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Trends and Insight in association withSynapse Virtual Production
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All the Gear, No Idea… Why the Shoot Went So Well

27/11/2017
Production Agency
Badbury, United Kingdom
37
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When it comes to projects, production companies need to 'own it', says Sandstorm's Tom Ward

The creative process is a funny, frictious little battleground sometimes. ‘No money for this’, ‘talent wants to shoot here instead’, ‘client thinks we should do it differently’... who is right and who is wrong in such discussions, to me, is of little interest, albeit one I have to deal with on a daily basis - it’s a team effort so we should all be working together to make the project run smoothly and to get the best results on screen. I’ve always rather loved my job, to make ideas into reality. And for me, the way to achieve this is very simple and plays to my strengths as a control freak… own it!

‘Own what?’ I hear you ask. Well, as much of the process as possible to take out the variables that create chaos, confusion or add cost or delay to a project; in order to create a controllable and repeatable process - even with creative, which is inevitably, slightly different on every project. Even if the idea is the same, just having a different client will mean the results are different. Because fundamentally my job is to get the job done well, not have endless conversations about it or planning it to within an inch of its life. Creativity in itself is an invisible and intangible beast, that exists in you - not in your words but in your actions. Judged almost unanimously with personal taste alone, regardless of metrics.

So, my first port of call as a business owner and a film director when I started Sandstorm was simply to start buying the best equipment in the world. How do you do that when you’re starting a company? Well it’s really easy, don’t take a wage and keep your overheads low… oh and work long hours, that is a given - anything is possible if you work hard enough for it.

I am still stunned at just how many compliments our business gets for its professional, low stress, hassle free approach to production. I personally can’t see why the whole industry hasn’t adopted this approach. Own it and you can get more work done and fundamentally create a bigger, better portfolio to grow your company.

Does ‘buying the best equipment in the world’ mean the latest and greatest? Well, no, not always. In fact some of the best weapons in my production arsenal are 20+ years old, while others came out six months ago and will doubtlessly be a worthless door-stop next year. That is the joy of working in an industry which is creative but also technology dependant. 

Fundamentally, what are clients paying my company for? Well, results. Tangible results that come in on budget and exceed their expectations - but how can this possibly be achieved if you have no control over the many elements that make up the production process?

Hence I have constantly re-invested our company's money in kit, facilities and good people; to create an environment that is perfect to work in, with a team who get on, who are honest and who are frankly shit-hot at what they do, using the best kit for the job.

‘How do you know what kit will stay valuable?’ is what I’m regularly asked, and in truth I can only use experience to judge that. There are certain companies out there who will constantly deliver the best kit in their sectors, you just have to find them and make sure that clients know them too. ‘How can you be cost effective if you’re constantly buying kit, surely you need to charge more to pay for it?’ is another. I ask the opposite, ‘how can you run a business with consistent mark-ups, that remains competitive on pricing and is fast to deliver without owning the kit?’ If our producers have to spend all day playing phone tennis with rental companies and freelance directors, directors of photography, talent agents, gaffers, post-houses (blah blah, blah, I’m bored even writing it down) then how are we going to get the job done affordably? People’s time costs a damn lot more than kit does, and people sat on phones all day and stuck to emails is not actually a great way to hone their skills, keep their energy up, keep them excited and happy to be at work - they should be on-set with the team making the work happen. And that is what we get by ‘owning it’.

Does it mean you can never email a producer and get a response? Well, no, because 90% of our shoots are in the studio next to their office, so they can pop out, answer their email, go into the edit suites, check on their job and then go back into the studio knowing everyone on the crew knows the kit and the space. So again, no wasted time, no wasted money.

So why isn’t everyone doing this? Well, I think a lot of us are actually. But you need to find companies who are as interested in their kit and their work as their profit. And that can be tricky when most companies are focused on paying for expensive Central London offices, office space in cities where most of their clients are no longer based in this technologically-evolving world which looks to save on overheads by moving their businesses out of the big cities. We pay an eighth now of what we did in Soho on rent, up-sizing from 800 sq ft to 10,000sq ft. in the process, allowing us to produce our work in our own custom-built facility with as much control as possible. Though I won’t ever claim to have ‘all the gear’ I do have an idea of why our shoots consistently go so very well.




Tom Ward is Founder and Managing Director of SANDSTORM 

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