9 minute read

Brighton post-production

The New Wave: Soho-on-Sea

ROB SPEIGHT checks out the Brighton post production scene

When you think of the UK south-coast seaside resort of Brighton, what does it conjure up? Crashing waves, sticks of rock, burning piers? Whatever springs to mind, Brighton is emerging from the fog of the pandemic, and as the sun filters through, it is slowly revealing a brave new world containing a rapidly growing audio post production scene.

That being said, post production audio is nothing new in Brighton. I personally ran a post facility for nearly ten years in the not so salubrious north edge of the city, Hollingdean, between 2003 and 2013. If you look at it one way it was incredibly hard work trying to build relationships between TV producers, film-makers and games companies when they were accustomed to going to London for everything. If you look at it another way, Outpost Sound was one of the O.G. audio post companies in Brighton. Pioneers of a brave new world (at least that’s how I like to think about it!). Truth is, like a prime minister after a party, the champagne buzz quickly wore off as people continuously questioned the validity and professionalism of a facility outside of London [you were too ahead of your time! — Ed].

Pier Productions

More recently the post audio scene in the seaside city has rapidly expanded, becoming more of a vibrant hub as greater numbers of producers and talent moved southwards during the pandemic. New facilities have popped up, others have expanded or re-branded, while others have changed their focus. One of these is Pier Productions, better known over the years for it radio productions. More recently Dubbing Mixer/ Sound Supervisor Matt Snowden and Sound Recordist/Designer/Dubbing Mixer Paul Weir have become deeply involved with the company and have subsequently converted two of the studios of the Regency townhouse into facilities for film and video post. I first asked Matt what changes they had made to the studios:

“Before they had two studios there. They’d been in that building quite a few years, mainly doing radio stuff. A few years before that, Andre Chapman who did a lot of the Monty Python stuff was there. He was a really, really fascinating guy.

He was their sound engineer since the seventies and did a lot of composing for their songs and worked with Terry Gilliam on a number of films. He had Redwood studios in London for quite a few years and he moved a lot of his gear into Pier. I’ve taken that over as he has semi-retired, and also added my own gear.

We’ve swapped the rooms over to how it was originally. They had two very large live rooms for the radio recording with lots of cast members. But it meant that both of the control rooms were quite small. So we swapped the bottom floor round. Now that’s got the big control room and then a smaller booth that you can still fit about four people in comfortably, and the box studio has still got the big live room and smaller control room. You can get eight people in there if you’re doing drama and group ADR.”

In addition to these new configurations, a studio used for practical effects for radio plays is being converted for use as a foley studio, “It is already basically a foley room. It just needs a bit more stuff in it!” he said.

Brown Bear Audio

In downtown Brighton sits the recently expanded home of Thomas Dalton’s Brown Bear Audio: “We’ve recently expanded our facilities. We upgraded our, suite to Dolby Atmos and then we also have a self-contained podcast studio, which also doubles-up as my ADR voiceover room. We do work across the board, including long and short form and branded content, as well as recording VO and ADR. We work with production companies across the UK and further afield, with myself and a network of engineers. They’re all working remotely. We also have myself and another sound designer and a composer based at Brown Bear. Augmenting that we have a network of freelancers who are all connected remotely — so we can service larger projects or expand our capacity when needed,” he said.

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/ The Edit

The Edit

The rapid growth of work available in Brighton has also been noticed by some London facilities, several of whom have also setup small facilities in the area such as Coda; but leading the field locally — just in terms of scale is — The Edit, where Head of Audio, Karl Mainzer is also a transplant from London. “I joined The Edit a couple years back when the facility was expanding into a much larger facility. Originally it was a small unit up at Fiveways. Because the amount of production that passes through Brighton has been increasing exponentially over the last few years, we felt that we needed a bigger facility. That was the main reason for taking the punt on building the bigger facility. People have tried it before and it’s never quite come off!”

Mainzer also sighted the pandemic as a driver of new business: “With Covid, there’s been a lot of people moving out of the city and down to Brighton. More producers, more execs that have the control over the budgets to determine where their post goes. I’m seeing a lot of that. Several long-time colleagues came down to Brighton, people that have been in my network for quite a few years. Now they’ve landed in Brighton it’s like — they know me, I know them — and they realise they don’t have to go to London Soho anymore to get their post done. It’s all here.”

The Edit now houses two purpose-built dubbing theatres including a Dolby Atmos theatre for feature docs, dramas, art installations and theatrical pre-dubs and a 5.1/stereo theatre, suitable for TV, commercial mixes and ADR.

As Mainzer pointed out, it’s not just the gear that creates the work, it’s the people, the culture and the location that has just as much influence when it comes to encouraging productions to spend their money. It seems that now, productions are starting to realise that Brighton has the culture and the professionalism to equal that of London.

Virtual Post

Jon Grey, Head of audio post production at Virtual Post, another full service facility located in Brighton, detailed how the city has and continues to develop a shared community; “I think it’s just being built. I think it’s still in the early days for this boom. A lot of production companies have moved down to Brighton and we are now beginning to reap the hard work that’s been put in to this by Production Hub, which is a Brighton based community.”

Brighton Production Hub

Brighton Production Hub, is a charity-based organisation that promotes and represents the television production community in the Brighton, Hove areas. Additionally, the organisation runs networking events, briefings, presentations from commissioning editors at major television networks and provides support for health and well-being in the industry.

Snowden (Pier Productions) explained why he

/ Brighton Production Hub network on the beach (remains of torched West Pier in background!)

thought Brighton was unique when it comes to post production, “The talent pool is very unique. There’s so much more voice talent down here that have exited from London, and people want to travel here more. At the beginning of last year we did a really fun comedy podcast project called Curl Up and D.I. written by Tony Pitts.”

The show which starred Katherine Kelly, Vic Reeves, Morgana Robinson, Mark Benton, Burn Gorman and Tony Pitts — to name a few — was recorded at Pier over eight days and Pitts was able to encourage all but one actor down to Brighton in person to do the sessions.

But the ‘only an hour from London’ reasoning is only part of the battle according to Mainzer (The Edit), “We try and keep things very high standard here. We don’t want our clients to think that they’re getting anything less than if they were going to Soho. That’s the danger for Brighton because we say to our clients, it’s only an hour from London to Brighton. They’re like, okay, but equally it’s only an hour from Brighton to London. So, we’re constantly trying to keep the high standards and improve, to keep the work here.”

This is not the only challenge, as Pier Productions mixer Paul Weir commented: ”You know in every other city there is a post-production hub there are sound stages and facilities and actual industry. In Birmingham, Manchester or Cardiff, but in Brighton there isn’t. It is lacking that. So, we’ll always be trying to wrestle stuff away from the other cities. I’d say it’s been a good, hard slog for post-production companies in Brighton. And it finally feels like things might have turned recently, which I think has possibly got more to do with Covid. I feel that that Brighton always had a problem that say Bristol, Birmingham or Manchester didn’t have, which was they all had their own film communities, whereas Brighton doesn’t have a television hub. It doesn’t have BBC Brighton. Whereas Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham all do.”

But where next for the industry in Brighton, the future of the industry as a whole and many like it? With working practices changed and the ability to work anywhere for the most part, are production hubs becoming a thing of the past, especially for post-production?

“We’ve got clients reviewing programs remotely, losing the need to come into the suites. So we’ve got about half and half now. People still have carried on the trend to work remotely after lockdown, and some people are really enjoying coming back to us and being in our dubbing suites,” Virtual Post’s Grey concluded.

Will this new wave of Brighton facilities continue to thrive? With increasing production across the UK it would seem they’re in with a very good chance. I’ll definitely be back as soon as someone can point me in the direction of a donut shop that’s not on a pier!

Virtual Post: www.virtualpostproduction.com Pier Studios: www.pierstudios.co.uk The Edit: www.theedit.co.uk Brown Bear Audio: www.brownbearaudio.co.uk Brighton Production Hub: www.brightonproductionhub.org

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