Welcome to Gloucestershire On Screen, a website set up to examine the role Gloucestershire has played in the history of TV and film-making. Using “before and after” photographs and film stills of film & TV made in the
county, Gloucestershire On Screen illustrates how alluring the county is to potential film directors and TV producers. With the inaugural Cheltenham Film Festival having taken place in October 2010, this website is aiming to be at the forefront of a resurgance of interest in local film and telvision. So, if you are looking for movies filmed in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Stroud, Tewkesbury or anywhere else in the Cotswolds, this site aims to cater. Or perhaps you are part of the new breed of people partaking in “film tourism” – coming to the county to search for film locations!
Since Malcolm Mcdowell rode around the county on his motorbike in the 1960s classic, If…, Gloucestershire has become a mecca for film and TV companies throughout the world, being used as a prime filming location. The Cotswolds was formally recognized as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in 1966 and this aided Gloucestershire’s role as a filming location. The construc
tion of Cheltenham Film Studios in the late 1990s, as well as the founding of several major council film departments, designed to cater for the needs of production companies, have helped to garner an interest in using Gloucestershire as a film location. Today, the county boasts a Screenwriter’s Festival, a plethora of celebrity residents and, most importantly, a beautiful backdrop suited to a variety of homegrown and foreign productions. A report commissioned by the UK Film Council, EM Media and others in 2007, cemented what many had already assumed; that film and television plays a significant and positive role in attracting visitors to a region or an attraction, and that this effect can be long-lasting. Gloucestershire is no exception.