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Title: BENEATH THE SKYLINE: Edinburgh to Music

Reference number: 3675

Date: 1966

Director: d. Mark Littlewood

Sound: sound

Original format: 16mm

Colour: col

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 10.38 mins

Description: Witness the beauty of Scotland’s capital city through the artistic eyes of award winning visionary Mark Littlewood. This independent, self-funded film, made on a shoe-string budget, is really Littlewood’s impressionistic interpretation of a wonderful city. He creates unique moving pictures, passionately revealing Edinburgh’s stunning cultural and industrial beauty to the world. An evocative, atmospheric portrait of what you can see 'beneath the skyline.'

Littlewood says: ‘I had no qualifications, but Alan Harper (Campbell Harper Films) gave me a job straight from school. An opportunity that formed my future, and guided my life’.

Winner of the Kodak award in colour photography, in the international ''Movie Maker Ten Best" competition, 1969.

Digitisation funded by British Film Institute 'Unlocking Film Heritage', awarding funds from the National Lottery. This has enabled the film to be enjoyed by a wider audience. View the film on BFI Player at https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-beneath-the-skyline-1966-online [last accessed 09/05/2024]

This film was selected by the BBC as the best film to open, present and promote Edinburgh to a global audience. This was a key requirement of its flagship programme 'The Eurovision Song Contest' when it was transmitted in 1972 from Edinburgh's Usher Hall across the world. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sN_V_uDjd0 [last accessed 09/05/2024]

Credits: p. Alan Harper
p. ass. Michael Alexander

Shotlist: Pan of Edinburgh at sunrise (.28) Beneath the Skyline Edinburgh to Music (.37) Pan across some trees to factory chimneys (.46) C/u sparks from metal being cut (?) (.55) Men feeding a furnace, some c/u of their faces and the white flames of the fire (1.18) White hot liquid metal being poured into a cauldron (1.29) C/u of workers faces (1.32) Pan up of the hull of a ship under construction (1.37) C/u of welder's face (1.39) Hot sparks from the metal plates being welded together (1.45) Vertical shot of the construction crane and ship (1.52) Zoom out of welders at work (2.02) Zoom down the ships hull to the reflection in the water (2.13) Zoom out from the sea to fishing boats tied up in the harbour ( 2.20) Boxes of iced fish being lifted on to the pier (2.51) Bow of a fishing boat heading out of the harbour cut into scenes of fishermen working with the boxes of iced fish (3.05) Three men on a raft beside the hull of a ship [ready to paint it(?)] (3.18) C/u of crane buckets moving (4.15) Calton Hill Monument (4.40) Edinburgh Castle silhouette (4.49) Church (5.02) Edinburgh skyline from Princes Street (5.11) Zoom out of the Bank of Scotland Headquarters (5.35) St Giles Cathedral (5.56) Sir Walter Scott Monument (6.07) Statue of Robert Burns (6.25) Gvs of architectural interest mostly in silhouette (6.55) Art gallery on the Mound (7.13) Gvs of architectural interest (7.23) George Square buildings at Edinburgh University ( 7.42) Duddingston Loch (8.13) Gvs of tree branches in the different seasons (8.48) Cauldron of white hot liquid metal (8.53)Sunset in the countryside (8.57) Loch (9.03) Gvs of town buildings (9.11) C/u of iron decorative railings (9.25) Zoom out from rusty industrial link chains to the ship construction (9.34) Wild flowers (9.40) Talking head of a fisherman on his boat (9.42) Swans (9.46) Shipyard cranes (9.48) Swan (9.51) Crane head (9.54) Swans in flight (9.59) Geese landing on a loch (10.05) C/u of a people at dusk walking along a street (10.14) Long grass blowing in the wind (10.19) Produced by Alan Harper and Mark Littlewood (10.24) Production Assistant Michael Alexander (10.30) Directed and Photographed by Mark Littlewood (10.38)