HOLLYWOOD IN BERKSHIRE

By Ron Prince

It’s a bit special” is the phrase that’s going around the industry grapevine about a new film and TV studio hub that is rapidly taking shape along the M4 motorway corridor.

So, on this sultry summer afternoon, I’m going to discover just what the buzz is all about by taking a tour around the emerging Shinfield Studios, sited just south of Reading in the county of Berkshire, UK.

I’m given a cordial welcome by the studio’s affable joint-MD, Nick Smith, and head of studio operations, Dean Horne, who offer a pair of size-9 toetectors, hard-hat and high-viz gilet. This is because, even though four sound stages were finished at the end of 2021, plus a further six opened in 2023 and have (according to the press) already earned a dollar or two hosting Netflix’s Bridgerton S3 and The Acolyte, Lucasfilm/Disney+’s eagerly-awaited Star Wars prequel, this place is still very much a site that is under-construction.

An army of similarly-clad workers, droves of excavators and lorries, plus mountains of building materials, are assembled together to finalise what will become, by early 2024, the fourth largest studio complex in the UK, costing some £300 million.

Shinfield Studios is owned and operated by US independent studio firm Shadowbox Studios –which is developing purpose-built studio campuses in Atlanta, Georgia and Los Angeles County, California – and is financially-backed by private equity investment companies Commonwealth Asset Management and Silver Lake. Shadowbox has taken a 199-year lease on the land for Shinfield Studios from the freeholder, the University of Reading, in an area called Thames Valley Science Park.

On completion, Shinfield Studios will deliver 18 state-of-the-art stages, providing in excess 1,000,000 sq/ft of production, workshop and contemporary office space, plus a vast backlot, all spread across 64-acres of land. A multi-storey parking structure can hold 750 cars, and there’s room for a further 1,250 vehicles around the lot.

In future development phases, there will be a 170-seat, Hollywood-style commissary serving food and beverages, sited inside a handsome, global brand, including the launch of overseas facilities in Toronto, The Dominican Republic and Atlanta (now Trillith Studios). Horne also counts the best part of 16 years of handson operational experience at the Pinewood/ Shepperton Group.

Grade-II listed, tithe barn. Infrastructure and partners are essential to modern-day film studios, so there are also plans underway to build dailies screening theatres and editing suites, and develop a community of tenants offering the full range of filmmaking services.

Now, I’m reliably informed that a fleet of electric golf buggies have been recently been ordered to help ferry cast and crew around the site, so in the meantime we’ll have to clump around in our sturdy boots.

We make our way towards what looks like an industrial park-cum-fulfilment depot on steroids. The stages are tall and imposing, liveried in dark carbongrey cladding with simple yellow numerals, and topped with muscular aircon ducts. The stages are encircled by heavy-duty concrete aprons, ready for all of the vehicles and filmmaking kit that’s going to turn-up in the not toodistant future. Silver girders glimmer in the distance, along sweeps of freshly-tarmac’d boulevards, as more stages are being erected lickety-split.

“We knew that Berkshire had a lot to offer,” adds Smith. “The area has a strong transport infrastructure –not least its proximity to London, which is 30-minutes by train, and Heathrow Airport, just 30-minutes by car up the M4. It is also within easy reach by top UK-based crew, who live right along the Thames Valley. Although the current site occupies 64-acres, we actually have around 120-acres in total at our disposal, so we have plenty of additional space to expand into if needed.”

With finance and planning permissions in place, construction started on Stages 15, 16, 17 and 18 in March 2021, and Shinfield Studios welcomed its first productions in 2022, ensuring income from an early stage.

“We’ve had great support from the local Wokingham Council, who recognise that a film and TV production studio hub will bring a substantial and diverse range of employment opportunities to the local economy – around 4,000 from direct on-lot jobs and off-lot service providers nearby. And we’re in conversations with a variety of companies, large and small, about on-the-lot tenancies,” says Smith.

Large-scale earthworks – cut-and-fill ground stabilisation, the construction of roads, the installation of 1,500 linear metres of site drainage and more than 600 metres of retaining walls – were initially required to make the place a workable studio environment. The site is secured by discretely-spiked 7ft metal perimeter fencing and full-height industrial turnstiles.

“During 2018, we looked at all points of the compass around the M25 London orbital motorway and considered four sites before settling on this one in 2019,” recalls Smith who, previously worked for 16 years as executive commercial director at Pinewood/Shepperton Studios Group, and was intimately involved in growing the business into a

Smith and Horne are eager to show-off Stage 3, one of two identical pièces de resistance, which is a within a gnat’s whisker of completion and is soon to be occupied by another large-franchise production. It’s mirror twin, Stage 4, stands diagonally-opposite, and immediately adjacent to Stages 1,2 and 5.

With a solid, polished-concrete deck, offering some 40,750sq/ft floorspace and a working height of 50ft, Stage 3 is a volume of breath-taking proportion, a real whopper, that forces a “wow” and the temptation to yodel and see what comes back.

“Stage 3 and Stage 4 are the biggest, fullysoundproofed, air-conditioned stages in the UK,” enthuses Horne. “All of our stages are built to be large, flexible spaces, with the needs of film and TV productions in front of mind. The walls are a metre thick, for acoustic sound insulation, with large elephant doors giving easy access. They all have internet and wireless capabilities too.

“Each stage has excellent height, and you can hang a stupid amounts of lighting and other equipment from the full-length overhead gantries –one tonne per 6m-length of runway beam. They are all similarly laid-out too, so everyone knows where the toilets, showers, entry/exit doors are.” reveal a record £6.27 billion film and high-end TV production spend in 2022. Shinfield Studios symbolises that success and is expected to make £600-million per year for the UK economy.

Whilst this growth – fuelled by Hollywood productions from Warner Bros., Paramount and Disney, and streamers such as Apple, Amazon and Netflix – has triggered an explosion in studio builds, it has also caused an estimated shortfall of 20,000 skilled staff in the industry.

To play its part in filling the skills gap, Shinfield Studios recently partnered with Resource Productions CIC and the University of Reading, in a venture backed by £600,000 of BFI funding over three years, to create a Berkshire-based ‘Skills Cluster’ that will make the industry more accessible and help to train and develop new and emerging film and TV production crew.

Our boots march us outside towards Workshop

A – actually of a line of seven spacious individual units to separately house things like set-construction, props and wardrobe – which runs around 200m in length beside Stages 1, 2 and 3, and backs on to the M4 motorway. But you can’t readily hear the hum of the non-stop traffic, because these workshops are soundproofed too.

Along with the voluminous Stages 3 and 4, the complex will comprise a further 4 x 30,00sq/ft plus stages with 50ft headroom, 12 x stages ranging between 17,250 and 20,750sq/ft with working heights of 40ft, as well as multiple conveniently-placed workshops and production offices. Smith reckons that’s enough capacity to host three or four large-scale productions at any one time.

“Anything you can imagine – lunar landscapes, fairytale castles, an evil villain’s lair – can be built here, in a secure and controlled environment,” he says.

The UK is the second-largest entertainment sector in the world after North America. In 2019 it overtook the UK car-making industry in size and helped to keep the country from tumbling into recession. Official statistics

“Our goal is to address the skills shortage in film production by offering pathways for local people to embark on careers in this rewarding sector,” says Smith. “We are going to need stagehands, prop masters, costumiers, carpenters, plasterers, camera and lighting technicians, hair/make-up artists and runners. There are job opportunities here that can change people’s lives.”

Before I know it two hours has gone by, talking and walking a good long distance around the backlot and back, in those unforgiving clodhoppers.

So what’s my takeaway? Well, those boots aren’t made for walkin’, bring-on those golf buggies. As for the studio itself, it’s not just a bit special. It’s absolutely fantastic. It’s patently clear that Smith and his team have poured a lot of knowledge and understanding into the planning and design of this impressive filmmaking centre, that will soon be crawling with A-list cast and crew.

Like the website proclaims, Shinfield Studios is a real “powerhouse”, although Smith modestly says, “We’re not re-inventing the wheel, just trying to make the studio experience better by a considerable margin.”

Hard-hats off for bringing Hollywood to Berkshire.