This month, we are highlighting some of our members who have extended their reach outside of London and made their mark across the UK
Radiant Post Production, Manchester
In 2017, Rapid Pictures acquired Crow TV, and rebranded its fellow West London post-production house as Radiant Post Production with 30 offline suites, four online suites, four dubbing theatres and colour grading facilities. Radiant Post has received the Best Companies Group recognition for ‘Best Place’ to work in TV every year since 2020. Intending to extend the business outside of London from its inception, Managing Director Ben Plumb sought to find the best fit for Radiant.
“Organically, Manchester became our focus. Two of our clients had secured regional commissions in Manchester back in 2021. To support them and to gain better local knowledge we set up a pop-up facility. It became apparent very quickly that Manchester was going to be the best location for the business and that we could support a well-established media base, providing more post-production opportunities in the city”
Ben Plumb, Managing Director of Radiant Post Production Group
In 2022, Radiant North – a state-of-the-art, 8000 square feet facility – opened in Enterprise City, a media, tech, and creative cluster in the heart of Manchester, to offer a full post-production service to multiple clients.
Since the move, Radiant has grown its capacity, output, and client base with Manchester-based production companies, facilitating a widening network.
“We have been able to retain quite a few projects within our business that would have otherwise been lost if we didn’t have a regional facility. The talent base in Manchester is incredible; this does give Radiant an advantage when load balancing work between London and Manchester. We can often overflow London project to Manchester at peak times which very helpful and continues support for the region.”
Ben Plumb
Clear Cut, Birmingham
Clear Cut Group, established in 1993, comprises four companies (Clear Cut Pictures, The Edit Store, Clear Cut Nations & Regions Ltd. and ClearMotion VFX) and delivers highly creative post production and hundreds of hours of programming for a range of leading clients across the world.
From 2016, Clear Cut began offering pop up editing services in the West Midlands where both the client base and requirement for high-quality post-production services was growing. By 2023, the West Midlands had emerged as a key creative hub, and Clear Cut took the natural next step to open a full post-production house in the heart of Digbeth, in a grade 2 listed site.
“The move allowed us to widen our catchment for both talent and productions, taking full advantage of the UK’s nations and regions strategy, and establishing a hub for our regional and international projects. Putting our feet down in the West Midlands felt like a natural evolution of a strategy already in motion”
Will Bramall, Post Production Co-Ordinator at Clear Cut Pictures
Based in the creative quarter of Birmingham, Clear Cut Nations & Regions offer suites onsite, with 24/7 technical support for local productions, as well as remote offlines across the UK and beyond. Establishing a permanent presence in the West Midlands has strengthened Clear Cut’s pipeline of operational talent, giving opportunities to skilled regional creatives, and transforming relationships with production companies.
“The West Midlands offers an attractive mix of production community and creative energy. Birmingham’s excellent connectivity to London and the wider UK makes it an easy extension of our existing operations. The region’s a rapidly growing creative sector, with well-established and expanding production infrastructure, long-term commitment from all Broadcasters and the local authorities supported by incredible energy from the wider community. With significant investment in high profile projects across all genres there is plenty of opportunity for growth. This undoubted energy aligns perfectly with our ambitions, and we are at the heart of this emerging production community.”
Will Bramall
Armed with a steady and organic, demand-driven approach, Clear Cut is planning future expansions at the speed of the local production community, with a stable commissioning pipeline.
“Emerging initiatives, such as that from the Production Central WM resource, supported by the West Midland Growth Company, will further support a new wave of regional creative growth and we are excited about the opportunities this creates for us to continue building relationships with new West Midlands–based clients.”
Will Bramall
Vine FX, Cambridge
Vine FX, an artist-led studio known for award-winning visual effects that recently celebrated its 18th birthday, was launched in 2007 by Michael Illingworth, who sought to realise his vision of creative independence, work-life balance, and high-quality visual storytelling.
After leveraging the flexibility of ‘pop-ups’ around London to work in productions like Harry Potter, Atlantis, and Merlin, Michael moved the studio to a stable base in Cambridge in 2016, embracing technology like Teradici for remote work well before the pandemic.
“After having a lot of fun living and working in London through my 20’s and early 30’s, I started thinking more seriously about having a family and what kind of day-to-day life I wanted. I was looking for something more manageable and stable. Cambridge felt like the right fit for me with an abundance of culture, history and all that good stuff, just without the big-city intensity.”
Michael Illingworth, Founder and Creative Director of Vine FX
It wasn’t Soho or LA which inspired Michael, but the space and balance between work and home. The team at Vine FX have grown using local talent from Cambridge and Norwich who could pour their creative energy into a studio that didn’t require a commute into London.
“Cambridge gives us the best of both worlds, it’s a strong regional base that lets us travel easily to clients across the UK, while still being just 50 minutes from London for quick face-to-face meetings. It’s also a fantastic place to build a team locally with shorter commutes and a better work-life balance that really makes a difference day to day. Cambridge is also a brilliant city in its own right, full of history, great cafés and restaurants, museums, and excellent schools, with the added bonus of feeling close to the countryside once the workday’s done.”
Michael Illingworth
Vine FX have scaled from a team of one up to 80-strong during busy periods through recruiting locally. After the pandemic, remote working expanded the talent pool further, bringing in people from London, across Europe, and beyond, leaving recruitment challenges in the past.
Vine aren’t stopping at Cambridge. Utilising the model for regional VFX services built up in Cambridge, they will be expanding into Manchester early next year, continuing work on Manchester-based projects like The Tower, Lazarus, and After the Flood seasons 1 and 2.
The Look, Cardiff
The Look, one of the leading high-end picture post productions companies globally, signed a lease on a new office in Cardiff, Wales in 2017. This marked the first move out of their London office on Margaret Street.
The Look Cardiff hires locally, with the Welsh employees working closely with the London facility, allowing experts to maintain the post production process across Wales and London. The Cardiff office also positions The Look as a central point in conversations around regional spend projects.
“It would be a small lie to say that some of the reasons were not commercial… Other motivational factors are that the senior leadership team here have a passion for growing talent and training. We wanted to do it properly and create an actual facility with Welsh talent and that’s exactly where we have ended up.”
Dan Marbrook, Chief Commercial Officer at The Look
After seven years, The Look Cardiff is only growing as the team completes more client-facing work on projects like Channel 4’s Falling and Deadpoint, both of which are Welsh spend and staffed projects from set to delivery.
“It is a long-term project, not a pop up. There is a wealth of applicants with great ambitions and it enables us to increase our back room work with less risk attached while genuinely investing in talent there.”
Dan Marbrook
Not only has the studio in Wales been central to Welsh-originated material, but The Look Cardiff has also been integral to the wider company’s work on household titles such as Gangs of London and Sex Education.
