BRIGHTON, UK — Virtual Post (www.virtualpostproduction.com) has added 10 new multipurpose edit suites to its Brighton facility over the last 12 months. The final five suites opened last month and are already contracted for the rest of the year to production companies’ projects.
Virtual Post opened a base at Freedom Works in early 2019, adding a Brighton regional outpost to its metro and cloud facilities in London and Orpington. The new post and content-serving hub opened with just two offline suites. Over the past year, an additional 10 multi-use edit suites were added in Brighton, all equipped with Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere NLEs, Resolve grading and finishing, and Adobe After Effects graphic capabilities. The new suites also offer Avid NEXIS shared storage and are linked to VP’s London and Orpington offices.
Among the indies currently working in the new facility are Koska, who just had two new series commissioned. Ricochet, Alaska TV, Lambent Productions and Factory Films are also working there. Collectively, the new clients are currently servicing around 50 hours of programming at the Brighton facility, including Sun, Sea, Selling Houses for Channel4, Storm Huntley Investigates for 5Star, and City Beats for Insight TV.
Nick Emmerson, founder and CEO of Koska says: “As Brighton enters this exciting period of growth, it's vital that the production community is supported by top quality infrastructure. As our own need for post production keeps growing, it’s a real treat for Koska having Virtual Post right here on our doorstep. The facilities are spot on and (founder Jon Lee’s) team are very friendly and professional. Plus they make a top cup of tea”.
“The transition from a London-centric to a more evenly distributed UK production infrastructure is great news for us all,” adds VP’s Lee. “Brighton is one of the main beneficiaries of this creative migration — and, as a result, so are we. But we’ve been anticipating a surge in regional offices for several years, as indies are liberated from London by the flexibility and remote working benefits offered by the cloud. Now, the ability to collaborate in realtime with teams in multiple geographic locations is reshaping the post production landscape, enabling next-generation post houses to fully support the UK’s indie community, wherever they are and however they choose to work. We offer clients the best of all worlds – metro, regions, nations and cloud”
Under VP’s joint venture with co-working office-space provider Freedom Works, independent producers can benefit from low-risk office space, scalable full-service post production support, and production workflow consultancy. The hub, whose clientele consists of both Brighton-based producers and the regional offices of London-based indies, is supported by a range of cloud tools.
In related news, Virtual Post appointed Ben Churcher to the newly created role of head of post production earlier this year. The company now employs 13 full-time staff, six of whom are based in Brighton and Hove. This represents a doubling of VP’s full-time staff in just 12 months.