Studio 74 Interview video transcript

CAPTION: Studio 74 Interview

[Upbeat, quirky guitar music]

[Cut to young man and woman standing, talking to the camera, Rachel and Dariusz owners of Studio 74. Rachel is wearing a plain black top with black, square glasses, and medium-length, brown hair pinned back from her face. Dariusz has brown curly hair and a short, brown beard and is wearing a white top with a grey and black open, checked shirt.]

Darius: My name is Darius and I'm the owner of Studio 74. We specialise in product and advertisement photography.

Rachel: I'm Rachel and I do all the operations and all the invoicing and all the ‘fun’ side of things. The flexibility of the space in Banks Mill really helped us at the beginning because we weren't sure if we wanted a commercial lease, or what kind of space we were after. So, it sort of allowed us the space to see, what we're going to use it for, how we're going to use it and it's been perfect for that, because they've given us the keys then we can make them the space whatever we need to make of it.

So, that was really good, whereas a commercial lease for us would have been weird at the beginning because we weren't sure. Do we want industrial? Do we want a nice space with character, like the Banks Mill building has? We weren't sure what we were after, so it's been great to see what space we need, and how we'll use it and then go forward moving into a commercial space- we know what we need it for then.

Darius: We engage with members of Banks Mall quite a lot actually because of what we do, it allows other people to outsource our service. We've had a few instances where we've collaborated as well. So, for example, with Anisha Palmer-London, she designs really unique jewellery pieces and obviously, e-commerce photography goes together so it’s a no-brainer for us to work together.

Rachel: We said when we were in the building, because it's so easy for us to move up and down floors, we were like “Oh, this will be great” We can just offer like a discounted rate for everyone in the building because it was a nice like community to say “Oh, we do product photography, you need to be out there online”- whether it's with social media content or website content, e-commerce content, whatever it is. We just, said “Well, we're here”… and quite a lot of people started using us!

Darius: Banks Mill Studios, they send out, I believe, newsletters, pretty much every week and every so often, be looking for like new businesses to talk about the new achievements or whatever might be going on. So, we've been featured in that quite a lot, especially when we’ve picked up some big brands like ‘Rosie Perfume’ or ‘Man Cave’, stuff like that. So that's kind of helpful to spread the word about what we do and kind of showcase what we do.

Rachel: Because a lot of the time when you're in the creative industry as well you're not part of news articles like that unless you drum them up yourself, so it's nice to have this like newsletter that goes out that we can then put on our channels. It's nice to sort of have that little press feature because you don't get it very often as photographers.

Darius: Recently we participated in a new event called Spring Showcase which is orientated more about business to business (B2B); which was a lot more suitable for our business because we’re a service-based industry, and we cater to other businesses. That was actually really successful because we had a lot of people come through that are actually looking to work with us straight away; it wasn't just like “What do you do?”. They already knew who we were, and what we do. 

[Music fades]

Studio 74 Interview video

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