Gorilla’s Remote Hybrid Post-Production project aims to grow Cardiff Capital Region’s post-production market by offering a hybrid remote and physical post-production experience. It also provides technical staff and infrastructure supplied from Cardiff-based GloWorks Headquarters.

Gorilla’s service set out to increase the market available to Wales, attract high profile productions and enhance our regional competitiveness as a sector.

In his story, Rich explains how Gorilla pioneered experimental forms of working before hybrid working was commonplace, why Wales need to shout about its achievements and how Gorilla’s way of working is supporting diversity and flexibility in the industry. 

Rich Moss, Managing Director of Gorilla:

About Gorilla… 

I’m the Managing Director of Gorilla TV. We’re Wales’ leading post-production facility house and we edit all genres including TV programmes, films, commercials, music videos, children’s and sports.  

Our main clients are independent production companies who we offer our services to for colour grading, visual effects, graphics and sound mix and then deliver these directly to broadcasters or streamers. We started in 1999 with a single edit suite and now we’ve got 150 or more. 

As a business, we’re 25 years old and we employ about 100 people and large numbers of Welsh freelance talent. 

Gorilla’s Media Cymru project 

Gorilla is a Media Cymru consortium partner, which means we’re on a five-year journey with Media Cymru to develop our project, which is research and innovation into growing our market of television post-production in Wales using new hybrid remote technologies. We called our project “remote hybrid post-production”, which won’t mean a lot to a lot of people, but it’s really about growing our market. 

Pre-COVID, our market was based on our location because everyone worked in rooms in our building. The Pandemic changed the way we all work through necessity, and through this disruption, we saw an opportunity to increase our market. 

We wanted to gain markets and territories that geographically we weren’t able to work in, while also protecting our Welsh market. What we’ve done is set up a concept, a business model utilising a hybrid remote model. Our new Hybrid post-production facility in Bristol is close enough that we can still physically go back and forth but is also remotely connected to Cardiff.  

We started with a small number of rooms, but could provide enormous capacity through our remote services. By having the small physical presence in Bristol, backed up by all our Cardiff staff and infrastructure we were able to extend our Welsh market base into an English Region.   

Our Bristol base is a great pivot point for us, we’re able to harness and access production power in Bristol and the South West, it’s completely opened up our markets to work that would never historically have come to Wales, but now has a good proportion of Welsh staff involved with various projects and seen the facility expand to employ Bristol staff as well 

Ahead of the curve: how the Pandemic accelerated our research and development 

We’ve always been innovating throughout history, without really knowing that’s what we were doing. We’ve continually researched and been innovative, but always in our spare time with no budget, with no label on it. But we’ve always had to keep trying new technologies using more kit, try new ways of working. Ironically, we got into remote working prior to the pandemic through our first research project with Clwstwr (link), which gave us access to some initial funding around this. 

We decided to make it about remote working before the pandemic, as it happens. Interestingly, one of our biggest risks of trying this project was thinking about “how do we sell this to a client that remote working is a good idea?”. We had to communicate what it offers that’s better than coming into a room. It was literally number one on our risk register. As soon as the pandemic hit, it became an absolute no brainer to do it, so we hit the ground running and that was through the fact that we’d officially started our first piece of research and innovation. From that point on, we’ve decided that this is something we want to carry on and keep doing, so when the option came up for working with Media Cymru, we jumped on it because we knew the benefits that a research project around this could bring. 

Boosting accessibility, diversity and inclusion 

There are of course a range of additional benefits to working with this Hybrid remote model which all align with Media Cymru’s wider goal as a consortium for fair, green economic growth. A production can actually choose the talent they want to work not based on geographical boundaries, but conversely, it also means that you know we can now work with a much more diverse talent pool. 

It’s better in every respect: for families, personal social dynamic and work-life balance, the economic benefits around cutting out carbon on the commute, or the sheer cost of travel. Ironically, we’ve seen more of our staff move between our Cardiff and Bristol offices for the same social and economic reasons. It might be somebody from Bristol who has a partner who’s in Wales. It might be someone looking to move closer to friends in Bristol. The cost of living and rent is high, and this model of working lends itself to a better work-life balance and we’re proud to have been at the forefront of flexible working perhaps before it became a buzzword!  

Lessons learned 

I think we’ve come to understand the incredible value of research and innovation to businesses and that it’s a part of an ongoing business. You have to continually develop what you do, what you offer. Embrace new technology.  Continually innovating means it will benefit the business long-term. It’s not something to be scared of, it’s not something that needs to cost. It’s just something that needs to be on people’s mindsets , perhaps asking internally “what do you think we could do better?”. That’s research and innovation and it’s something we’ve fully embraced.  

We’re a creative business, but we’re creative through technology, so we definitely have to keep innovating. If we stand still, we’re moving backwards…

A “Wales First” philosophy 

There’s a lot of innovation around, but certainly what’s come out of this process with Media Cymru is collaboration. It’s not just about Cardiff, Bristol, London, either. There’s an openness now for all businesses to collaborate. For instance, we may be working on a project in Cardiff but need a screening with commissioners in London, conversely, a London based company may want services in Wales or Bristol. We help each other on projects, and it’s opened up everybody’s markets. Now, we’re able to work with these businesses and hand on heart know that we’re actually providing a benefit to Wales and to the culture. Even if it’s just through employing the number of people we do, they can actually rent homes, purchase homes, start families, go to school and actually live and work and have a career in Wales rather than feel that they have to leave Wales…now we can actually bring high quality work to Wales 

At Gorilla we made “Wales first” our philosophy. We’re a business and yes – we need to make money. But really, after 25 years, what we want to do is have the Welsh screen industry thrive and survive and grow and know that we’re a part of that. Everything we do is about the success of Wales and the screen industry. That’s what we’re all about. 

Culture is really important for our future. Ultimately, we want to keep adding to cultural benefits Wales is producing and for it to be recognised across the globe. Especially in such turbulent and uncertain times. Our culture and the way we work is really part of our calling card.

“We need to shout about our successes in Wales!” 

The Welsh media industry came into its own with the creation of S4C – The public service broadcaster in the Welsh language. Since then, and following on from the success of Doctor Who, the establishment of Bad Wolf in Cardiff and studios such as Wolf, Seren and Dragon, Wales is now seen as a centre of excellence for drama and high-end television. But we are also a beacon of excellence for non-scripted shows with large incumbent production companies and new start ups flying the flag for Wales, We can do it all in Wales and we need to shout more about it. We’re absolutely seen UK-wide as a centre of excellence now, which is great to see…and that’s the reason people don’t need to leave Wales for work now because the work comes to us. 

We are fortunate that we have a supportive, devolved Government who know the value of the Welsh Creative Industries . Now that we have this level of success, we need to bring along all the businesses involved in selling Wales not just to the UK, but to the world. We have a power and relevance as part of British programme-making on a global stage. We could all be producing more British home-grown programmes as a whole. But it’s important to maintain our distinctive voice in the mix – we’ve got to be careful that our cultural identity isnt run by somebody else. 

About Rich Moss

Rich Moss – Gorilla’s founder and Managing Director comes from an award winning editing background and has grown the company into a nationally respected post-house, providing picture editing, sound dubbing, colour grading and technical services for clients both in Wales and across the UK. 

Rich is active in promoting Wales and our Creative Industries, and through Gorilla – contributes to the sustainable employment growth and skill base needed for Wales to compete globally. He is a member of various Boards working groups including UK Screen, BAFTA and ScreenSkills. 

About Gorilla

Gorilla TV was established in 1999 and is the leading post-production facility in Wales. Their HQ spans five floors and operates 24/7 alongside their second Cardiff city centre facility and new Bristol facility in Finzel’s Reach.  

While creative post-production is a big part of their offer, they are also technical and media workflow experts, with Satellite uplink/down-link facilities, Broadcast lines, studios, fixed rigs and live TX gallery. Gorilla’s media experts manage hundreds of terabytes of UHD/HDR media including VFX pipelines to and from multiple international vendors. Gorilla delivers hundreds of hours of multi genre programming from ‘Daytime’ to HETV to all UK Broadcasters and International clients including HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and BBC WW/SD.