EXCLUSIVE: Molinare managing director Julie Parmenter has confirmed that the London co-production house is stepping away from film investment.
“We don’t do equity deals,” Parmenter said. The aim now is to focus instead on the core business post-production, “to cut back to what we are really good at” as Parmenter puts it. “Let’s be proud of what we are very good at rather than trying to diversify into things that aren’t our forte.”
Last year, Molinare was bought out of administration by a consortium headed by former chief-exec Steve Milne. At that point, Parmenter came on board.
Parmenter (formerly global head of sales at Rolls Royce) has been in Cannes in this week meeting clients and prospective clients. Molinare was involved in several Cannes titles, among them Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant.
Projects that are headed to Molinare include recently announced UK sci-fi drama Our Robot Overlords.
The facility (already benefiting from the new tax credit for high end TV) has just completed its work on hit US TV series The Bible and is working on Carnival Films’ new version of Dracula.
Molinare has also been working on feature doc Last Man On The Moon, about astronaut Eugene Cernan.
Music video site PROMO NEWS has selected the brand new video from UK soul sensation Lulu James to appear on their industry blog. Graded by Tim Drewitt, one of Molinare’s up and coming Colourists, this stylish video really showcases Lulu’s star quality and Tim’s grading talent:
21 year old South Shields singer Lulu James signed to Sony Music last year and enjoyed radio and press support around her debut EP Rope Mirage.
For her new single Closer, the ‘Queen of 21st Century Soul’ teams up with new directing duo De La Muerte – aka photographer Debbie Scanlan and editor Liz Adams – who deliver a simple and stark promo in black and white highlighting her performance chops and natural style.
Lulu James
Closer (Sony Music)
Director: De La Muerte
Producer: Cal Gordon
Production Company: Burning Reel
Directors Agent: Marisa Garner @Marisa Garner Associates
DP: Nathan Mackintosh
Camera Assistant: Rob Hancock
Gaffer: Theo Milford
1st AD: Ben Mealing
Stylist: Jaimee Jarvis & Aimee Croysdill
Make-up: Kym Mezies-Foster
Editor: Phil Hignett @Marshall Street Editors
Grade: Tim Drewett @Molinare
VFX: Mike Tyler
Special Thanks: Liam @ Filmscape Media and Tom & Sean @ Molinare
Commissioner: Lisa Foo
Aiming higher: James McAvoy in Welcome To The Punch
EVENING STANDARD 19 February 2013
Film-maker Eran Creevy has gone from the micro-budget grit of his acclaimed debut, Shifty, to a high-gloss action thriller with a crack British cast for his new release — but he wants London to be the real star.
Welcome To The Punch stars James McAvoy, Mark Strong and Andrea Riseborough and the budget, at £5.2 million, was more than 50 times what it took to make Shifty.
Writer-director Creevy’s script so impressed Sir Ridley Scott, director of Blade Runner and Alien, that he hit the phones himself to help get it made.
Creevy, 36, said the new film — shot mainly amid the steel and concrete of Canary Wharf — epitomises his hopes of creating a glossy Hollywood-style genre of action thriller. “I wanted to make London look sexy and make a more aspirational level of cinema that we don’t always get,” he said.
“After Shifty it would have been very easy for me to make another gritty, socio-realistic drama. But I hope I can make commercial cinema in this country that has a broader appeal. Sometimes we can be very literal in how we portray things… American movies often look more cinematic.”
McAvoy plays a detective embroiled in a political scandal involving police corruption. Mark Strong and Peter Mullan play gangsters who, admits Creevy, “talk to each other in gravelly voices”, but he hopes he has emulated the heightened visual impact of directors such as Jerry Bruckheimer.
Creevy, who lives in east London, was a runner in Soho before progressing to ads and videos, and then making Shifty for £100,000 under Film London’s Microwave scheme for young film-makers. The new film, while involving a big jump in budget, would have cost 10 times more to make in the US.
Strong was “intrigued” by Creevy’s bid “to create a world of cops and robbers that is more exotic than we are used to” in the UK, where The Bill remains the model for many a police drama. “We largely don’t make action movies in this country because they’re incredibly expensive but Eran has rather magically been able to pull this off. I like the ambition he shows for British film.”
Welcome To The Punch is released on March 15, with picture post production completed at Molinare.
MTV recently recruited us to provide the post production on their new MTV STAYING ALIVE foundation promo, directed by David Barr and Stuart Meldrum. The Staying Alive campaign’s philosophy is to fund the teaching and support of inspirational young leaders who teach about the prevention of HIV. At the same time, MTV are creating and distributing content across their networks to raise awareness of the disease. This latest PROTECT YOUR PASSION campaign was graded and onlined by Molinare’s Senior Colourist, Gareth Spensley.
We are delighted to announce that we have joined forces with 7th Wave Broadcast Services to offer unique broadcasting opportunities throughout the 2012 Summer Games, direct from the heart of London.
Accessing the world-famous Carnaby Street location in London’s West End, 7th Wave will offer camera connectivity services to support broadcaster operations, utilising Dejero’s LIVE+ mobile transmission products and Molinare’s wireless network.
We will also provide a hospitality area to accommodate live or pre-recorded broadcaster interviews, and its state of the art screening theatre for the viewing of public broadcast material throughout the Summer Games.
Neil Tweedley of 7th Wave said, “We are delighted to be collaborating with Molinare throughout this exciting summer of sport, offering broadcasters a fantastic package for their transmission and hospitality needs in the centre of London.”
We are delighted to announce that June 2012 saw the completion Molinare Limited’s sale to Steve Milne and his consortium of Investors.
Molinare TV & Film Limited acquired the assets of the company on the 7th June 2012, and was a consortium which included Steve Milne’s British Film Company and private equity firm Next Wave Partners.
Steve has positioned Julie Parmenter as Managing Director of the new Molinare TV & Film Limited, and will take on the role of Chairman himself. He said: “I have know Julie for over twenty years. She is one of the best executives I know and was until last year Global Head of Sales and Operations for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. She has been working with me at the British Film Company and will make a brilliant MD for Molinare.”
Steve of course first bought Molinare from the TV Corporation in 2003 with business partner Mark Foligno, before selling to Indian-based Century Communications Ltd in 2008.
He is clear that the future of Molinare is very bright, building on the successes of the past few years including winning the Broadcast Award for Best Post Production House in early 2012: “We are starting the company clean and are clear on where we are going, which is high-end factual and drama for TV and film.”
The staff at Molinare were delighted to be informed this morning that Steve Milne and his consortium are to buy the Company, the sale of which is expected to complete next week.
Steve Milne first purchased the Company in 2003 and then sold the majority of his shares in 2008 to Century Communications Ltd before making a complete exit from the Company in September 2010. The Indian company have invested substantially over the last four years, and the company was awarded Best Post Production House at this year’s Broadcast Awards.
(Full story to come upon the completion of the sale)
Next month the most eagerly anticipated film of the year, probably of the decade, reaches cinemas – Ridley Scott’s PROMETHEUS.
Molinare worked with the Prometheus team throughout the entire pre-production process, testing the whole DI pipeline from shooting and digital dailies, through editorial and full DI post production, to the creation and review of 3D stereoscopic and 2D digital and film print deliverables. We were then delighted to host them at our central Soho offices during the film’s edit.
Molinare’s technical team attended the initial test shoot on the Red Epic camera, and set up an offline edit suite with 3D stereoscopic monitoring, testing various resolutions to find the optimum performance for the creative edit and review screenings. We then conformed the edited sequence, testing EXR and DPX workflows, and performed geometric corrections, colour and depth grade in our 3D stereoscopic grading theatre, working with director Ridley Scott and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski to enhance the atmospheric look of the scenes.
To ensure the quality of final delivery, our team then created 3D stereoscopic and 2D digital cinema packages as well as a 2D film print, closely matching the tone and look for all mediums. The whole team reviewed the deliverables closely on our Dolby 3D and Xpand projection theatres, as well as screening the test at a RealD cinema in London’s Leicester Square, and validated the entire workflow and colour management for digital and film.
When the film went into full production, Molinare hosted the offline editorial team in Soho and utilised a high speed private network to Pinewood Studios to transfer dailies directly to the shared edit storage. The offline was carried out at high resolution and the output of the edit suites was fed directly to our main grading theatre to allow full 3D stereoscopic review throughout the offline process.
We were absolutely delighted to be awarded Best Post Production House at last night’s Broadcast Awards, held at Grosvenor House. The Molinare team were out in force at the event, and we were blown away when the win was announced.
2011 was a year of highs for Molinare, including relaunching our brand (including an epic relaunch party!) and some truly fantastic Broadcast projects crossing our path.
One of the Broadcast highlights was our post-production of BBC2’s The Hour for Kudos Film and Television, which led to an RTS Award nomination for Gareth Spensley’s grade on the series. Producer Ruth Kenley-Letts, who has also teamed up with us on Silent Witness, said she was “blown away” by the work we completed on the drama series.
Our relationship with the MasterChef team continued in 2011 when we helped them make the move to HD, providing technical support and a cloud-based review and editing service for the production to view and assemble rushes remotely
MasterChef series producer Karen Ross said: “Molinare is not merely a facilitator but a contributor, and there is nowhere else we would have received this kind of ongoing service.”
A huge thanks to all our clients, staff and supporters, who over the past year have helped us go from strength to strength, with the crowning glory being this accolade. We’re looking forward to seeing what the rest of 2012 will bring.
EXCLUSIVE: London-based post-production outfit Molinare has revealed that its long term strategy will be based primarily around attracting productions through the quality of its work, as opposed to being required to make equity investments.
The decision comes at a time when an increasing number of post-production companies are choosing – or being required – to offer equity investment in order to secure work on feature films, partly due to a growing expectation from producers that post houses will be able to provide them with the final piece of equity to complete their financing jigsaw.
Whilst Molinare will continue to invest in features, its head of business Richard Conway [pictured] told Screen that it would “no longer be the primary driving force.”
Molinare is currently working on the post production for Eran Creevy’s hotly anticipated second feature Welcome To The Punch, Jon Wright’s monster movie Grabbers, Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet as well as Julian Temple’s upcoming project This Is London, none of which have involved an equity investment from the company, although it has put some investment into Lionsgate’s forthcoming Keith Lemon feature, Keith Lemon: The Film.
“Our fortunate investment in The King’s Speech was a lightning strike. We must not assume it will ever happen again. That does not mean we are not investing at all, but the financing we can provide is no longer the primary driving force to attract film makers to Molinare, the quality of the post production is,” said Conway, who joined Molinare in late 2008 following its takeover by Century Communications.
“Many in the industry have become uncomfortable with post houses dictating as to what they can and cannot have within the restraints of an investment deal. It’s refreshing to see more and more respected industry figures working with Molinare through choice not necessity,” explained Conway, who points to the company’s multimillion pound two-year refurbishment plan – including a new grading theatre, equipment upgrades, client hospitality and an expanded VFX department – as helping to attract film and TV productions.
As part of a year of change for the company, there have been several high profile appointments, including Asa Shoul, who is joining the company this month as a senior colourist. Shoul’s credits include Kick-Ass and Clash Of The Titans. He is also known for grading high profile TV dramas including HBO’s Generation Kill and StrikeBack: Project Dawn.
John Palmer was appointed as head of digital film services in October, with a remit to develop Molinare’s archive/restoration, whilst Meg Guidon and George Zwier joined the VFX department last year.
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