The office, in Farringdon, opened at the start of the year and is shared with parent company, Coffee & TV

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Picture post-production house Residence Pictures first opened in Clerkenwell Road, Farringdon at the beginning of this year.

The company is the brainchild of former Fifty Fifty managing director Cara Kotschy and Coffee & TV CEO and co-founder Derek Moore.

Their aim was to create a specialist facility offering only picture post-production for predominantly high-end television clients, from a well-appointed new facility in central London.

The key staff members - both on the management and creative side - would also become shareholders and co-founders of the company, and Residence Pictures would work to quickly establish an academy to train the future generation of post talent, hand-picked from underrepresented communities.

The vision has become a reality, with Residence Pictures and Coffee & TV now sharing space in a custom-built facility that’s so far cost around £2m to create.

The facilities provided by Residence Pictures are high-end but relatively modest in scale - “We don’t want to be massive in scale, but we want to be massive creatively. We have four Flames, two Baselights and two Resolves, with one of the Baselights in a big grading theatre, which is for theatrical and HETV work. The other grading suites are in three finishing rooms,” Kotschy told Broadcast Tech on a tour of the building.

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“We have two sets of clients under one roof, and the focus for us is on long-form episodic work,” she adds.

All the clients across Residence and Coffee & TV are on the same storage, so Coffee & TV is well placed to pick up VFX work on projects that come to Residence Pictures.

The facility spans two floors and there’s a large area, with a bar, in the middle of the ground floor (pictured throughout this article), with lounge chairs, large tables with seating and an assortment of spaces to work, which is shared with Coffee & TV. Kotschy says: “It has a luxurious members club feel and everything is sustainable and runs off green energy, as part of our B-Corp certification.”

Downstairs, in the basement area are “lots of visual effects artists”, which are joined by lots more working from home, working on projects for both Coffee & TV and Residence Pictures.

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“We don’t have audio post-production facilities here – we have our specialisms and focus on one thing and are great at it,” says Kotschy. “I think generalising waters down your offering a bit. For us, it’s about building small pockets of excellence.”

Having said that, Kotschy admits there is some demand from the commercial side (Coffee & TV) for audio, so it’s possible audio post facilities may be added in the basement area at some point in the future.

Derek Moore, CEO and co-founder of the Coffee & TV Group, said: “The capability and magnitude of the new space signals the continued ambition of the Coffee & TV family. Our state-of-the-art new space will bring a lot of our talent together under one roof to collaborate and deliver the very best work for our clients across the advertising, film and TV sectors. Whilst remote working has been a revelation for us and our industry, I’m thrilled to be able to welcome clients back to our gorgeous new home.”

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