(Pictured – Les Mis and Snow White set repurposed by Dresd for Observer Ethical Awards staging.)
Sustainable film/TV set-clearance company Drèsd is the latest company to join The Bottle Yard Studios’ burgeoning tenant community.
The innovative company provides the broadcast industry with a cost effective alternative to sending set waste to landfill, by clearing sets, then repurposing, recycling and reselling salvaged materials to production houses, event companies, interior designers and charities. Drèsd also offers its own event production and office re-fit service using items it salvages, with recent work for the annual Observer Ethical Awards and Huckletree, a co-working space in London.
With a Head Office in Pinewood Studios and a warehouse facility in Essex, Drèsd’s new Bristol base marks the first time that the company has extended business outside of the South East. The Studios’ fast-growing creative hub of on-site tenants provide incoming productions with creative, digital, technical, audio/visual, grips, transport and structural know-how, as well as fire and safety expertise. Drèsd is the eleventh tenant to set up a permanent base at the Studios.
Lynn McFarlane, Founder of Drèsd, says: “It’s always been our intention to have regional bases located conveniently around the UK to service the demands of our customers, so to open a new centre at The Bottle Yard Studios in the South West so soon after moving into our new headquarters at Pinewood Studios is heartening for us as a business, and also speaks volumes about the growing demand amongst our domestic broadcast industry to deliver sustainable productions from concept to wrap.
“Alongside Drèsd’s core work of clearing sets in a sustainable manner, at our new South West location in Bristol we’ll be offering a re-purposing prop house, design and build workshops for interiors and events, up-cycled set building, in house creative workshops and training, as well as running apprenticeship schemes in conjunction with The Bottle Yard, local schools, colleges and Bristol City Council.”
Fiona Francombe, Managing Director of The Bottle Yard Studios says: “We’re so pleased to welcome Drèsd to our growing production hub. Sustainability in the broadcast industry is something we care deeply about, and having Drèsd on site permanently is a great boost to the Studios’ ongoing drive to reduce waste. Departing productions will be able to send less waste to landfill whilst incoming productions will have the chance to benefit from what is left behind by others. It’s a win-win situation and one that helps us to reduce our carbon footprint.”
In 2012-3, Drèsd recovered and repurposed a total of 396.2 tonnes of film/TV set waste. The company has recently cleared and repurposed sets for productions including The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies (shot at The Bottle Yard Studios in 2013), BBC’s ‘The One Show’, Les Miserables, Fast & Furious 6, Snow White, 47Ronin, The Hour, Anna Karenina, Gambit, Worlds End, About Time and I Give It a Year. The sustainable supplier has partnered with The Observer Ethical Awards for a number of years, using props and other recycled film/TV set materials to create the stages and set for the event.
Sustainability in the film and television industry has been placed firmly on the agenda by industry leaders in recent years. The 2009 Green Screen report estimated that the UK screen industry generates 125,000 tonnes of emissions per year; 40% caused by studio emissions, 28% by film/TV production activities, 17% by locations shoots and 15% post production emissions. A new British Standard for sustainability in film, BS 8909, was announced in 2011, and in 2010 the BBC and BAFTA introduced a carbon calculator designed especially for the TV industry, which benchmarks the carbon emissions on TV productions.