Broadcast
New facilities are
being built around the country and existing sites are adding extra stages, but
there is concern over soaring energy costs and a lack of crew.
article here
Investment in
studios topped £4.77bn last year, reflecting the UK’s evergreen appeal to
high-end TV producers. Space remains oversubscribed, crew shortages are acute
and rising energy costs are putting the sector under further pressure, but with
more stages, training schemes and strategies to combat inflation coming on
stream, it is not a perfect storm – yet.
“The scale of shows
keeps increasing and impacting demand on space,” says Barnaby Thompson,
partner at Ealing Studios. “From wardrobe and props stores to offices,
everything is growing exponentially.”
Ealing has a
relatively small campus (four acres) and is building an additional 14,000 sq ft
stage and workshops. But that won’t open until August 2024.
“We’re the
traditional home of low-budget features and BBC drama. Now it’s much more about
shows for Netflix, Apple and Amazon,” says Thompson. “Some studios have
been taken out of circulation but the UK has had a historic shortage of stages.
We’ve been full for the past eight years.”
Amazon Prime has a
10-year lease on nine sound stages at Shepperton Studios. Disney has a similar
deal at Pinewood. Apple has secured facilities at Symmetry Park in
Aylesbury and Netflix plans to double the size of its production base at
Shepperton.
Elstree, where Sky
and NBCU opened a 13-stage complex in 2022, is “100% full”, says consultant
operations director Rebecca Hawkes. The BBC occupies three studios and The
Crown holds the remaining footprint – though Netflix will vacate after the
final series shoots next summer.
There is around 6
million sq ft of production facilities in the UK, according to real estate
consultant Knight Frank, but with total production spend forecast to
double over the next five years to £11.16bn, it is reasonable to assume that
space requirements will need to increase by a similar proportion.
“The supply of film
studios is insufficient to keep pace with the rising demand for new content,”
says William Matthews, head of commercial research at Knight Frank. “This
shortage is placing sustained upward pressure on rents, driving the case for
new development and investment in the sector.”
RD Studios opened
in April with more than 45,000 sq ft of space in Park Royal, London. While
owner Ryan Dean was looking to fulfil demand for space from commercials
clients, the new studio has been booked up with drama, doc reconstructions and
sitcoms for clients including Apple TV+, Factual Fiction, Pulse Films and
ITV Studios.
“We target everyone
and because we have five sound stages inside the North Circular, we get a good
mix,” says managing director Stephanie Hartog.
Crew shortage
As new space
expands, the lack of skilled crew is a pressure point – and a supply shortage
means crew are more selective. “Crews don’t like having to travel a great
distance, and since the majority still live in and around the M25, it means
that London area facilities tend to win out,” says Hartog.
The answer is to
focus on training. “When I came into the industry, it felt like a closed shop
run by a few families,” says Thompson. “That’s changed but we still have to
find a way to get the message out that there are opportunities here. The one
thing that will hold us back as an industry is the lack of crew.”
Laura Aviles,
senior film manager at Bristol City Council, points to a shortage of
location unit managers and line producers. “Before we greenlit expansion [at
Bottle Yard Studios], we wanted to make sure we could sustain three new stages
and our feasibility assessment did flag that there would not be enough crew to
service 11 stages.”
A workforce
development programme is expected to create 860 jobs in Bristol over the next
10 years, and similar schemes are happening around other studio hubs: Stage
Fifty’s new studio in Wycombe will support about 1,200 jobs, with many
introduced via its own training scheme.
Rising energy costs
are a global issue, but film and TV production can be particularly
energy-intensive. “The cost of energy is definitely having an impact,” says
Maidstone Studios commercial director Josephine Clark. “Productions aren’t
getting bigger budgets so we are all having to find cost-effective, imaginative
ways to deliver efficiencies.”
Most studios are
rented exclusive of electricity costs, so productions are facing higher bills,
with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine inflaming the situation. “The prices we
quoted [before the invasion] are obsolete now,” says Garden Studios chief
executive and founder Thomas Hoegh. “That is hurting. We have to adopt a
more variable pricing model. No one predicted a war.”
Dock 10 head of
studios Andy Waters says one way studios can help broadcasters who are feeling
the squeeze “is to maximise their studio time, for example, by helping record
more shows per day”.
The introduction of
virtual-set technology at Dock 10 gives clients the flexibility to build
any set in any size studio. It can, for example, operate virtual set
productions of Gran Turismo Championships, BBC Bitesize and Match Of The
Day at the same time.
Stage Fifty will
claim the world’s largest virtual production volume (30,000 sq ft) when it
opens in Winnersh next year. “We see VP as a staple studio service,” says
chief executive James Enright. “Filmmaking has always relied on scenic
backdrops and VP is the modern version of this.”
Other studios are
more reticent. DNEG and Dimension have booked two stages for VP
exploration at RD Studios until June, but Hartog is reluctant to invest in a
permanent facility until demand dictates.
Even Garden
Studios, which is opening two new VP training stages and a third volume
dedicated to R&D “with a significant partner” in the new year, “would not
have a business but for short-form content”.
Hoegh says: “Music
promo and commercials are more willing to take risks than film and TV. The
interest in VP is extraordinary but when it comes to actual bookings, there is
some latency.”
The prospect of
studio capacity doubling by 2026 is real. Among dozens of projects is the
£700m, 21-stage Sunset Studios complex in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, which
is due to open in 2025.
The question is
whether any of these will end up as white elephants. “Demand for drama may soon
level out but since there are not as many TV studios, I think the demand
for TV and sports facilities will continue steadily,” says Clark.
Hoegh, by contrast,
says it is “damn obvious there will be over-capacity”.
“It will be a blood
bath,” he says. “They are building the same facilities in Belgium, France and
Scandinavia who will fall over each other with incentives.”
But, he adds: “The
UK’s advantage is its people. We have a lot of people who know how to do
this stuff. The UK will be resilient.”
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