Reel Tastes: Shippam Film Collection at Screen Archive South East

By Jane King, Business and Partnerships Manager at Screen Archive South East

Screen Archive South East, the University of Brighton’s film archive, has been caring for the Shippam film collection since 1995 when it was deposited for long-term preservation by the Shippam family.  Shippam Ltd commissioned publicity films and commercials for the company and its products from as early as the 1930s continuing into the 1980s.  The majority of the collection is 35mm and 16mm film and, together with the archives at the West Sussex Record Office and The Novium Museum, the three collections represent an excellent comprehensive example of a business’s advertising history.

The 35mm nitrate film is stored in the British Film Institute’s nitrate store. The 35mm and 16mm safety films are stored in a temperature-controlled strongroom at West Sussex Record Office where digitisation and collection care work is undertaken.  In our Brighton store we have a Shippam’s large single lens Magic Lantern projector and slide sets indicating the company’s early interest in the use of screen technologies as a promotional tool.

16mm film cans

One of the earliest films we have in the Shippam Ltd collection is the film Ancient and Modern,1933, a very early example of the adoption of sound on film for promotional purposes.  Film prints of this title would have been circulated to potential business clients, distributors and educational establishments.

Still from Ancient and Modern

These early promotional films emphasise the nature of the firm as a traditional, family-owned business, where long-serving, skilled staff were highly valued, and the quality of the product was of the utmost importance. The films also conveyed the company as an efficient organisation, using modern machinery and hygienic working practices, see Where Cleanliness Reigns Supreme, 1939.

Still from A Family Tradition

Building on its popularity in the 1930s the company took definitive steps to make the very most of cinema advertising, and later moving on to the new medium of television with the launch of ITV in late 1955 and Southern Television, the regional franchise in 1958.  Most commercials would have been made for both cinema (in colour) and television (initially black and white).  Consequently, we have many different copies in the collection (e.g work prints, reductions and colour / black & white variations, optical soundtracks and separate audio magnetic tracks).

Shippam Ltd commissioned professional film studios and cutting-edge advertising agencies to produce their promotional content, for example, Anglo-Scottish Pictures based at the London Film Studio in Shepperton. For commercials they commissioned the Larkins animation studio who produced Shippam’s Guide to Opera. They also worked closely with London Press Exchange, which was later part of Leo Burnett and Foote, Cone and Belding Ltd, the latter producing live-action advertisements such as Shippam’s Cameo. 

Still from Shippam’s Guide to Opera

Techniques progressed from using rostrum camera clips (filming directly above the product/focus of the clip), zooms and close-ups, which was evident in Shippam’s Real Chicken, to animated adverts with graphics shown in Shippam’s Footballer. They also used stop-frame animation in adverts such as Shippam’s Chicken Supreme, and live-action adverts like Sandwichmakers Chauffeur.

Music was key in the adverts, employing catchy jingles and slogans, a cheeky or sometimes wholesome narrative as demonstrated in Shippam’s Paste, Children’s Tea Party. They also often included animated animals and fish singing operatic music seen in Shippam’s Three Spotlight Beams. In Shippam’s Rock and Roll, a guitar-playing chicken is featured! Even into the 1980s this style continued, see Top of the Pots, which parodies pop groups Blondie, Adam and the Ants and Legs & Co.

Still from Shippam’s Rock and Roll

With National Lottery Heritage Funding support from the British Film Institute’s digitisation projects, this collection is now digitised, catalogued and available to view online.  To find out more about the work of Screen Archive South East this region’s public sector film archive, please visit https://screenarchive.brighton.ac.uk, call  01273 643213 or email: screenarchive@brighton.ac.uk