Touring Sugar Studios

This experience was gifted by Midas PR

Studios come in all shapes and sizes, but few are as well positioned as Sugar Studios. With a prime location in an old brick warehouse on the bank of the River Thames, Sugar Studios is a one of kind flexible event space for filming, photo shoots, music videos, theatre and dance rehearsals, and much more. The studio gets its name from the fact that it used to be a sugar refinery. Now it makes noise in the London events industry, including clients like Sofar Sounds who I got to see during my visit.

The studio is a dry hire studio with 5 distinct spaces, a central foyer and something every studio dreams of having...an onsite food truck.

Photos in the gallery above supplied by Sugar Studios.

They cater for big and small events with their largest room holding a whopping 437 standing and 220 seated, and their smallest room holding 76 standing and 38 seated all connected by a central foyer. With its location it allows for more flexibility with creative events that would be difficult to hold in Central London locations. You can find out more information on how they cater for events by contacting Sugar Studios directly.

What I found fascinating was how the space is used as a studio to do photography and videography. With one of the largest infinity coves in the UK the blank canvas provides so much creative opportunity. With their prop making company (MDM) next door, I can easily see how they could create unique shoots for their clients who have included the likes of Schuh, BMW Mini, Sainsbury’s, Adidas, and Usain Bolt.

I took the time to talk to Steph Smith one of the studio managers to find out a little more about how the studio works and what it could offer.

Examples of campaigns shot in Sugar Studios

Interview with Studio Manager Stephanie Smith

For those of us who don't know, what does a Studio Manager do?

My job here is quite sort of well-rounded, may I say. I sort of do everything from the sort of initial enquiries with clients and the bookings, taking pencils, emailing people the rate cards, negotiating prices and taking bookings, sorting out the calendar and that's kind of the admin side then.

The shoot management side is, you know, making sure the studios were ready for the shoot, making sure that the cleaners are here, booking and painting and, you know, certain shoots need the studio to be painted a different colour, etc., etc.. so the sort of like general studio maintenance, sort of administrative bookings.

Then on top of that, we've also got catering here. So I also sort of head up the catering to make sure we've got staff in the catering truck, make sure we've got their orders, make menus and packages.

Those are the main three studio management jobs I do here and then on top of that, we've got our events that we've now started to do as well, and we also do social media.

So we've got a couple of girls who work in the office on the social media side and I help to implement the social media marketing strategy.

Are you able to reveal what sort of budget it would take to book studios to size or book out?

So our prices vary we have like general rates but we tend to go shoot by shoot so people will come to us with budgets and we have our general rates but because we go, you know, shoot by shoot, budget by budget.

Sometimes people want to shoot for a charity and don't have very much budget, sometimes people are from, you know, a massive agency and have a lot more budget, etc..

So it can vary.

So I don't have like a general price, but we try our best to work with budgets where we can, you know, help people out where we can and make sure, you know, we're just sort of covering our maintenance, painting costs, etc. But yeah, we tend to we tend to go shoot by shoot with prices.

For example with the small studio, we like try our best to maybe offer it as an hourly rate for our small photographers or we've also done days where we've got no bookings and people want to do a test shoot in there. And yeah, it's all just about building a relationship and allowing people to be able to use the space, especially if we've got down days for example, and a photographer needs a space.

Then there's always things we can do. We also used to have Ravensbourne film course work here. So there's a few Ravensbourne students and ex-students that we're friends of that might need it for lower rates etc..

So yeah, it varies.

What would you say is the most innovative use of the space you've seen so far?

We've had a lot of shoots across our infinity and green screen, which, you know, are really good. Like the directors have done things in post-production that look really cool. So when they're in the studio, you might have Usain Bolt just attached to some wires above a fan and actually it was to make him look like he was skydiving. We've had some shoots in the green screen music videos where people are sort of crawling on the floor along a ladder, and actually it looks as if they're like climbing a mountain. And yeah, the possibilities in there are endless. We've also had like some stunt doubles come and rehearse in the rehearsal hall and that was very cool because they had like these big knives and like acrobats.

So yeah, it's very, varied. Very, varied.

What’s strangest prop you have and why?

Next door to the studios, we do have a prop making company, so our sister company are called MDM Props. They make really big bespoke props for various people from like theatre sets to shop windows to museums. So you might have noticed the whale hanging in the ceiling, it was given to us by MDM to hang up, but in terms of like small scale set props, it's a little bit different they're more of like big bespoke sets as opposed to a small little prop.

How would you say photographers and videographers can make the best use of Sugar Studios?

I guess to come and do a shoot here we try our best to sort of make sure the whole range of experiences is a good one. From even like staffing the catering truck that will give people the breakfast and dinner and making sure that everybody feels, at home. You know, we never get tired of people saying how much they like the food and the atmosphere and it feels like…homely.

We try to just make it an easy experience. We try to be yes men as much as we can be allowing people to bring whatever ideas they want.

You know, we've had people be like “We've got a band and we want it to look as if they've got black tar all over them while they play their instruments.”

So we were like; “Cool, sure, yeah, come do that here.”

And then next thing there's like black treacle being thrown all over the studio and all over the band. But you know, we sort of want that attitude of like, bring any of your creative ideas here and we'll try our best to make it work.

We can speak to MDM props, we can speak to a lot of different people that we know within industries to help make that work. We do sort of have an idea in the future that it would be nice to sort of be able to have a 360 like roster of people that we can pull upon. Whether you need somebody to help with like music supervision or whether you need people to make your props or whether you just need, you know, some runners, etc., Then it would be good for us to sort of have like more of a 360. That's a little bit of a future idea that we've got on building kind of like a black book of people.

Why do you feel places like good studios are important for the events industry?

I think just because London in general is just lacking in big spaces now and all event spaces in London are now in places that are residential or have companies around them that don't want certain noise and there's certain restrictions. We're in a unique position where this place that we're in now is protected as industrial land and we've got quite a lot of room.

We're in an industrial estate. It's a good place.

For example tonights event with Sofar Sounds, it's happening, it's big. Loads of people can come. It's interesting. It's not too far out of central London. We're still in North Greenwich.

It’s a space that you can kind of bring whatever you want here.

We're not space for a rave, but, you know, like any sort of event, big or small, we would be happy to facilitate.

Live music fans like Sofar Sounds sits well within the space but what other events do you find gravitate to it?

As far as the events go, we've only just started to open up for events. It's not been around that long and and we've been primarily focusing on shoots.

It's only since this year we got an alcohol licence granted to us. So since May.

So just since then we've started to like open for events. Sofar Sounds has been rolling through monthly. We had a couple of supper clubs here. We've had a couple of networking events, we've got some fashion awards coming up.

I guess we also want to target people that want to do PR events, product launches and album launches and things like that.

Film screenings as well potentially.

Music, film screenings, supper clubs, galleries, exhibitions, etc.,

Do you envision branching out to other areas of the UK in the future?

We're still in the baby phase of this, to be honest. We're still very much like a Start-Up, our aim for this place is that we do want it to become more of a like creative hub. I want it to be more a place where people can come and work and, you know, we have our own workshops here etc., 

So I think we're more focussing on cracking that before we start thinking about other locations.

Though maybe one day.

Sofar Sounds

Following the tour and interview, I was able to stick around for one of Sugar Studios events with Sofar Sounds and got to see it go from blank space to fully realised event in a matter of hours. The crowds of people gathered, getting their drinks and food from the food truck before taking their seats around the stage that had appeared in the previously empty infinity stage. Unfortunately I could only stay for 2 acts but Sofar Sounds put together a wonderful set of music and made the space feel like an intimate coffee shop rather than a studio stage.

The acts for the night included: Victor Ray, a sensational singer hailing from Uganda, raised in Newcastle and now resident of London, Tommy WÁ; a free-spirited singer/songwriter, poet, guitarist and visual storyteller with music at the core of his expression and Parthenope the one act which I unfortunately did not get to listen to.

Some shots I got during the Sofar Sounds event are below, if you want to find out more about their upcoming events worldwide simply visit their website.