Broadcast
p14-18 Broadcast supplement
‘Survive to 2025’ may have summed up struggles in Facilityland last year but no-one was under the illusion that a switch would be flipped on January 1st. Nonetheless, the handful of shops canvassed by Broadcast expressed cautious optimism of a change in fortunes ahead.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the post game and each business has to work out its best mix of technology and location, staffing, investment and clientele. This is a snapshot of seven of them.
Splice
By luck or design, Splice fared well through 2024 even opening a new 38-edit suite facility near Old Street to go with its existing pair of East London buildings.
“We forecast, we did a lot of really nice work and we didn't stop [the new facility] because we know it makes a lot of sense,” says MD Richard Folley.
Early 2025 has been more challenging but he remains optimistic. “I doubt the market will return [soon] to what it was two years ago. What we're experiencing now are conversations going on for longer periods and commissioners more cautious about how they spend their money.”
One of the narratives in post is that to make things work you have to go remote. Folley disagrees, “Very simply, people don't want to. I speak to directors and production teams and they want people on premise. A producer once told me that doing television is a team sport. We still believe that the best way to make telly is to support creatives in the office.”
About 20 percent of Splice’s work is, however, remote. It has remote edits right now in Poland, USA, and Ireland. “We have an exceptional remote service for that kind of collaboration, but at the same time, people will always end up back in the room.
“People say facilities can't afford to service offline anymore. Actually, the answer is you can't afford to offline in Soho anymore. I’ve been in the industry nearly 30 years and we've been through periods where it's been super busy and super quiet but it levels out in the end. The biggest challenge in post is to manage the feast and the famine.”
Granary Media
Granary Media principal Simon Kanjee describes last year as “the bottom of the trough” but spies green shoots “on the scripted side.”
He adds, “We're all believing and trusting that 2025 will get better. It’s not a hockey stick trend, but we're seeing positive signs with some series coming back and new formats being talked about which we haven't seen for a couple of years.”
Having taken charge of Streamland Media’s operations in London and Cardiff in January, Kanjee’s priority is reducing its physical footprint.
“Down the line we will look at using automation technology for more efficiencies. In many way facilities still operate the same way they did 30 years ago with lots of people running around with Post-It notes and bits of string. We've got to evolve technically to be a really strong industry.
He adds, “The cost of real estate doesn't go down nor does the cost of people while the amount we can charge clients has been static for as long as I can remember. It's about driving revenues from outside the real estate in Soho by connecting clients remotely.”
BlueBolt
The collapse of Technicolor’s VFX division sent shockwaves through the community but its fate may be isolated.
“We are a much smaller company with a lot less risk,” says BlueBolt MD Tracy McCreary. “We don't have crazy overheads so when there are bumps on the road we’ve been able to ride them quite well.”
Those bumps came during Covid and the Hollywood strikes which have meant “turbulent swings in the market” since 2021. “2025 is looking a lot healthier. All of us want to put a marker in what normal looks like.”
BlueBolt recently completed 132 shots on Disney+ drama A Thousand Blows, worked on Apple TV+ thriller Echo Valley and wrapped on Steven Spielberg produced Netflix caper The Thursday Murder Club.
“Different types of drama are being commissioned, often with smaller budgets, and that hits VFX quite significantly,” McCreary says. “On the other hand, the tax breaks have had a really positive benefit.”
Introduced in April 1st and backdated to January, the new tax package gives a welcome boost to UK VFX. “More shows are saying they want to keep VFX effects here. We may not be returning to pre-Covid levels but we have shows booked through the rest of the year.”
Enginelab
Few facilities have more cloud know-how than Untold Studios where Sam Reid was, until recently, the Director of Technology. “2024 was shaky all around,” he says. “Lots of people lost their jobs. I had to make some redundancies in my team, which was awful and hope I never have to do that again.
“We're far from being out of the woods but there are some encouraging signs that capacity is returning.”
Reid senses “cautious optimism” which is just as well as he has left Untold to start-up Enginelab offering cloud storage and workflows for productions of any scale.
“We have a lot of experience in the bank and relationships we hope to capitalise on,” Reid says of co-founders, Matt Herman (who founded and sold Trace VFX to Technicolor in 2016) and former Untold R&D lead Daniel Goller.
“We’ll use AI for doing things more efficiently than we could do previously, such as writing code. That's where our skillset can really shine. To an extent the technology is disposable. The most important assets in the industry has always been its people.”
Sticks and Glass
Winter 2023-24 found Leeds’ full-service house Sticks and Glass contracting for the first time since launch in 2018. “We had to let our facility manager go,” reports co-founder Adam Bennett. “We stopped hiring. We spend an entire salary of a human on software a month. We spend an entire salary of a human on electricity per month. There's only so much you can pull back on.”
It wasn’t until last June that it returned to black and has since had eight “record-breaking” months.
“We're lucky that our business is as diverse as it is so when the networks aren't commissioning we have agency clients. Of course, it’s all connected. If advertising revenues are down, there's not much floating around.”
Conventional post work includes four-part Channel 4 ob-doc Peacock & Verity for which the facility serviced everything from camera hire to dub and deliverables. It also films and posts campaign work for creative agencies. Bennett and co-founder Verdy Martin Oliver (Emmy nominated DP on Disney+ Welcome to Wrexham) are camera operators and producers which adds another string to their bow.
“We essentially shoot them like a long-form doc but the output is 15-60 second vertical clips for TikTok. They’ve got the same budget as TVCs and we're doing them to the same cinematic standards. We're able to make good money on them.”
Unusually, Sticks and Glass services live sports for clients including DAZN. The facility has landed a major contract to produce the live host broadcast of a major UK football league beginning next season. “This is a big win for Yorkshire,” Bennett. “We're bringing a national sporting property from London up to Leeds.”
The facility is expanding and not just with new galleries to accommodate sports. “The future of our business is very much in physical spaces. It’s a massive part of our identity. Physical space with artists in attendance is important for training. People don't learn working remotely. They work from sitting alongside people.
“The only way we can compete with a lad in Starbucks on a MacBook Pro is by saying to the client that they don’t have a Dolby Atmos suite, a world-class ADR room, or the ability to ingest 12 live streams concurrently. They don't have the storage or the workflow, the technology or expertise to deliver for IMAX. We’re in the game of building services that you just can't have unless you're willing to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
That said, every quote it receives is for a hybrid option. “Nobody's asking for dry hire anymore but they would like the ability to come in as well as work from home.”
The Church
Co-founder James Baxter says The Church is in a strong position as one of the only postproduction houses in Newcastle at a time when the North East is among the fastest growing areas in the industry.
North East Screen figures suggest a 86% increase in film and TV production related jobs over the past two years with the £450m Crown Works Studios in Sunderland expected to create up to 8,450 more across the region by 2033. That’s on top of the £25m the BBC is spending between 2021-26 on regional programming.
“There's been a massive surge of growth in the North East and we've been well placed to take on high-end shows,” says Baxter.
Credits include 4x60’ drama The Inheritance and 6x60’ The Feud both for Channel 5 and Paramount, produced by Newcastle-based Lonesome Pine.
Baxter also passes post for films he produces as founder at J6 Films through The Church. This includes feature doc Harder than the Rock acquired by Sky Arts.
“We’re keeping an eye on the situation since we don't want to grow too quickly if there’s any slowdown in the region,” he adds. “We're cautiously optimistic.”
The Church can draw on online editors and colourists in the region but expansion means connecting with talent down south. On Transaction, a ITVX 6x30’ comedy from Big Talk Studios filmed in Hartlepool, it is working with offline editors facilitated by West London-based Salon.
“Talent has traditionally left the region because there wasn't enough work to keep them. It remains a big challenge but it’s starting to change. We are always open to giving people opportunities to gain experience.”
Filmsat59
“I haven’t known a time in our industry when we aren't trying to survive,” says Gina Fucci who has been running Bristol’s Filmsat59 since co-founding it 1990. “None of us expected an overnight change in workload, but we are seeing a slight increase and some ‘green shoots’. Budgets are tight and costs are rising, so we’re being careful with how we spend and plan ahead.”
Fucci is sanguine about the impact of AI. “There are many things we have no control over. All we can do is work together to make the best of things. We have to remain flexible and we've found that if everyone on the team buys into that thinking then change feels possible.”
She urges industry bodies like Pact and DPP as well as producers, broadcasters, SVODs and distributors to be aligned on what the future of post should be.
“Buying new kit for tech’s sake is not going to sustain the industry - nor is keeping old kit for too long. We have a responsibility to understand how AI will impact every part of the chain and the true costs of powering more computers which take people out of the equation.”
No comments:
Post a Comment