Magna event is the icing on the cake for Warp Films’ 10th birthday celebrations

Sheffield production company Warp Films are marking their 10th birthday with a night involving “10 hours of music and 10 hours of film” on November 17th at the Magna Science Adventure Centre.

The night at Magna is the culmination of a month of events to celebrate the anniversary and will include a live re-scoring of Warp Films’ debut feature, Dead Man’s Shoes. 

Pete McKee and Mark Herbert 

at the opening night of McKee’s 

Warp Film poster exhibition

Mark Herbert, CEO of Warp Films, said: “The main thing is the Magna event which is an expensive event to put on, but it had to be Sheffield even though we have an office in London.

“I live in Sheffield, our head office is here, we started here and Warp Records started here.

“We love it here and we love the people.

“Magna is an amazing venue. We wanted to do something that was embracing a good night so it’s going to be a great party with some great DJs.

“We still keep in touch with Gavin (Clark – member of Clayhill and UNKLE) who has done a lot of music in our films such as This Is England, and we came up with the idea of rescoring Dead Man’s Shoes – stripping the music out and reworking it.

“What started off as a small event that we were going to do in the woods at the end of summer with just 200 people has just grown. I think it’s going to be 10 hours of music and 10 hours of film in one night so it’s good value.

“We’ve sold 700 tickets in two weeks so I’m hoping there will be over 1000 there on the night.”

The Warp Films retrospective at 

Showroom Cinema runs from 3-9th November

The event, which will run from 6pm till 4am, will also feature DJ sets from BBC Radio 6 Music presenter Tom Ravenscroft and This Is England director, Shane Meadows, as well as an all night Warp Films cinema.

Showroom Cinema has also joined in the celebrations with a Warp Films retrospective season starting on November 3rd. The week long season includes screenings of Warp’s most successful films including the BAFTA award winning, Tyrannosaur and a This Is England marathon.

An exhibition by Sheffield cartoonist Pete McKee, who has re-imagined 10 Warp Films posters in his own unique style, is also currently on display in the Showroom bar.

McKee, speaking on the first day of the exhibition, said:  “People can take things for granted quite easily and not really appreciate how wonderful some things are – like the fact that Warp is a Sheffield film company with internationally renowned films on their roster. When you see the ten films that I’ve painted you realise how not only unique and brilliant they are but also how daring and unflinching they are with the films that they choose.”

Pete McKee has created 10 posters for the exhibition

including ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’, ‘Tyrannosaur’ and ‘Snowtown’

McKee, who has previously had work commissioned by Richard Hawley, the Arctic Monkeys and Noel Gallagher, added: “Originally I was meant to do some work based around This Is England and then it morphed into ‘Hang on – we’ve got the Warp 10th anniversary; why don’t you do something for that?’

“So we came up with the notion of re-imagining some of their more well-known films as film posters in my particular style. That’s how it came about really – a happy accident.

“The whole project took about three months from the original plan to the final execution. Each one had its own little delaying process but at the end of the day we finished in time and made the deadlines.”

Warp Films has gone from strength to strength in recent years with BAFTA award recognition for Tyrannosaur, Four Lions and This Is England ’88. They also continue to work with some of the biggest names in the British industry such as Shane Meadows, Richard Ayoade, Paddy Considine and Chris Morris.

Herbert, reflecting on the past and future of Warp Films, said: “It’s been a really organic process. We’ve had business plans but the company has grown through connections.  We work with people and they like the way we work and then we do something again with them. It’s like a massive dysfunctional family.

“I really want to do a Warp family film. So the next big thing for us is to take a family film but make it feel Warp.

“I’ve got three kids and if you look at the films that we’ve made, they are not really family-friendly films.

“We are also really excited doing the This Is England TV series. That has been great and enjoyable. The reaction from that has been amazing, so also making cinema but for the television.

“So the next 10 years is to carry on doing what we are doing – working with new talent, working with the current talent that we love like Shane (Meadows) and making some weird stuff but maybe some bigger budget stuff as well.”

by Larry McCloskey