When lighting specialist turned camera and lens distributor Les Zellan visited a Leicester lens factory more than 20 years ago, he fell in love with the place – and started his journey to bringing it back to its place as the best in the world.
He was convinced Cooke lenses could regain their place as a world leader, and went about raising the money to buy the company.
He renamed the business - previously part of Leicester’s Taylor, Taylor and Hobson, then later a forgotten part of the Rank Organisation - Cooke Optics.
Cooke lenses were first made in the 1890s.
They were used on Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic exploration.
They helped document Everest expeditions in the 1920s, and have travelled to the bottom of the deepest ocean.
Throughout those early years and beyond Cooke technology has been at the heart of the movie business.
In Hollywood, the lenses were used on the Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Keystone Cops films.
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They helped film Modern Times, the Wizard of Oz, A Matter of Life and Death and Gone with the Wind, as well as Star Wars, Superman and Singing in the Rain.
In an interview with British Cinematographer website a few years ago, Les was quoted as saying: “I said to my wife, 'I want to buy this company' and for no good reason – simply a feeling of the history of the building.
“With all the brick, concrete and dust you wondered how anyone could make optics there.”
Under his stewardship, the business went on to reinvent itself, making world-beating innovations, and bringing out new products such as /i Technology – so film and digital cameras can record key lens data for each frame shot, which can then be used in post-production.
It streamlines production, saves time and cost, and eliminates guesswork.
It also enables greater creative freedom on the part of the film and post production crews.
Directors and directors of photography love it, and Cooke’s industry defining technology that has been championed by great directors such as Ridley Scott, Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard.
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More recently, its lenses - in a new factory in Thurmaston, just outside Leicester - have been used on The Crown, Game of Thrones, Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born and Sky’s epic Chernobyl.
In fact the business is no less than a Hollywood Oscar winner.
Seven years ago Les was a guest of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to collect the science and technology Oscar for the pivotal role his business plays in creating the look of some of the biggest movies of all time.
That award, presented at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Los Angeles, was only the 47 th of its kind ever given.
The Academy picked the business out for its “continuing innovation in the design, development and manufacture of advanced camera lenses that have helped define the look of motion pictures over the last century".
Such has been the success of the lenses that the “Cooke Look” has become a trademarked term - summing up the warm colours, sharp images and lack of harshness which are so sought after within the movie industry all across the world.
Two years ago an investment company took an 89 per cent share in the business, in a deal which valued Cooke at almost £100 million.
Les has stayed on as chairman of the business as it continues to make its mark on movie history.Last week he was presented with the lifetime achievement award at the 2020 LeicestershireLive Innovation Awards, which took place at the Morningside Arena in Leicester.
Les was in the States, but in a video message – which included clips from some of the era-defining films Cooke lenses have been used in – he said it was an honour.
Les said: “Cooke Optics is a rare gem of a company that has been hiding in plain sight in Leicester for over 130 years.
“Cooke’s history is intertwined with the motion picture history, going back to Thomas Edison and George Eastman.
“Over the years Cooke was the company that the motion picture industry turned to to solve difficult optical problems.
“In the late 1980s the then owners of TT&H, the Rank Organisation, lost interest in manufacturing and Cooke suffered. By the 1990s Cooke was on life support.
“I purchased the company in 1998 and the rest is history.
“Over the last 22 years we have grown from 36 people to 140 people working worldwide, with 130 people right here in Leicester.
“We built and occupy a new factory in Thurmaston that another Leicester legend, the late Richard Attenborough, helped us dedicate.
“With the help of everyone at Cooke, from the glass and assembly shop technicians to the engineering and R&D teams and the administrators, Cooke has regained its rightful place in the industry, as a leader and an innovator.
“Our lenses are used wherever professional moving pictures are made – movies, television, music videos, commercials, just to name a few.”