but I completely fail to understand why the 3pm start was ever contemplated at all. We can't know what the nature of the discussions were between the location manager, the film company and the various authorities, but the first thing the authorities should have said is "No we can't close the High St in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. We must find another time when business and leisure will not be affected" And that takes us back to the need for a competent Film Officer at ESCC...

Should be be fun in town sat evening trying to film with Brighton and Chelsea fans in town and plods sirens going off all over the place..

Um, I think if you look Carl up on google and IMDB you'll see he has a little bit of experience in location scouting/managing. This smells like a short film to me; a limited budget and poor communications with local business (a decent location manager would have been flyposting shops and local residents days/weeks ago with sweeteners and smiles) and full understanding of council procedures. Hence the confusion and mystery and meeting in pubs.
I hope the local councils involved do have dedicated film officers though, Sussex is a beautiful place after all.

Sorry that should be 'lack of understanding of council procedures...'

Definitely a she, yes, jacko.

ADT, in the other threads it's clear that this is a commercial rather than a short film. I'm afraid in my book that means that they have to pay full whack. Carl has identified himself as the location manager, again in the other thread. I agree with you that it's very puzzling that no sensible notice has been given and no approaches were made to high street businesses to explain what was going on; that's why I assumed that someone had assured him that it was all in hand and Lewes businesses would be delighted to have parking suspended and access restricted on a Saturday afternoon.

I can find no evidence of a dedicated film office. If there is one, ESCC needs to advertise it more prominently and if there isn't then I suggest one is appointed soon.

SQ - Film office needed indeed. Couldn't you put yourself forward?!?
Am just back from hols so haven't been up the High St recently, are there unit signs, markers, etc?

If anybody would like to talk to me about the whole film brouhaha, please call me tomorrow on 01273 544530 or email details to neil.vowles@theargus.co.uk so I can contact you. Some really interesting points here that would be good to include in the Argus.

With respect to Chamber of Commerce, would it really have taken them very long or much money to print a simple A4 letter and distribute by hand to the High Street businesses -I imagine this would cost 100 sheets of paper and an hour of somebody's time. The Chamber are sitting on a lot of money so have failed to fulfil their duty of care to High Street traders, members or not, on this occassion. As this is an advert, there is no 'artisitic merit' in this, we may as well invite that lardy bloke to do a 'Go Compare' Ad. In fact, now I think about it.....

Well are you all p@@@@@ up , or can anyone spill the beans on the 6pm meet at the arms

Well, we weren't druv, guys.

Castle Gate and I, and a couple of others turned up in the Lewes Arms this evening. We have won a big concession, and that is that filming will not now start until 5pm with parking restrictions beginning at 4. The street won't be closed, but there will be occasions when traffic will be stopped for a couple of minutes.

I think the lesson from this is that Lewes, and East Sussex as a whole, does not have someone who is responsible for liaising with all the different agencies and individuals when a film company seeks permission to film. I also think that that lesson has been learned.

As I've said before, this isn't the film company's fault: Carl has worked very hard to tick all the boxes and it's clear that the fault lies with the various authorities not talking to each other. I was never going to be affected by the filming, so I was just there to find out what had happened, but Castle Gate is happy and their furniture moving can now happen as planned!

Well every public event is now suppose to go before the lewes SAG , unless you are the council it seems

Fantastic, so now there is a fabulous vacancy in County Hall for an over paid poncy luvie to field filming enquires. That'll cost us more than we'll make. (A bit like the parking scheme).
Also, worth mentioning is that film location researchers ALWAYS leave it till the last minute to get a location. Expect everyone to drop every thing for a bit of 'filming' as if they are going to be winning X Factor. And always keep everyone hanging around for ever. Avoid, Avoid, Avoid !!

I disagree, old mayor. There is a great deal of potential in this county which I suspect goes untapped and it would more than pay for itself. Certainly almost anything would be better than the status quo which is clearly absolute rubbish.

I disagree also that "film location researchers ALWAYS leave it till the last minute to get a location." Not if they're spending tens of thousands of pounds on a single days filming they don't. In Carl's defence he quite clearly had tried quite hard, but with three different councils to deal with offering conflicting advice he had an uphill struggle.

It seems the council's attitude to films - both the making AND the showing of them - needs more thought. Do they have some kind of problem with the concept? Do we know yet what their plans are for taking over what Lewes Cinema used to do so efficiently?

Film Crew, welcome to the town with the collective personality of Kevin The Teenger

Mme B. There are THREE councils that affect Lewes. County Council are what we are taking about re this film. It is the Town Council who own and run All Saints and will be offering mainstream film at All Saints from September. Look forward to seeing at the screenings.
BTW I had a letter regarding the filming a few weeks ago that is also happening in South street on Saturday.

Twittersphere reporting that Kevin Bacon is with film crew in Paddock Road. Confirmation anyone?

BBC Sussex breakfast show reports Lewes's response to the sudden changes to parking and movement of traffic and pedestrians following the Lewes Arms meeting. A BBC Sussex reporter recorded the discussion and some interviews afterwards.

Linked below is a recording of the news item; and then the Breakfast Show report.

It's an Everything Everywhere (Orange/T-Mobile) advert featuring Kevin Bacon.
"The Golden Globe winning actor has been in such big name films as Animal House, A Few Good Men, The Woodsman, Mystic River, JFK, Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon.
He was captured by our photographer walking down Paddock Road, Lewes, this morning where the road was blocked off to traffic and security was in force.
Filming is taking place around the town today and tomorrow, believed to be for an Everything Everywhere (Orange/T-Mobile) advert."

Stephen Catlin said in that report that only 6 people turned up to talk to Carl, but with such short notice and unless people were reading the Lewes Forum at the right time and could drop everything including childcare and turn up, it made it a bit tricky. Well done to those that did. On the point about the Lewes Cinema, that's all been very sad.

"Sussex Express can exclusively reveal..." posted 12:12pm today, even though twitter & VivaLewes posted it was Kevin Bacon at about 10:30am. Paper must go to the same school of journalism as The Argus with their "exclusives"

Somewhere lost in this thread there was a suggestion that said come on bonfire boys , as chair of one of the larger society's I would like To make the point that we are not for hire as a rent a mob , sure some bonfire boys maybe upset about this filming and they my act in a manner that suits their own feelings , I'm not sure having drummers turn up to disrupt filming is the best kind of protest it will only prolong the situation , as they have so much time , money , and footage invested I dont believe they will just give up , maybe we should just play nice for 2 days and then stick it up those that failed in their civic duties , I thank you

Southover was awash with media types when I came through half an hour or so ago. There are yellow cones all along the parking bays opposite the church.
It looked like they might be filming in Priory Crescent.

MY GOD YOU LOT ARE A WHINING BUNCH OF NO GOOD BUSY BODIES!!!!!
GET OFF YOUR COMPUTERS AND GO AND LIVE!!!!!!
ENJOY PEOPLE FILMING IN THE TOWN, ENJOY THE FACT YOU LIVE IN LEWES, AND STOP BEING A BUNCH OF POMPUS STUCK UP AROGANT Urrrgghhhhh, PRETENDING YOUR CONCERNED ABOUT THE OVER PRICED SHOPS AT THE 'TOP OF THE TOWN' NONE OF YOU EVER GO IN!!!
'I USED TO WORK FOR THE BBC' !!! - SELF ENDULGED 'LOOK AT ME' -DIVS
'LETS HAVE A MEETING IN THE LEWES ARMS' - JUST ABOUT SUMS UP THE DFL's ON THIS FORUM!!!

Dearie dearie me. Please do stop shouting. And learn some spelling and grammar before you insult people.

I agree Double Top, sometimes there is a tendency In Lewes to just have a good old moan.
But in this case there did seem to be some confusion over parking, and bearing in mind how hard it is to make a living these days, you can understand retailers complaining about losing trade.

Curiously Double Top seems to object to people who are trying to do something rather than just moaning about it. The meeting resulted in the filming being moved to a time which suited both the film crew and the town which, as you correctly suggest, is a result.

Not sure I'm getting the loss of trade bit. Seems to me that there's dozens of them in town, presumably staying locally and certainly could be seen out and about in town spending money in the pubs and I assume the restaurants last night. Dare I suggest that it's a rather myopic viewpoint to focus on a couple of hours when God the car may not be able to move around quite so freely, ignoring the revenue potential of the film crew and potential spin-off from being seen in the resulting ad? I'm a solid supporter of the local shops over the chains, but surely they don't need cars right to their doorsteps every minute of the day to do their business (except the garages, of course!).

I'd suggest that given Proms in the Paddock is on tonight anyway, the loss of trade from people not being able to park in the fifteen or so spaces up that end of town (Most of which are permanently occupied by people working at the various estate agents on that stretch) for a couple of hours at the end of the day on Saturday would have been pretty minimal. I'd be interested to hear from any business owners up there how much money they take today between three and five and how many of those customers were parked on that stretch of road but I fear such information would be a little hard to come by.

I'm not saying there wouldn't have been potential disruption but the Brewers and Lincolns don't attract much driving trade one would hope, the post office is shut on a saturday afternoon, as are the banks, the estate agents do more business over the phone than face to face, the White Hart has it's own car park for anyone mental enough to want to go in there and the only businesses likely to sell anything one could not easily carry to the YMCA car park or the Maltings car park would be Lewesiana (Who offer a delivery service) and potentially Kings Framers but then with the bank shut any customers could nip into the private spots opposite Pelham House for five minutes while they carried things to their car.

The only genuine disruption would have been to the guy planning to move house that day but even then he would have struggled to appease the blue meanies and might have been better off carting the stuff up to the Maltings anyway, rather than risking life and limb emptying the contents of a house across the main road to a valid parking spot, should the estate agents have popped out long enough for him to secure one.

We've just taken a quarter of our normal saturday total. Thanks Kevin.

Don't forget to thank CSBS and the GB Olympic team!

We had a good morning of trading but a very quiet afternoon, as I imagine most people who came earlier in the week or saw the papers believed that the High Street would be closed from mid afternoon.
Saturday afternoon at 3-4.30pm is actually one of our busiest times usually as people head back up the hill home or out of town, so disappointing, but every rose, alas, has its thorn.
I went to ask the film crew if they needed any flowers for the advert but was told that 'we brought it all down from London'. Hopefully, the Brewers and other places got some business out of it or the Shanaz.
These things are sent to try us, perhaps more often in Lewes than other places!
Oh well, onwards and upwards ..

Sorry to hear that christian, If its any consolation, we only had 18 diners at the shanaz. This was the worst saturday since the renovations 3 years ago. Oh well, i guess we just have to grin and bear it mate!!!!!!

Maybe the lack of trade and diners was also due to a big evening for team GB at the Olympics, lots of people staying in to watch it, consider all options before pointing the finger of blame!

Maybe the lack of trade and diners was also due to a big evening for team GB at the Olympics, lots of people staying in to watch it, consider all options before pointing the finger of blame!