Trendswatch: Movie magic
Geraldine Kendall on how a growing number of museums are staging temporary exhibitions to tie in with major film releases
The US can keep Hollywood – Britain is experiencing its own golden age of cinema at the moment. The UK film industry is booming, with a growing number of high-profile blockbusters shot here every year, including wildly popular franchises such as James Bond and Star Wars.
The museum and heritage sector has long had close links to cinema, supplying film-makers with everything from specialist expertise to original props and set locations.
But many are now capitalising on the film boom and bringing a sprinkle of movie magic to their own galleries by arranging temporary exhibitions to tie-in with big-screen releases.
Pause for Paddington
The Museum of London (MoL) recently opened a free exhibition, A Bear Called Paddington, linked to the recent release of the children’s blockbuster, Paddington. The MoL is also running an exhibition on Sherlock Holmes at the moment, building on the huge popularity that Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective has enjoyed on both the large and small screen recently.
In other cases, museums have made the most of the links they have established with studios during a film production. The Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset is running Fury Exhibition, a special display that documents its involvement in the second world war drama Fury, which stars Brad Pitt.
The museum lent two original tanks to the film-makers: a Fury Sherman M4 tank – the film’s eponymous vehicle – which played a starring role onscreen, and a Tiger 131 tank.
The exhibition explores how the museum worked with the stars and film-makers to ensure historical accuracy, and displays numerous uniforms and props used in the movie that have been donated to the museum by the film’s production company.
Give and take
Another museum that has built on its film connections is Bletchley Park. The second world war codebreaking site is running an exhibition to coincide with the release of The Imitation Game, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the cryptologist and computing pioneer Alan Turing.
Although most of the movie was filmed on sets, Bletchley Park allowed the crew to recreate a 1940s bar within its Victorian mansion building, which featured in several key scenes of the film.
Afterwards, the production company, StudioCanal, donated costumes, props and sets to Bletchley Park, including a Bombe code-breaking machine specially built for the film that demonstrates how it would have looked mid-construction.
Although the exhibition has had to balance drama with historical fact, the appeal to people’s emotional responses is something that has worked in its favour, says Kelsey Griffin, the director of museum operations at the Bletchley Park Trust.
“The feedback has been amazing. Having the set dressing in the place it actually happened really brings the incredibly life-changing stories that happened here to life.”
Though a film tie-in may be less serious-minded and more commercially driven than a traditional exhibition, it can have a dramatic impact on visitor numbers and audience variety – footfall to Bletchley Park has been almost 80% higher than it was during the same period last year.
“Anything that brings people through the door is to be welcomed,” Griffin says. “Whatever your route into history, once you’re in the door we can build on that.”
“The Imitation Game exhibition at Bletchley Park (which is on until 1 November) is an opportunity to not only give our existing audiences the chance to see some of the film’s set dressing and some of the fantastic objects and documents created by the art department, but also for us to contact film fans who otherwise may not be familiar with the secret wartime work of the mathematician Alan Turing and the thousands of other heroes.
Combining real events with dramatisation has given us a chance to reach audiences we would not generally meet and gives everyone a chance to see how significant Turing’s wartime work was and the impact that he has had on the technology of the modern world.”
Sarah Kay is the digitisation and exhibitions officer at Bletchley Park Trust and the curator of the Imitation Game exhibition
The museum and heritage sector has long had close links to cinema, supplying film-makers with everything from specialist expertise to original props and set locations.
But many are now capitalising on the film boom and bringing a sprinkle of movie magic to their own galleries by arranging temporary exhibitions to tie-in with big-screen releases.
Pause for Paddington
The Museum of London (MoL) recently opened a free exhibition, A Bear Called Paddington, linked to the recent release of the children’s blockbuster, Paddington. The MoL is also running an exhibition on Sherlock Holmes at the moment, building on the huge popularity that Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective has enjoyed on both the large and small screen recently.
In other cases, museums have made the most of the links they have established with studios during a film production. The Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset is running Fury Exhibition, a special display that documents its involvement in the second world war drama Fury, which stars Brad Pitt.
The museum lent two original tanks to the film-makers: a Fury Sherman M4 tank – the film’s eponymous vehicle – which played a starring role onscreen, and a Tiger 131 tank.
The exhibition explores how the museum worked with the stars and film-makers to ensure historical accuracy, and displays numerous uniforms and props used in the movie that have been donated to the museum by the film’s production company.
Give and take
Another museum that has built on its film connections is Bletchley Park. The second world war codebreaking site is running an exhibition to coincide with the release of The Imitation Game, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the cryptologist and computing pioneer Alan Turing.
Although most of the movie was filmed on sets, Bletchley Park allowed the crew to recreate a 1940s bar within its Victorian mansion building, which featured in several key scenes of the film.
Afterwards, the production company, StudioCanal, donated costumes, props and sets to Bletchley Park, including a Bombe code-breaking machine specially built for the film that demonstrates how it would have looked mid-construction.
Although the exhibition has had to balance drama with historical fact, the appeal to people’s emotional responses is something that has worked in its favour, says Kelsey Griffin, the director of museum operations at the Bletchley Park Trust.
“The feedback has been amazing. Having the set dressing in the place it actually happened really brings the incredibly life-changing stories that happened here to life.”
Though a film tie-in may be less serious-minded and more commercially driven than a traditional exhibition, it can have a dramatic impact on visitor numbers and audience variety – footfall to Bletchley Park has been almost 80% higher than it was during the same period last year.
“Anything that brings people through the door is to be welcomed,” Griffin says. “Whatever your route into history, once you’re in the door we can build on that.”
Dramatic effects
“The Imitation Game exhibition at Bletchley Park (which is on until 1 November) is an opportunity to not only give our existing audiences the chance to see some of the film’s set dressing and some of the fantastic objects and documents created by the art department, but also for us to contact film fans who otherwise may not be familiar with the secret wartime work of the mathematician Alan Turing and the thousands of other heroes.
Combining real events with dramatisation has given us a chance to reach audiences we would not generally meet and gives everyone a chance to see how significant Turing’s wartime work was and the impact that he has had on the technology of the modern world.”
Sarah Kay is the digitisation and exhibitions officer at Bletchley Park Trust and the curator of the Imitation Game exhibition