BEST OF BRITISH

The British Film Institutes recent survey of 'Britain's 100 Greatest Films' reveals that five out of the top 6 were made before 1950. They were The Third Man (1950, No 1); Brief Encounter (1945, No 2); The 39 Steps (1935, No 4); Great Expectations (1946, No 5); and Kind Hearts & Coronets (1949, No 6).

David Lean clocked up the biggest director score with 6 films in the top 100, three of them, Brief Encounter, Great Expectations and Lawrence Of Arabia being in the top 5. A seventh could be added for In Which We Serve (1942, No 92), which he co-directed with Noel Coward.

Sir Alec Guiness stars in more of the top 100 than any other actor, with nine appearance. Michael Caine is next appearing in seven of the top 100.

On August 17th this year, thousands of film workers held a rally on Hollywood Boulevard to protest at the number of US films being made overseas. According to the Actor's and Director's Guilds, 285 of last year's 1075 US movies were filmed in other countries.

The American Screen Writers Guild has spoken out against the practice of giving directors the ego swelling credit 'A Film By ...' claiming it demeans the efforts of screen writers - what about the efforts of camera, editing sound and all the other crafts that go to make a film?

A Variety magazine survey revealed that only 20 of last year's top 50 movies were based on original scripts. The remaining 30 were either remakes, sequels, or based on books and TV shows. So Screen Writers, whose work is being demeaned now?

PRAISE FOR THEIR GEAR

Tony Dawe AMPS speaks highly of the Cooper Sound 106 6-channel location mixer he has been using on Tim Burton's new movie Sleepy Hollow. Tony says "When you're on location you need a mixer to be logical, reliable and professional, and the CS 106 fulfils all of those and an awful lot more. This is a mixer that has obviously been designed for the specific purpose of location recording". By the way, Andrew Cooper, the designer, is British.

 Simon Bishop AMPS speaking devotedly of his Deva 24-bit hard disk recorder talks about the tracks he recorded in the Newcastle Brown Ale bottling plant (lucky fellow) - "I was listening to the constant clinking of bottles through the headphones thinking I was hearing the source live. Then I pressed the stop button and realised I had been listening to the Deva playing back off disk. The quality was amazing. Compared to 16-bit DAT it sounded like a veil had been drawn away from the recording."

Was it Deva's extended word length that gave clarity to the clinking, or was it the Brown Ale that lifted the veil?

IN BRIEF

Fairlight FSP has become the largest investor in the newly formed Lightworks Inc company. The previous owner, Tektronix, announced a year ago that they no longer wished to develop the Lightworks non-linear video editing system. Lightworks Canadian distributor arranged a deal with Tektronix that means all intellectual property and support for existing systems passes to the new company. R&D will still remain largely UK-based with the company being run from Canada....  Euphonix has launched a fully digital mixing console, the System 5. Many of the early orders have gone to film and video post houses. The existing CS digitally controlled analogue consoles will continue to be available.... Soundtracs have just launched their DS-M digital audio workstation which is based on the recent introduced DS-3 digital mixer integrated with a SADiE audio editor and video playback. It is the result of a collaboration with the SADiE company signed earlier this year.... AMS Neve introduced a substantial upgrade to the AudioFile platform in the form of the AudioFile SC. This is a two screen system, one dedicated to displaying the audio programme 32-track waveforms, plus enhanced current and future networking possibilities. Reports say that it also benefits from a considerable increase in speed.... Sennheiser has added multiple radio microphone transmitters and receiving systems to its 300 Series. Most of the models can be operated across 32 frequencies while the receiving systems are expandable from single unit to multichannel with computer monitoring.... Digidesign has announced Pro Tools 5.0 as a free upgrade to recent Pro Tools purchasers. The main benefits of the software are an increase in the support for audio-for-video applications and easier integration of Avid video....