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The Bottle Yard Studios

Two of the biggest issues impacting film and television production are the unrelenting demand for space and the urgent need to address sustainability. Both challenges are being met head on at The Bottle Yard, the largest dedicated film and television studio facility in the West of England.

That ethos began at inception 13 years ago when owner Bristol City Council began transforming a disused bottling factory into a buzzing film and television hub.

“Our roots lie in repurposing,” says Laura Aviles, Senior Film Manager. “We’ve created continued use for buildings spanning a site the size of three football pitches. We’re committed to reducing the carbon output generated by filming at the Studios and on location around the city.”

These goals were at the heart of a major GBP12 million expansion to the studios which opened this autumn. The Bottle Yard 2 (TBY2) is less than half a mile from the main site in South Bristol and offers three fully sound insulated and acoustically treated stages at 20,000 sqft, 16,500 sqft and 7,000sqft with maximum heights of 34ft.

The facility is powered by a giant 1MWp solar array, the biggest community-owned solar rooftop array in the West of England and one of the biggest of its kind in the UK. Consisting of more than 2,000 panels, the solar array is funded by the Bristol Energy Cooperative (BEC), the community-owned energy cooperative. Over time, surplus energy produced at the facility will be used to connect buildings and reduce energy consumption from non-renewables across Bristol.

Will Houghton, Bristol Energy Cooperative Project Developer, explains, “Solar arrays are often designed to cover just a small part of a roof, to reduce costs. But we’re in a climate crisis, and in order to meet Bristol’s climate goals we’re aiming much higher than that. TBY2 is a massive site, with loads of opportunity for energy generation and CO2 reduction. To put it into context, the amount of energy this array is capable of generating could power more than 250 average Bristol households per year.”

KEY STAFF

SENIOR FILM MANAGER LAURA AVILES BUSINESS OPERATIONS MANAGER KATHERINE NASH BUILDING MANAGER DAN WATSON STUDIO MANAGER EMMA REID PR & MARKETING CONSULTANT TARA MILNE SITE ELECTRICIAN JOHN HYNAN STUDIO COORDINATOR REBECCA OLD SENIOR BUSINESS SUPPORT OFFICER JONATHAN WORSLEY STUDIO MANAGEMENT ASSISTANT JONATHAN WORSLEY KICKSTART SCHEME STUDIOS RUNNER WILLIAM ROBERTS What’s more, transport around the Studios’ expanded footprint will be carbon neutral, with EV points and ample cycling provision supporting low carbon movement. Earlier this year, Eco Shoots, a local specialist in delivering sustainability solutions for the industry, set up shop at The Bottle Yard. It supplies a wide range of sustainable hire equipment as well as services including waste and recycling, diesel-free generators, reusable floor protection and compostable catering packaging.

“TBY2 has been designed and built with sustainability in mind at every stage, with premium insulation throughout and a sophisticated building management system to ensure optimal energy conservation,” says Aviles. “We’re hugely proud that the exterior of the building is being put to such valuable use, hosting a community-owned PV array of this size which will generate a huge amount of clean energy to power the site, with surplus energy benefitting the city of Bristol.”

GREEN SCREEN BOUNDARIES

Netflix Original sci-fi family series The Last Bus, produced by Wildseed Studios, broke green screen boundaries whilst filming at The Bottle Yard Studios, according to producer Andy Mosse.

“Filming on location is expensive so we had to find a way of getting the bus scenes filmed in the studio at The Bottle Yard. Traditionally this is done with a green screen, but we developed a way to use LED screens as a full 360 degree wrap around the bus so that we could shoot in any direction with any backdrop, which hadn’t been done before.”

The panoramic 360 images Wildseed projected were captured with 12 x 4K cameras built on a bespoke rigged car we called the ‘hotdog’. Combine this with some hydraulic Wallace and Gromit type levers plugged into the suspension of the bus, “and you’ve got a moving bus interior that bumps and weaves with the road and can be shot in camera with no digital effects needed,” Mosse says.

Wildseed MD, Miles Bullough added: "The Studios gave us space and freedom to push the boundaries of what we could do on its 5000 sqft green screen using LED, which was a real gamechanger. Adding in bespoke hydraulic systems on set broke new ground in terms of what could be achieved in the studio without the need for digital effects.”