On 24 Sep, 08:50, wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote:

The Beckton Depot has been extended to provide space to stable these
trains - this has taken the form of new outdoor sidings. I dunno if
the DLR bought lots of land when the Beckton depot was constructed or
acquired more at a later stage, but it was all wasteland around there
(and some of still is) - of course in pre-natural gas days it was all
a massive gasworks (which later, in a dilapidated state, provided a
backdrop for one of Mr Kubrick's moving pictures).

-----

Which Kubrick film?


Full Metal Jacket, the one about the Vietnam war.

This webpage has more info, though a note for the squeamish it also
has a still photo of bloodied people though of course unlike the real
horrors of that and other wars this is entirely simulated:
http://pages.prodigy.com/kubrick/kubfmj.htm

Here's an excerpt of the most relevant bits:

---quote---
Becton, an abandoned 1930s gasworks town by the Thames was used as the
Vietnam city of Hue. Of creating this "set" where the film's climax
takes place, Kubrick has said:

"We worked from still photographs of Hue in 1968. And we found an area
that had the same 1930's functionalist architecture. Now, not every
bit of it was right, but some of the buildings were absolute carbon
copies of the outer industrial areas of Hue...We had demolition guys
in there for a week, laying charges...Then we had a wrecking ball
there for two months, with the art director telling the operator which
hole to knock in which building... I don't think anybody's ever had a
set like that...To make that kind of three-dimensional rubble, you'd
have to have everything done by plasterers, modeled, and you couldn't
build that if you spent $80 million and had five years to do it. You
couldn't duplicate, oh, all those twisted bits of reinforcement. And
to make rubble, you'd have to go find some real rubble and copy
it...no one can make up a rock. I found that out in Paths of Glory. We
had to copy rocks, but every rock also has an inherent logic you're
not aware of until you see a fake rock. Every detail looks right, but
something's wrong. So we had real rubble. We brought in palm trees
from Spain and a hundred thousand plastic tropical plants from Hong
Kong...All in all, a tremendous set dressing and rubble job."
---/quote---


AFAICS all of this 'set' is now gone. There are still several gas
holders (aka gasometers) at Beckton, so it's still an important part
of the gas supply network - but none of these gas holders appeared in
the film courtesy of some carefully chosen angles during shooting. In
the film I think you can see some of the still standing national grid
pylons in the distant background, as well as a few glimpses of the
hilly banks of the far side of the river. I'm told that the light in
the film isn't really right for Vietnam.

The aforementioned webpage has a YouTube video clip embedded within it
- it is of the American trailer to the film, which features several
clips of the scenes filmed at Beckton.