When the Coolbox crew aren’t filming in a beautiful old whisky distillery’s dunnage warehouse, or in a swanky East London townhouse barbecuing with Michelin-starred chefs, a lot of our video production projects require studio space.
This goes doubly for during the recent pandemic, where more and more shoots were taking place remotely. Thankfully this is mostly over now, and our crew and clients are able to venture out to wherever our hearts (or the Art Directors) desire.
Coolbox have been based at M One Studio, off Oxford Road in Manchester for almost four years now; and earlier this year the team decided we needed a larger space. Over the past decade we’ve gathered A LOT of filmmaking gear that needs to be stored safely, and of course with an expanding team, we need more floor space to house our lovely new employees, but also we wanted a separate studio space, specifically designed for filming.
It’s great to have a space adjoining our pre and post-production studios where we’re able to shoot pieces to cameras, ‘talking head’ interviews, vlogs, greenscreen content, and of course, for product filming.
There are many advantages of having an in-house film studio; for one we’re able to build bespoke set ups with ease, our vast choice of equipment and props is all on hand, it massively reduces our set up time (extending our time actually shooting content), and finally we’re conveniently located in the city centre, close to public transport links and great places for coffee and crew lunches.
One of our first projects in our lovely new kitted out studio was for Pago Premium Fruit Juice. Pago asked Coolbox to create a series of fruity, summery videos for their Amazon Store and social channels. Sounds easy right? Well, we needed to shoot 23 videos….in one day!
It was great having the Pago team in the Coolbox studio; giving them the opportunity to provide real-time feedback as we were building the set, lighting the scene and framing the shot.
More recently, the team were working on a few visual concepts for an upcoming project. Storyboards and mood boards are a great way of communicating your ideas to the rest of the team and client, but being able to step into the adjoining room, flick a few lights on and shoot a few shots or scenes to help more accurately get your vision across, is a million times better.
If you’re looking to create an eye-catching, scroll-stopping piece of social video content, why not get in touch, or pop in to the studio to have a look at what’s on offer.