Skip to main content

Disney filmmaking ripoff?

independent.co.uk: "Basil Williams, 50, an occasional resident of St Vincent who runs a social welfare charity in London, owns a chunk of Wallilabou Bay where much of the film was shot. He said he was approached by First Mate Productions Inc, a company he had never heard of, in 2002, who explained that they were filming a 'small project' on the island. They asked if he would be willing to rent his 3.5-acre part of the bay to them for six months. Williams explained he had a holiday cottage on his land which he rented to English people for £250 a week. He claimed the company agreed to cover this cost, even though his cottage would not be needed. But when filming started, it was used by a member of the crew.

'At first they wanted to pay me £40 a week,' he recalled. 'When they asked the price I charge for the cottage they thought I meant 250 East Caribbean dollars, of which there are five to the pound. They even used the phone in the cottage - my 80-year-old mother Keturia, who lives in St Vincent, had to chase them afterwards to pay the phone bill.

'I had no idea that Disney was involved in this,' he continued. 'I thought this was a project to benefit the island. When I found out a big Hollywood studio was involved, I realised I had been ripped off. But by then the contract had been signed.'

Gwyneth Edwards, whose land was used by the film company to park a trailer, is also unhappy with Disney. She said the £1,500 she was paid had to be spent on repairing boundary poles. 'It seems to me that Disney don't care about the people on the island,' she said.

Patricia Barnett, director of Tourism Concern, said this is not the first time that filming in 'paradise island' locations has generated controversy. The Beach, starring Leonardo Di Caprio, which was filmed on the island of Phi Phi in Thailand, was criticised for relandscaping the beach, removing natural vegetation and installing palm trees which fulfilled Western perceptions of how a paradise island should appear. 'Like the Thai government, the government of St Vincent saw a good opportunity in having filming on the island but local people are often the last people to be consulted,' she said."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

georgelazenby: Rusomaniacal batshittery

Яџѕѕіаиѕ. Yes, I know that spells Ytdzdziais, don't bother me with details. If Тетяіѕ can do it, I can too. "We went up a short incline. This brought us to an ordinary glass door. We knocked. We waited. We waited. We noticed the doorbell. We rang. We waited. Eventually we grew bold and entered. This brought us into a narrow hallway that had all the indications of being nothing more than drywall, veneer and ceiling tile. We said 'Hello....?' No one answered our question. We proceeded down the hallway flanked by doors, unsure as to whether the desire not to surprise someone for the sake of politeness overrode the rudeness of opening a closed door. At an impasse, we kept walking down the hallway, not opening any doors. But, we rapidly became trapped, when we realized that the only way out of this hallway was to open a door. Because it seemed the least likely to be the entrance to an office, bathroom or weird eastern European slave dungeon, we chose the last door the h...

Josh Nimoy @ ITP - BallDroppings

Josh Nimoy @ ITP - BallDroppings : "BallDroppings is an addicting and noisy play-toy. It can also be seen as an emergence game. My brother Marc takes this software seriously as an audio-visual performance instrument. Balls fall from the top of the screen and bounce off the lines you are drawing with the mouse. The balls make a percussive and melodic sound, whose pitch depends on how fast the ball is moving when it hits the line."