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Production Cities and Studios
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You might think there is little more to studios than big empty sheds with a couple of lights, a relatively generous electricity supply and a coffee machine in one corner. But you’d be quite wrong, my friends. Because, if you lift the lid on these colossi of commercials and film production, there is a whole pile of interesting stuff going on.
Studios come in all shapes and sizes. They can be 3,000 square metres with a film lab attached and a giant water tank. They can house a permanent reproduction of the Trevi Fountain, extensive post-production facilities and endless acres of backlot for building things on. Or they can even be kitted out with a fully equipped gym for cast and crew to make use of in the boring bits between shooting.
The point is, they are extraordinarily varied and versatile, and, in the pitched battle against locations, these big ‘sheds’ offer an impressive array of advantages to the average director.
The prime benefit studios hold over shooting outdoors is a controlled environment. Studios offer shelter from the weather, provide tight security – keeping out the unwanted public – and, crucially, give the technicians maximum control of effects, from basic lighting and sound to the more advanced visual trickery.
Robert Campbell, managing director of Outsider in London, sums up: "You have total control in a studio. There is no rain, no wind to blow anything over. It can be exactly what you want, how you want it."
Privacy seems to be one of the key advantages, particularly when prima donna celebrities are involved. Carol Andre-Smith, executive member of the board of directors at Cinecitta (www.cinecittastudios.it) in Rome, the biggest studio in Europe, says: "The Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears and Beyoncé was shot here. It could have been shot on location – because they needed a Roman forum and lots of outdoor scenes – but stars like that really need privacy so they don’t get bothered. There were no crowds, so there was no cost of keeping the crowds away and controlling the noise. Crowd control is a big issue with location shooting."
Special effects also often dictate a studio shoot. Given that a studio is dark, any degree of light can be created without having to wait for nightfall or sunset or a nice bright day to arrive. A studio can also have the necessary height, which is key for many types of lights and lighting rigs. It is also silent, so it’s far easier to record sound – there is a considerable amount of undesired noise on real locations. And then there’s the fancier stuff.
Phil Barnes, the head of music video at Bikini Films in London, says: "In music videos we spend our time dreaming up weird, unreal environments that are completely idea-led. We often have to shoot in a studio because we can’t achieve the fantastical effects in a real environment."
Not every commercial stars the likes of Beyoncé and Beckham or has a mega-budget special effect at its core, but the fact that studios protect shoots from the biggest enemy – the weather – is another major bonus. Deedee Barnett, studio manager at Sasani Studios (www.sasani.co.za) in South Africa, comments: "There is no concern with the weather at a studio. Shoots are not dictated by it. And the same goes for light. Our shooting day is 24 hours long – the studio can be hired for 24 hours at no extra charge than a regular 12-hour shoot."
If you want the weather, of course, it can be created entirely artificially indoors. "Rain, snow, wind, whatever, can all be done on set," says Andre-Smith.
"You don’t have to take wind machines out to a piazza in a country village, and then have one of them break down so you have to wait for another to be delivered. There is a guarantee to a producer that you will never lose a day’s work."
When Cinecitta was originally built in 1937, its slogan was that you could "walk in with your script and walk back out with a film reel." This philosophy has filtered through to other studios, with the result that many offer every imaginable service within walking distance. They can often resemble shopping malls, incorporating restaurants, edit facilities, paint shops, metalwork shops, wardrobes, dressing rooms, even leisure areas and small swimming pools for client usage. So no need for the hiring of clunky Winnebagos or catering trucks, or indeed any form of venturing beyond the complex’s four walls: everything, in fact, is neatly contained in one place.
"Everything you need is right there," comments Andre-Smith. "And shooting is a lot faster as a result."
Debbie Gill, production supervisor at Palma Pictures (www.palmapictures.es) in Majorca, reinforces the notion: "The idea is that we are a one-stop shop. We can provide absolutely everything in-house."
There are numerous other benefits to studio shoots, from savings on time, travel and costs, to the fact that some ads will always be best shot indoors – such as one-day jobs for beauty and hair products, demos, packshot-led ads or car commercials that only need basic sets.
But despite all this glowing talk about lavish services and the edge that studios have over locations, many production companies are simply not using them as much as they did – primarily because of cost.
This is particularly true in the UK. One anonymous leading British executive producer says: "We never shoot in studios any more. When I started, back in the 80s, we used to shoot in them all the time, but I can’t remember when I last used one. More and more, because of budgets, we are being pushed onto location. We’d only use a studio in the UK now for a relatively small job where the builds aren’t that huge so the savings outweigh the costs. If the job requires a building on any scale, then we go on location."
Britain’s bad weather also used to drive productions under cover in the past, but flights are cheaper today and it’s easier to go abroad and shoot outside in the sunshine – if not in a foreign studio somewhere.
Outsider’s Campbell adds: "Studios are great places when you need them, but a lot more jobs are now done on location. In the old days we just built everything. Now the cost of construction and the studio itself is expensive. To hire a studio might only be £2,000 a day – but it’s what you put in it that is expensive. And that could cost as much as £100,000."
The cost can certainly be hefty. The price for a very basic lighting, grip, camera and crew package at Palma Pictures is around £15,000 per day. South Africa’s Sasani Studios charge only £400 for its biggest studio for the day – but that’s just the shell, with everything else on top (electricity, phone calls, food, for example). Set builds and what you put in the studios crank up the costs still further. The main European studios are also becoming more expensive, particularly since most countries have entered the EU and prices have broadly standardised across the continent – although Spain is probably still the cheapest, around 10 per cent less than the other countries.
Studios get all hot under the collar when cost is brought up, and many insist that they offer real value for money compared with location shoots – so much so that they have seen commercials jobs significantly increase over the past few years.
Several of these mainland European studios are able to undercut UK studios, resulting in a large percentage of their clients coming from Britain. Palma Pictures, for example, claims that the UK is "our biggest customer, accounting for around 60 per cent of our business".
"We also get work from France, Germany, Scandinavia, the US and even Japan," says Gill. "We are cost effective because studios around Europe are becoming more expensive. We have calculated that if you are shooting for two days, then it is cheaper to shoot in Majorca than in London – as long as you don’t have a huge cast of models." Cinecitta similarly claims to being 20 per cent cheaper than studios in New York and London.
But the rise of eastern European studios, particularly in Romania and Bulgaria, is creating an even more competitive market. Casting, labour, hotels and general facilities are all cheaper, with savings on US and western European studios of as much as 70 per cent. More and more jobs are heading east as a result. At around £10,000 per week – rather than per day – for a decent-sized stage, it is no surprise.
Christopher Bojilov, executive producer at Bulgaria Film Services (www.bfs.bg), says of eastern European studios: "We offer excellent value, very good professionals and can provide every kind of service. There is no difference between western Europe and eastern Europe in terms of service – shooting here is the same quality."
Kentauros Studios (www.kentauros.ro) signals a new era, particularly for Romanian film production. It is a spanking new state-of-the-art facility in Bucharest, complete with a full and permanent set of New York (the only one in Europe), and so far it has had nothing but overseas clients.
Gian Paolo Varani, head of production at Kentauros, adds: "We have built a brand new studio using the very latest technology in terms of facilities, with air conditioning, high ceilings and a specific area for commercials.
The Prague studios are now becoming expensive, particularly because they have the euro. Our crews are much cheaper than Czech crews." Other studios leading the Romanian invasion include Castel Film Studios (www.castelfilm.ro), where Cold Mountain was shot and 120 commercials were filmed last year, and Mediapro Pictures (www.mediaprostudios.ro), which currently has a colossal 4,000 square metre stage. Boyana (www.boyanafilm.bg), Bulgaria’s biggest studio and the largest in the Balkans, is attracting work, particularly from Spain, Germany, France and the UK, claiming that around 90 per cent of its clients come from abroad.
Petr Polednak, marketing director of Prague’s Barrandov Studios (www.barrandov.com) in the Czech Republic, adds: "The majority of our work comes from abroad, from the US followed by Britain, France or New Zealand. The use of the studios is increasing with the growing knowledge of the Czech Republic. Producers cherish the skills of Czech filmmakers, and Barrandov is investing in building new studios in the coming years to reflect the growing demand."
Predictably, the more established studios are hitting back. Andre-Smith adds that while these new eastern operations can be less expensive, they don’t necessarily have the skills or facilities.
"We can construct and make sets so much faster and with much less manpower than these studios because we have special laser-cutting machinery which means we can keep costs down. We can do as much with one man in one hour as they can do with 20 of their men in one day," she says. And now, too, Ciudad de la Luz (www.ciudaddelaluz.com) a whole big new studio has opened up outside Alicante in Spain and thrown a bomb into commercials production across Europe.
But whatever the cost, the facilities, the result of the competition between east and west studios and whatever the advantages of shooting film in a controlled environment, there are some inescapable reasons for filming outside that studios simply cannot compete with. Locations can offer great production value, and despite the permission seeking, location searching and general hell of setting up a shoot outdoors, they can be preferable.
Kate Elson, executive producer of Bikini Films, says: "Many directors want to shoot on location because it is more emotive and better for the actors. If actors are sitting on a studio set, it feels like a studio set. It is often simply more logical and organic to shoot in a realistic environment."
First published in shots
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