Tour of UTV's Post Production facilities in Belfast
Growing up in Belfast all my life, and having a strong passion for all things related to media, it was perhaps slightly shameful of me that I never set foot through the doors of Ulster Television’s main headquarters. Yes, for all my sins, I wasn’t even a guest on School Around The Corner. Much to my surprise then to be invited down for an extensive tour of the company’s newly renovated facilities on a windy Tuesday morning in March.
Arriving all wide-eyed and curious, the day began in UTV’s new state of the art Green Screen Studio – the country’s largest infinity curved green screen studio, we’re told – for a short video presentation on everything on offer, to the growing number of multimedia production companies in Ireland.
After this, the first stop was the Outside Broadcast Unit offering the ability to broadcast news, sport or programming inserts all over the world. Among the humble but impressive fleet is also a separate Satellite Uplink Vehicle, which is said to handle most technical and tape formats.
From there was a quick showing of UTV’s infamous Live studio, the only truly fixed set in the facility, which is only available mainly for corporate functions.
The richly dense Archive Room within the complex was a treasure trove of footage documenting Northern Ireland’s history, as far back as 1959 – including interviews with icons such as, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, George Best and John DeLorean. Almost all of the material available has since been converted into digital formats, but the company still own a fully functional Steinbeck, and the traditionalist in me prays that will never change. A lot of the footage is also said to be often used by the BBC’s leading current affairs, satire show, Have I Got News For You.
I got a little emotional upon noticing the archive footage being shown, during the demonstration, was of the late, great Curzon Cinema – once located on the Upper Ormeau Road in Belfast – when the original Star Wars had premiered in the city back in 1977. Memories flooded back of those days as a child I spent seeing films with my grandmother such as Disney’s The Jungle Book (upon one of the later re-releases, I’m not that old), War of the Buttons, the remake of Miracle on 34th Street amongst others in such an institution.
It’s footage like this, which has the power to conjure such warm and vivid memories which are more than worthy of being preserved for centuries to come. Along with the countless streams of archived footage which serves as a reminder to Northern Ireland’s colourful past.
Reluctantly moving on – I probably could’ve spent a week in the Archive Room – we were shown the companies intimate, but extremely impressive post-production and creative facilities. Unsurprisingly the high powered Apple computers contained all the standard resources from Photoshop, After Effects and 3D Studio Max. The maze-like structure of the building then, once more, leads us to the UTV newsroom for stationed journalists, which claims to be the first fully integrated for radio, TV and internet in the United Kingdom.
I’ve spent a lot of time watching countless hours of film and television, and despite writing about it for the past two years, it was quite an enlightening and eye opening experience to finally experience it all at ground level and being able to fully the vast amount of work, even a studio as intimate as Ulster Television, is efficiently ran.
The production industry for film and television as well as the demand for new home grown projects is on the rise all over Ireland. With the likes of UTV offering their staff and impressive facilities to independent companies and film-makers, as well as even securing contracts with the BBC, the future is looking ever so brighter still.
Andrew Moore
