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Tony Earnshaw is a man who lives and breathes film. He's the Head of Film Programming at the National Media Museum in Bradford, and also Artistic Director of the Bradford International Film Festival. After years as a print journalist at the Yorkshire Post, following film shoots in the county, Tony decided to put his archive and film knowledge to good use and together with his old colleague from the Yorkshire Post, photographer Jim Moran, they've put together "Made In Yorkshire". We asked Tony where it all started:

"When I was a kid I was always fascinated by the process of making a movie. I never came across a film set until I was a teenager in Bradford in the 1980s, when David McCallum came to town to make a film about an East German border guard. They'd used Little Germany as a replacement Berlin and Checkpoint Charlie."

Tony Earnshaw

"It was absolutely fascinating to watch because it gave you an idea of the mechanics involved in making a film - endless cups of tea, lots of standing around, setting up props, checking costumes, light, weather etc. A lot of the actors were bored out of their minds - a bit of a contrast to the images in my head of a 'glamorous' film set."

"But I still found it enticing and made me want to be a film extra - something that only happened years later. I was hooked and started to keep a record of these things - particularly in my local area - and gradually finding out about other film and TV projects filmed locally. Later on when I was working as a journalist, whenever I could, I would be down on the set taking notes and pictures for print articles. After several years of location reports and film writing I had the opportunity to write a film book and I suppose I had a huge amount of source material already, hence "Made In Yorkshire"."

"I suppose it's a reference book, but there's plenty of anecdotes as well. Experience showed me that people who worked as extras on these films remembered the experience for the rest of their lives. I talked to one chap about being an extra on a film nearly fifty years ago and I assumed his memory might be a bit hazy but he remembered everything! The costumes, what they ate, the weather, film actors (who was nice and who was a 'bit up themselves')."

"All the 'colour' for certain pieces within the book came from such reminiscences. I realised that I could have all the star interviews in the world but they are there to provide the hype - the real story came from people on the set soaking up the atmosphere and relating it later - sometimes they'd have scrapbooks with some amazing details and pictures that proved invaluable to my writing of the book. These pictures were more candid than the usual publicity stills - often catching actors off-guard, or in situations that contrast with their costume and role. There's a great picture of Cate Blanchett dressed as Elizabeth 1 listening to her CD player on headphones."

"One thing that readers might be surprised by is the general dearth of films shot in Leeds. I don't know why that is, maybe some cities were more amenable to the film industry than others, or maybe Leeds didn't have the right look that producers were after. However, that's not to say that Leeds misses out completely in Yorkshire's film history. 'Billy Liar' is renowned as a 'Bradford' film - but parts were filmed in Leeds. The fantasy 'war' sequences in Billy's mythical world of Ambrosia were filmed on the Headrow and the Town Hall steps as well as an area off Wellington Road, long since demolished.

"'Monk Dawson' was filmed partly in Beeston. Set in Belfast during the height of the Troubles, so there were lots of soldiers, RUC, armoured trucks and a fairly grim backdrop. But they achieved a lot on a really small budget - I imagine only eagle-eyed Beeston residents would have been able to tell that it WAS actually Beeston in the finished film."

Edward Dmytryk (left) - copyright Yorkshire Post

"One that got away was a project involving Lee Marvin due to star in an adaptation of Jack Higgins book "A Prayer For The Dying", in Leeds. Yorkshireman Stan Walker set up a film company Norwood to produce this film in 1977. He hired Hollywood veteran Edward Dmytryk to direct. Dmytryk got as far as scouting locations - cemetery near Quarry Hill. By this point he was coming to the end of his career but he was still a big Hollywood name. It looked good for for a period of time but didn't come to fruition. Eventually it was filmed a decade later with Mickey Rourke, Bob Hoskins and Alan Bates."

"Finding out about such projects made me think that maybe I didn't know as much as I thought I did about films made in Yorkshire. There were obvious ones like Kes, Yanks, Billy Liar but then people would give me details about projects like the film Bette Davis made in Malham (Another Man's Poison - 1952) and I'd be sceptical but then would have to be apologetic and ring them up asking for more details."

"Other big names to film in Yorkshire include Dustin Hoffman and Paul Newman. My list of 'Yorkshire' films started to get bigger and bigger, so my collaborator (photographer Jim Moran) and I had to rethink because we couldn't cover everything despite my original intention to be comprehensive. We reckoned that there were about 160 films - but that would have meant producing a book that would have put a severe strain on your back to pick it up! For space reasons we've covered 38 films (some known, some obscure)Μύand had to leave out obvious ones like Full Monty and Calendar Girls as they've been covered more than adequately elsewhere. We've covered important ones in detail and there's a chronological list at the back where we've noted all the ones we couldn't go into detail about."

"I think the reason Yorkshire is such a great place to shoot films is geographic - there's a huge range of locations within easy reach in Yorkshire - nowhere else in country like it. You have the urban grit of the cities, coastline, moors, dales etc. There's plenty of talent in the north, we need to maintain a talent base of technicians, runners, set designers, caterers etc which make it cheaper to film in the north. Hopefully things like 'The Damned United' can encourage more films to be made in the north, as it gets more expensive and inflexible to film exclusively in London."

"I was very lucky over the years to be granted access to so many people who would later become stars. The Yorkshire Screen Commission (precursor of Screen Yorkshire) was very amenable in allowing us access. We got interviews with the likes of David Tennant and Bill Nighy before their fame as well as interviews with huge industryΜύ figures like Morgan Freeman, Julie Christie, Ken Loach and John Schlesinger - who came back to Bradford 35 years after filming 'Billy Liar'. Everyone told him it was a classic but it didn't feel like it at the time, to him. Back then you could produce a film and if it didn't work you were given other chances to hone your craft - now there's a pressure to make every film count. A film has to be an 'experience'. People are always sounding the death knell for the British film industry but I think it's in fairly rude health."

'Made In Yorkshire' by Tony Earnshaw & Jim Moran is published by Guerrilla Books.