TV studio 1974 – 1983
In February 2025, the press were reporting that industry giant Technicolor had collapsed into administration in the UK. What people may not have noted was that this company also owned a couple of very successful SFX businesses – The Mill and Moving Picture Company (MPC). Some employees blamed the senior management of Paris-based Technicolor but whatever the reason, the 2013 US strikes and subsequent slow-down in commissioning films and TV dramas were the final straw. This was a sad end to a very successful and ground-breaking company, founded by Mike Luckwell.
Mike Luckwell, head of MPC, had originally planned to study at the London School of Economics. Following A-levels, to gain some experience of the real world, he took on a junior role in the Stock Exchange and was soon offered a more senior job but decided to take a short break doing something completely different before starting it. So he worked as a runner in a film production company and immediately decided that this was the world he wanted to be in. Moving swiftly upward, he became assistant director on a number of films in the early 1960s and even worked with special effects genius Ray Harryhausen.
Following a few years with World Wide Pictures, a documentary and commercials production company, in 1968 he became chairman and managing director of HSFA, another company doing similar work. Following a reorganisation in 1970, HSFA became The Moving Picture Company (MPC).
MPC opened for business in Soho on April 1st 1970, with a USP of making film and TV productions as cost-effectively as possible. TV was just opening up to independent production companies and the market for producing and editing commercials was expanding. The BBC was also short of colour editing capacity at the time.
In 1974 Luckwell noticed that in the US they were developing computerised video editing equipment and in Germany Bosch had brought out new lightweight video cameras. He decided to invest in this kit – not assuming that all commercials would immediately start to use video rather than film but knowing that having this new technology would position his company ahead of the competition.
They found these premises in Noel Street that had previously been a Jewish restaurant but had been empty for a while. The studio was created on the ground floor in the space previously occupied by the restaurant. Kitting out the small studio and investing in 3-machine editing suites cost £300,000 – a huge sum in those days. However, the gamble paid off and within 2 years, virtually all commercials were edited on video, even if they were originated on 35mm film. The studio was equipped with 3 Bosch Fernseh KCR-40s. They also had a Bosch KCN-92 and one of the first Sony BVP-330s, which they used with a small OB unit.
The technology MPC offered meant that a retailer could make a marketing decision on a Wednesday, shoot a commercial on the Thursday, edit on Friday and deliver the result via land-line to the ITV network on Saturday morning.
Another achievement of MPC was that all Margaret Thatcher’s party political broadcasts were shot in their studio, including the last one to go out before her election victory in 1979. The first version was not good so Luckwell and Tim Bell of Saatchi and Saatchi worked with a team of editors late into the night to fix it prior to its broadcast the following day.
Mike Luckwell has written his own version of the history of MPC so it seems appropriate to quote sections from it here…
‘The Moving Picture Company opened on April Fool’s Day 1970. It was founded by me and two film directors as a production company making commercials, industrial documentaries, pop promos, anything we could lay our hands on. A small advertising consultancy, Cramer Saatchi, came up with the name The Moving Picture Company. Charles Saatchi charged me £100 – which I thought was a bit steep at the time! Saatchi and Saatchi later became a big client.
MPC soon became the most prolific, profitable commercials producer in Europe. It became apparent that video technology was going to challenge film. Video was clunky and low quality, but MPC had a vision this image could be changed by applying film techniques to video technology. In 1974, we opened a video studio and sophisticated post-production facility in Soho.
John Beedle joined MPC, as director of engineering, to set up the video division. This led to a long partnership and friendship. John played a vitally important role in the technological developments. When the film directors left MPC, John and I became sole owners of the company. Video was a gigantic investment at the time, but MPC’s profitability enabled us to do it without outside investors. Frame accurate editing and small video cameras were key factors.
MPC soon became the leading independent video house in Europe. My belief has always been that in the television/technology sector you have to constantly change the business model, which MPC certainly did.
The advertising sector loved shooting on film, but I saw that video post-production could replace film labs. Cutting post-production from six weeks on film to six hours on video dramatically reduced the marketing decisions process. At one time, half the commercials transmitted in the UK were from MPC videotapes. Sadly, competitors arrived, but we transitioned from video to digital technology, whilst also continued as a production company and post-production facility.
I saw that digital special effects, merged with every other type of SFX technique, had an even bigger potential. I was fortunate, when working in the movies as an assistant director, to have been a protegee of Ray Harryhausen, an American who was then the world’s foremost ‘Special Effects’ expert. MPC experimented and innovated with everything. One experiment was computer generated images. We started with some software developed by NASA to calculate rocket trajectories, and MPC introduced CGI for film and TV in Europe. It was crude initially but later led to MPC becoming an Oscar winning CGI company with several thousand employees and offices around the word. David Jeffers, who followed me as CEO of MPC, did a brilliant job developing that side of the business.
We also introduced sophisticated motion control and built our own rig from scratch using ‘machine learning’ to control camera rigs.
My movie background led me to set up a programme/small movie production division. I recall showing Edmund Dell, the minister responsible for the Channel 4 legislation, around MPC’s video studio and post-production complex to convince him that TV production Independents really did exist. He drafted the Channel 4 legislation which created the independent programme production sector in the UK. In its first year, MPC was a major supplier of programmes to Channel 4.
After 13 years, MPC merged with a small public company, Carlton Communications plc., valuing MPC at £16m, leaving me as the biggest shareholder in Carlton, and its managing director, with John Beedle also on the board. Carlton soon grew to be worth £300m. After I sold out and left the company, Carlton (using the programme production division of MPC as leverage) went on to win a television franchise and later merged with Granada to become ITV.
MPC was then sold to Technicolor. Technicolor’s management encouraged little that was innovative, and starved MPC of capital. Technicolor has recently gone bust and MPC with it. A sad end for such a fabulous company.’
Neil Wilson worked there between 1981 and 1983 and he recalls various programmes for Channel 4 being recorded in the studio as well as lots of commercials. A number of pop videos were also made here, utilising the advanced post production techniques that MPC were developing at the time.
Luckwell formed a close working relationship with Michael Green, who was keen to invest in the world of television. In 1982 he had purchased Transvideo, based at St John’s Wood Studios, and changed the name to Carlton Television.
In 1983 between them they agreed a friendly takeover of MPC by Carlton Communications. Mike Luckwell became Carlton’s managing director. The Noel Street TV studio was closed and became a motion control studio – using the latest technology. The studio at St John’s Wood effectively took over the commercials, pop videos and other work previously done here. (See elsewhere on this website for more details.)
Paul Round has written to me – he worked at MPC between 1984 and 1994. He tells me that MPC was equipped with the most advanced post production equipment available at the time. They had 5 edit suites – four used 1 inch machines (later Sony D1) but Edit 5 was the first digital edit suite in the UK. There were also 2 telecine suites and a Quantel Paintbox.
When he left, the basement housed bookings, a kitchen, 4 edit suites and 2 Harry suites. Harry was the first digital non-linear editor, controlled via a pen and tablet and keyboard. This technology transformed the way video was edited and was particularly useful when cutting commercials.
MPC moved from here to Wardour Street around the turn of the century. These premises are now occupied by post house Halo. I went there several times to grade sitcoms I had lit, like Upstart Crow.
Some of the above information gratefully taken from ‘Greenfinger: The Rise of Michael Green and Carlton Communications’ by Raymond Snoddy.
