Soho-based Blue Post Production is investing almost£400,000 to expand its facility with six new Avid suites, writes Farah Jifri.
Soho-based Blue Post Production is investing almost £400,000 to expand its facility with six new Avid suites, writes Farah Jifri.

The company has decided to turn the accounts floor of its Old Compton Street facility into a dedicated Avid area.

Blue's managing director, David Cadle, said the move was in response to a poll of its top 10 broadcast clients which showed that additional suites would bring in more work.

Now in the building stage, the new area will house six suites equipped with Avid Adrenaline systems, a machine room and a Unity LAN shared network capable of supporting up to 20 Avids.

Blue has taken on three Avid assistants and will draw on its pool of around 15 editors to staff the suites as and when needed. The new area will also be available for dry hire.

Blue already has a number of commissions confirmed for the new Avid area, with the BBC signed up as its first client. The facility will do all post work as well as Avid editing on Wedding Planner , a 6 x 50-minute series for the BBC as well for the BBC's new reality format Naked S.

Blue is also looking to dip its toe in the water with high definition (HD) and is looking to purchase a new Smoke system. The move follows an increasing number of enquiries for HD work, according to Cadle.

'What Discovery is doing in the States means that more and more people are now thinking that they need to produce an HD version [of their content],' he said.

The next step in the HD ladder will be upgrading Blue's existing Editbox systems to HD kit. 'Part two of the investment will be to expand to all six floors of the building, possibly with a new sound studio,' Cadle explained.

Blue, which came third in Broadcast's recent producer poll of post facilities, employs around 70 people and its credits include As If, Feltham Sings and Pompeii - the Last Day.

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