First post-production house open in Digbeth
7 July 2023
In March 2023, Clear Cut opened a new post-production facility in Birmingham. Rowan Bray, Managing Director of the Clear Cut Group, shares what this new venture means for creative industries in the West Midlands and the reasoning behind the company’s decision to set up shop in the heart of Birmingham’s creative quarter - Digbeth…
“In recent years there has been progress towards creating a full TV and film industry in the West Midlands. A lot has been done to build the required infrastructure, to support the drive towards regional commissioning, led by the teams at Create Central and the West Midlands Combined Authority. Utilising established local talent there have been advances on many fronts but, to date, there has been no established independent post-production offering – a serious gap in the TV ecosystem.
Despite not having a formal base in the area, Clear Cut already had a proven track record in Birmingham, having previously launched a pop-up facility in 2016 to meet specific production requirements. This had grown year on year, but it came to the point where we needed a permanent home to meet demand.
We have now opened the doors of our new state-of-the-art facility located in the heart of Digbeth in Birmingham. The location ensures we are at the heart of the creative quarter, equidistant to The Custard Factory, The Banana Warehouse, Digbeth Loc, The Bond and just a stone’s throw away from the BBC’s new HQ, The Tea Factory. A perfect location to offer post-production to the expanding production community.
Situated in a Grade 2 listed building with industrial heritage, Clear Cut has delivered a full-service post-production house complete with adaptable suites with capacity for up to 40 remote offline suites, and configurable onsite suites offering offline, online and grade suites (with Media Composer, Premiere Pro and Da Vinci Resolve), giving clients the ability to handle end to end post-production tasks and final mastering in HD and 4K. There is also 24 hr operational support, a 12-seat production office, outdoor space with secure car and cycle parking.
Clear Cut client Full Fat TV’s Fresh Cops
Remote working has played its part in helping to establish regional hubs - the production and editing talent is far more widespread hence the option to work remotely was established by Clear Cut in 2016. Our Birmingham building is designed to deliver an elegant solution for dispersed production teams. Clear Cut's solution is agile and secure, enabling production teams to seamlessly switch between working remotely to working onsite to suit their project.
Making the commitment to establish considerable infrastructure in Birmingham meant also committing to local staff. The operation is led by local champion Caroline Hewson who has significant experience in post-production and is passionate about building the services we offer for the West Midlands. We had identified that there were a number of talented creatives available in the West Midlands who, to date, have often had to travel to deliver their work.
In addition, we have committed to train a new generation of operational staff through our own in-house training programme. We are also working with the BBC Apprentice Hub to identify local talent, with the right passion, who we can develop alongside our existing cohort of staff.
We have been supported in so many ways by Create Central and the production community in the West Midlands who have welcomed our arrival so warmly. Digbeth is set to be a huge production centre and it has been massively exciting to set up our office in this vibrant, creative location - as the first independent post-production house. We really feel we are completing a missing link in the ecosystem of Birmingham.”
Rowan Bray is Managing Director of the Clear Cut Group