The Times - UK (2022-04-28)

the times | Thursday April 28 2022 3

News

From Watson and Crick to Lennon and
McCartney, great achievements have
often emerged from teamwork.
Video calls mean that collaborators
no longer need to share a physical
space, though this may come at a
creative cost: a study claims that work-
ers who brainstorm via video generate
fewer ideas.
To explore how meeting via Zoom
might affect the generation of ideas,
researchers enrolled nearly 1,
people across Europe, the Middle East
and South Asia. The participants, who
worked as engineers for a large tele-
coms company, were paired at random.
They then met either face-to-face or via
video call and were asked to come up
with new product ideas.
The pairs who worked in person pro-

money for the rest of the night and ac-

cepted my losses!”

However, last Saturday, he received

an envelope through his door from an

anonymous sender. He did not recog-

nise the wallet at first until he remem-

bered losing one in 2015 and now wants

to find the kind stranger to thank him.

“When I saw the wallet, I just had no

clue what was going on. Then it all

came back to me and I could not believe

that it was that wallet I’d lost in town al-

most ten years ago.

“It had about £140 left inside and

nothing had been touched whatsoever

— some of the notes are so old that

they’re now out of date.

“The sender left no note inside. It’s

rare to see this type of kindness.”

A

South Way

Watford

Road

Existing

backlot

Existing

buildings

Leavesden

North

Watford

The planning proposal

Proposed new area

Existing area

New buildings

Sound stage

Other buildings

500ft

72 ft

How sound stages 2E, 2F and 2G will look

M

M

M

5 miles LONDON

2G

2E2F

The muggles are not happy. A proposal
to expand the Warner Bros universe in
Hertfordshire where Harry Potter
found his way on to global screens has
prompted fears about the future of the
magical green belt.
The plans to create more than a
hectare’s worth of sound stages and
production buildings plus a car park big
enough for all the wizarding pupils of
Hogwarts have angered residents and
conservation societies.
Creating the space for more movie
magic would be green-belt robbery, the
Chiltern Society has said, and dozens of
residents claim that there would be a
massive increase in industry and traffic
without adequate infrastructure.
The threat to the multimillion-
pound development plans at the
80-hectare site, which last year played
host to Batman and Dumbledore,
comes at a time when Britain is enjoy-
ing a film and television production
boom.
About 20 new studio sites are
planned across the country as content-
hungry streaming giants such as Net-
flix and Amazon seek space in which to
create. Traditional film studios such as
Warner Bros continue to take advan-
tage of Britain’s generous tax breaks
and specialised workforce.
According to figures from the British
Film Institute, the combined spend on
film and high-quality television pro-
duction in Britain last year was £5.6 bil-
lion, a £1.3 billion increase on 2019.
Ben Roberts, BFI’s chief executive,
has said that film-making in Britain
used to be a cottage industry, but the
country now has more studio space
than Hollywood.
The Warner Bros Studios in Leaves-
den, near Watford, already has 16
stages, including a 37m x 27m water
tank that is thought to be Europe’s big-
gest. Its sound stages cover about
350,000 sq ft in total.
It said the expansion plans would
help to ensure that “Leavesden remains
at the forefront of the fast-evolving film
industry”, adding that it wanted to take
into consideration “the interest of those
living near by”.
Besides the studio facilities in
Leavesden, Warner Bros also hosts The
Making of Harry Potter studio tour —

Gig-goer’s lost wallet returned

seven years later, note perfect

George Sandeman

Ideas trickle in a Zoom brainstorm

duced an average of 8.6 ideas, while

those who met virtually generated an

average of 7.4. More creativity might

seem to be a good thing. As Linus Paul-

ing. the Nobel-laureate chemist, put it:

“The best way to have a good idea is to

have lots of ideas.”

When it came to picking out the best

ideas, however, video meetings had an

edge. The next part of the experiment

involved the ideas being scored by an

outside panel of engineers. When the

pairs were asked to submit their best

proposals, Zoom calls led to a top-scor-

ing idea being chosen slightly more

often. “When it came to idea selection

we found, if anything, the virtual condi-

tion was better,” Professor Melanie

Brucks of Columbia University in New

York, who led the research, said.

A commentary on the study, which

was published in the journal Nature,

pointed out that Zoom might still

produce new ideas more cheaply. “If, for

argument’s sake, virtual collaborations

produce 20 per cent fewer ideas than do

in-person teams, but at 40 per cent of

the cost, then the cost per idea is greater

for in-person teams than for virtual

collaborations,” it said.

An explanation for why in-person

collaborations are more productive

may lie in where people place their at-

tention. The researchers used techno-

logy that tracked where participants

were focusing their eyes. Those pairs

who spoke to each other via video spent

more time looking directly at their

partner, as opposed to gazing around

the room. “We are actually the most

creative when we’re unfocused and

free,” Brucks said. She said that one

solution might be to limit video calls to

sound only.

Rhys Blakely, Science Correspondent

A man who mislaid a wallet full of cash

and bank cards after a night at a rock

concert has had it returned to him fully

intact after seven years.

Andy Evans, 45, lost his wallet in a

taxi after attending a gig headlined by

Manchester band the Courteeners and

having paid the fare in advance.

He got out in the city centre for

drinks with friends but realised he had

left his wallet, cards and £140 in cash in

the vehicle after it had driven away.

Evans, a father of two from Wythen-

shawe, Greater Manchester, was con-

vinced he would never see his brown

Henri Lloyd wallet or his cash again.

He said: “I just borrowed some

a popular tourist attraction. According

to plans submitted to Three Rivers

council, Warner Bros wants 11 new

sound stages — some as high as 72ft —

workshops, offices, a “welfare and café

building”, a new roundabout and

“decked car parking”. The plan-

ning application fee alone is

just under £400,000.

However, the Chiltern

Society, which has about

7,000 members, said the

expansion would lead to “per-

manent loss of green-belt land”

and that the “clear” traffic

problems that exist at the site

would be “likely to get worse

with the proposed expansion”.

The Gypsy Lane residents

group said the expansion

would “destroy” the envi-

ronment.

The proposed expansion

of the Leavesden site high-

lights the development dilem-

Warner Bros Studios in Leavesden already covers about 350,000 sq ft, where it has played host to Harry Potter and Batman

Harry Potter and a green-belt battle

As studios scramble to

cash in on a filming

boom, locals fight to

keep their spaces green,

writes David Sanderson

ma facing Britain as film studios look

for space close to London, with the

capital offering glamour and entertain-

ment for their leading stars and a

specialised workforce of “skilled screen

professionals”.

However, London is ringed by the

green belt, which was designed to

curtail excessive development and its

residents are well versed in planning

battles.

In December Buckinghamshire

council granted planning permission

for a big expansion of the Pinewood

Studios site where James Bond and Star

Wars films have been created. Along

with new production facilities, the

plans include a visitor attraction

entitled Pinewood Studio Experience.

One of the Pinewood Group’s other

sites — in Shepperton, Surrey — re-

cently signed a deal with Amazon

granting it first use of its 450,000 sq ft

space. Netflix, which says it plans to

spend £1 billion a year on UK produc-

tions, has doubled its studio space in

Surrey, where it has made films such as

The Old Guard, with Charlize Theron.

In response to the planning objec-

tions, a spokeswoman for Warner Bros

Studios said it recognised “how impor-

tant it is that future development

respects the interests of our neigh-

bours and the sensitivity of our local

environment”.

Emily Stillman, its senior vice-

president, has previously said that

since opening on the site of the

former Leavesden Aerodrome in

2012 it had continued to invest in

“studio and tour facilities,

creating two world-class

businesses at the heart of

the local community”.

She added: “At a time

when the UK film

and TV industry is

flourishing, de-

mand for quality

production space

has never been

greater.”

WARNER BROS