2015 Review: studios round-up

Broadcast 

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/2015-review-studios-round-up/5097820.article?blocktitle=2015-Review&contentID=44199

New studios were opened and existing spaces expanded as high-end TV and film tax credits continued to take effect, but Scotland looks to be missing out.

RISING DEMAND 

In the year to June 2015, spend on UK production was £1.2bn – down £350m on 2014 but up nearly £100m on 2012/13. Spend on high-end TV in the first six months of the year was £279m across 30 productions, including ITV’s Downton Abbey and Endeavour, BBC1’s War And Peace and BBC2’s The Dresser.

The government stoked the fire in April by dropping the minimum that high-end dramas have to spend in the UK to qualify for tax relief from 25% of their total budget to 10%. At the same time, it upped film tax breaks to 25% for all qualifying expenditure, rather than just the first £20m. Fuelled by tax credits, the UK has cemented its place as a world centre for film and TV production, and studios cannot build fast enough to keep pace with demand.

In March, Pinewood Group raised £30m to part-fund the £200m expansion of its Buckinghamshire site, greenlit at the end of 2014. Intended to address capacity constraints, the Pinewood Studios Development Framework will double the existing space through the addition of 323,000 sq ft of studios and stages, including three 40,000 sq ft studios. Phase one, costing £65m and comprising five stages totalling 170,000 sq ft, is expected to be completed early next year.

“Pleased to announce #StarWarsVIII will be filmed here in UK @Pinewood- Studios – great news for @starwars fans & our UK creative industries,” tweeted chancellor George Osborne, who also suggested LucasFilm would invest £100m and secure 3,000 jobs for the production.

Warner Bros-owned Leavesden Studios has a masterplan of its own, pumping millions into building three sound stages that will increase its capacity by a quarter. Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is being shot there.

Elstree Studios is mid-way through a construction project that will also increase the studio’s size by a quarter, and Belfast’s Titanic Studios has also expanded, with a £14m doubling of infrastructure to accommodate another two series of HBO’s Game Of Thrones.

But it isn’t just the most high-profile studio brands that are in demand. Marvel movie Doctor Strange began principal photography at Surrey’s Longcross Film Studios last month and will shoot until the new year.

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE 

“High-end TV drama is driving huge potential for growth in the nations and regions,” Iain Smith, British Film Commission chair and executive producer of Mad Max: Fury Road told Broadcast in August.

No more so than along the M62 corridor linking Leeds with Liverpool. In the summer, Screen Yorkshire allied with property investor Makin Enterprises to convert a former RAF base at Church Fenton into a studio facility, promptly enticing ITV drama Jericho to shoot there.

Pending council approval, Liverpool could soon open its first film studio. The £25m scheme, on the 4.5 acre site of a former Littlewoods warehouse, would create 900 full-time jobs and present a boon for a city that hosts more location shoots than anywhere outside London.

In the middle of this northern renaissance lie the existing facilities of Dock 10 in Salford and The Space Project to the east of Manchester, which housed Big Talk’s Houdini & Doyle for ITV, and Jellylegs Productions’ Sky 1 sitcom Rovers.

“We are already working in collaborative fashion and see each part of our offer combined under the banner of a northern powerhouse to rival London,” says The Space Project chief executive Sue Woodward.

The Space Project is now constructing a new 30,000 sq ft stage, reckoned by Woodward to be the biggest in the north of England. It is part of the wider 6.8 hectare Outer Space, which will include 55,000 sq ft of associated facilities, such as lighting storage, “to encourage the supply chain to come here and support productions”.

Producers of two feature films are reportedly interested in booking the site when it opens next year, and Big Talk is understood to have booked a return from spring 2016 for its revival of ITV comedy drama Cold Feet.

SCOTTISH AMBITION

Scotland may be the most cinematic part of the UK, with castles and dramatic landscapes – and no shortage of talent – but the absence of dedicated large-scale studio space is one saga it could do without.

Holyrood reported this year that Scotland saw just £30m of the £1bn revenue associated with the UK film industry. Scottish Greens culture spokeswoman Zara Kitson cited one example in The Scotsman: Doune Castle stood in for Winterfell in early episodes of Game Of Thrones, but when the show decamped to Belfast around £160m of revenue was lost to Scotland.

With the Scottish government hampered by EU rules about public subsidy, the frontrunner for several proposals tabled this year remains a private-sector initiative located outside Edinburgh. Developer PSL Land submitted plans in May for a film and television complex on an 86-acre site at Straiton, south of the city. It is estimated that the £135m development, expected to open in 2017, will create 600 jobs.

However, speaking to Broadcast in August, Creative Scotland director of film and media Natalie Usher said: “We can’t dictate the speed of progress, but it is positive.”

Challenged by MSPs on the progress of the project a month later, Creative Scotland chief executive Janet Archer couldn’t confirm that a studio would be in place within three years.

Nonetheless, Scottish production spend was a record £40m in 2013-14 and Creative Scotland successfully lobbied for a £1.75m development fund as an incentive to attract more international and UK work.

Recent features to shoot north of the border include Gillies Mackinnon’s remake of Ealing classic Whisky Galore!, Steven Spielberg’s The BFG and Guy Ritchie’s Knights Of The Roundtable: King Arthur. Major TV productions include returners Starz’s Outlander (Left Bank Pictures) and BBC Alba’s Gaelic drama series Bannan, plus BBC1 four-parter One Of Us (Two Brothers Pictures).

SPACE SQUEEZE 

The reopening of Wimbledon Studios in August did little to alleviate the problems caused by increased demand for TV facilities, given the permanent closure of key space at Teddington a year ago and on-going refurbishments at Riverside Studios and Television Centre.

That is, of course, good news for the likes of Fountain Studios in Middle sex, where managing director Mariana Spater reports consistent business through 2015, with bookings including The X Factor and Hungry Bear’s 1000 Heartbeats for ITV, and strong enquiries for early 2016.

Studios are responding to the increased workload not just by adding more stages, but by getting more from the space they already have.

At Elstree, BBC S&PP shot Celebrity Juice and Virtually Famous simultaneously, using multiple LED lighting positions on a grid to speed up turnaround.

“Whereas large-format shows like Strictly Come Dancing and The Voice UK are so massive they have to sit in the space for their entire run, we can record episodes of different panel and quiz shows on the same studio footprint,” says BBC S&PP commercial manager Meryl McLaren.

Celebro Media Studios in central London offers a highly automated set-up with three robotic cameras, “for broadcasters wanting to make a live programme with fewer personnel in a space that typically requires 20 people to operate it,” explains chief executive Wesley Dodd.

Salford’s Dock 10 mooted the possibility of shooting a panel show with locked-off 4K cameras and reframing the high-resolution shots in post to achieve similar cost-savings.

The ability to shoot in one location and vision-switch live or post-produce in another is also opening up options for producers and studios. Umbilically linked to Dock 10 by fast internet, The Space Project offered Dragon’s Den the extra space it needed while allowing the production to post at its previous home in MediaCityUK. “

Extending the fibre network across the M62 corridor, linking stages to post, will boost the entire region’s economy and make it easier for clients to rock up to the north, plug in and play,” says Woodward