The remarkable history of The Moving Picture Company (MPC)

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.

The next target was computer imaging combined with intelligent machines for the health sector, now a huge and booming area. It was sad this area of innovation fell by the wayside after I left the company.

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.

MPC also became a venture capital company, becoming a significant shareholder in companies such as Collet Dickenson Pearce (CDP), then the UK’s most creative advertising agency. Alan Parker, who became a very successful movie director, then working for CDP and directed his first commercial through MPC.

The Conservative Party was an MPC client too. All of Margaret Thatcher’s early party-political broadcasts were shot in MPC’s studios.

However, a key element of this deal was that all credit must be given to Saachi’s, despite MPC even providing financial assistance.

So many famous people passed through MPC’s doors.

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.

Mike Luckwell was co-founder of The Moving Picture Company, and now runs Mike Luckwell Venture Funding