Founder Derek Simmonds

Derann Vaults

A Derann Story

  • Labs – Part 1

    Labs – Part 1

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    by

    Ged Jones

    Let me try to recall the production of a film in the early days of Derann. In 1976 Derann was printing in both Standard 8 and Super 8, with production of standard 8mm terminated by 1977/8. Most of our films were printed at Filmatic, a laboratory that had a reputation for variable colour and quality.…

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  • Mouse

    Mouse

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    by

    Ged Jones

    OK so this doesn’t sound much like my usual Derann posts, but It’s Christmas and if you’ll bear with me for a few minutes you’ll understand. As you know Derek and I made regular trips down to London where we’d head to Wardour Street, Dean Street, Brewer Street, Golden Square and the surrounding area. It…

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  • Nearly

    Nearly

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    by

    Ged Jones

    During the initial meetings with Ken Troy, our contact at EMI, gave us a number of 16mm rental catalogues and reams of photocopied lists to take away and go through in our own time, in order to make a list of possible titles for release on Super 8. As many of you are aware that…

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  • Lost – Part 1

    Lost – Part 1

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    by

    Ged Jones

    In last weeks post I mentioned the American International Pictures (AIP) product we missed out on when AIP closed their London office. Even though, like most London based offices their London agent, a good looking middle-aged lady whose name I can’t remember, had to constantly confer with her US offices, she had insisted that we…

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  • Rights – Part 2

    Rights – Part 2

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    by

    Ged Jones

    We never gave up hunting for film rights and very soon signed a contract with Enterprise, who I’m sure had offices on the top floor of the same building as 20th Century Fox, where we picked up ‘Kingdom of the Spiders’, ‘The Comeback’, ‘The Magic of Lassie’, ‘Bruce Lee: The Man and the Myth’ and…

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  • Clubs – Part 2

    Clubs – Part 2

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    by

    Ged Jones

    In post #29 of this series I talked about Derann’s regular involment, enjoyment, not to mention profitable, time we had from putting on film shows at numerous working men’s clubs in the West Midlands. We had as many as three teams working up to four or even five nights a week, with two workers in…

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  • Staff

    Staff

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    by

    Ged Jones

    In 1975, our premises were at 171 Stourbridge Road, Holly Hall, just a hundred yards from our first shop (at 169), and only a few minutes from the much larger building (an old car showroom, that at various times in its life had been a chapel and a butchers, complete with its own slaughter house),…

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  • Mountain – Part 2

    Mountain – Part 2

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    by

    Ged Jones

    If you thought that my ‘Mountain’ post ended abruptly that’s because when I’d finished typing, it was so long I decided to cut it in half… so here’s that second part.  Peter and Aubrey were like chalk and cheese…. Peter was generally very talkative and would have a constant stream of information concerning new releases…

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  • Mountain

    Mountain

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    by

    Ged Jones

    Our (Derek and myself) trips to London generally followed a regular pattern. We would travel down in Derek’s car, arriving at around 7.30am, park as near to West Central Street as possible and take a short walk to a cafe to have breakfast… always the same small cafe. It would give Derek chance to stretch…

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  • Hammer

    Hammer

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    by

    Ged Jones

    As I joined Derann, Derek was about to sign a contract for ‘The Adventures of Captain Marvel’ a 12 part serial,  ‘Gullivers Travels’, ‘Hoppity Goes To Town’, ‘Wake of the Red Witch’, ‘Copacabana’ and ‘Kronos’, with Ivy Film of New York. Upon their release they proved to be popular and sold very well, especially the…

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