Visit to Doghouse Post Production, Bristol March 2016

Introduction

Whilst in Bristol for the i-Docs conference we took a trip to visit Doghouse Post Production in Bristol which is run and owned Jules Barton-Hill, a friend of mine from college.

Doghouse is coming up to celebrating its tenth year as a large boutique post production house in the heart of Bristol. They are experts in Avid, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro and are equipped with 12 Edit Suites, ProTools dubbing suite, Voice Over booth and separate track lay.

History

Jules kindly explained his history of being an early adopter of non-linear editing when he studied at Ravensbourne, spending the whole summer practicing on Avid suites that were still a new entry to the post-production world, this enabled him to start his career at London Studios as an assistant editor on prime time television and then move into an editor role within Soho facilities.

He moved back to Bristol 10 years ago and set up Doghouse across the road from BBC Bristol which he credits as a smart move as BBC Bristol has increasingly outsourced its post-production. From this Doghouse has managed to have a regular run of BBC work from Gardener´s World to David Attenborough to a wide range of children’s TV.

In the DaVinci Resolve suite talking about the VFX and compositing on Andy’s Prehistoric Adventures. Photo by Dag S. Roland.

Work

Jules kindly showed us around the edit suites and we got to see a number of shows in the different stages of post-production, an early assembly edit on Andy’s Prehistoric Nightmares and a final edit of Gardener´s World.

We talked further about routes into the industry and issues faced with new entrants, Jules outlined that a big issue is one of “mindset”, too many graduates think they will immediately be editors, directors or DoP´s etc but without the mindset and life skills to face some core challenges of work, he outlined issues like how to talk to clients, to be helpful and on time. These are foundations to build the more specific skills upon, but too many don´t have.

Jules is an avid snowboarder and outdoor enthusiast so we discussed how we would love to have him visit us here in Volda, which he would love to do.