The refit, which will be completed in September, includes the addition of a scalable Isilon storage area network (SAN) which will link the facility to other Farm Group premises in London - Uncle in Livonia Street, The Shed in Dean Street and Home in Richmond Buildings.
The building will become data-centric and resolution independent. Two HD Avid Symphonies and two HD DS Nitris suites will replace existing suites while a Digital Vision 4K Film Master, two Protools Icon 5.1 mixing desks, a new Probel 3G router and 4:4:4 RGB HD switching capabilities will also be added.
The Farm Group director of technology David Klafkowski said: “This will be the first major overhaul of Soho Square in 10 years which is testament to our original technology.”
The Farm will also add a bespoke asset-management system that will link to all systems including the DVS-SAN and Avid Unity storage in each of the Soho buildings.
Klafkowski said the asset management technology will track media across Soho as soon as it is booked into any of the buildings. “We're not systematic like an airline and we needed to take people's ways of working into account,” he said. “This was why we didn't buy an off-the-shelf solution.”
The refurb of the Soho Square facility is just one of a number of changes at The Farm Group. Equipment hire division Rent, based at Livonia Street, has invested in four Sony PMW-EX1 cameras. This is the company's first bulk purchase of tapeless cameras.
The Farm Group has also soft launched a new Rushes Service to customers hiring the Sony cameras. The service will back up captured data to a hard drive or Blu-ray disc and offer viewing of transcoded rushes via a secure website.
Klafkowski believes that most hire companies would not be able to offer such a service. He said: “We are able to do this because we are a post company with our own software development team and our own logging software.”
The new Rushes Service can be used independently of post-production services.
Meanwhile Jason Elliot has been promoted from sales manager to group sales director across post, hire and digital media. He has been with the company for four years. The company has also employed Laurence Gale from The Frame as a senior sound editor.
The Farm has just completed Britain's Got Talent and is working on Shameless, Mary Queen of Shops (pictured), Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Gavin and Stacey and Skins.
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