Creative Minds: Brick Studios
Welcome to our first Creative Minds chat! Two of the pillars of Hey Mate is connection and community, which we hope we can create for you with our Creative Minds series. During the series we will be taking a deep dive with some of the creative minds that inspire us and make us question and explore the people that fill the creative industries.
Let me introduce the legends at Brick Studios, a boutique film production company based in South Western Sydney, with local, national and international clients. These legends not only make award winning work but also support mental - well-being within the creative industries including recently supporting our LEWP initiative. We love a studio that looks good and does good!
Anyway over to Daniel and Erin at Brick Studios:
Brick Studios TVC Setup
How did Brick Studios begin?
We just wrapped on our first tourism campaign (which went on to become award winning). We were tired, a little stinky, but strangely... really motivated. After years of working freelance for various agencies, production companies, and meeting an enormous amount of talented crew, Daniel and Erin made the bold leap to establish a company where we could work with our friends, chase our own creative interests, have the freedom to work on a whole range of different genres and offered our clients a place where they can successfully deliver their brands message through video. Brick Studios ‘officially’ opened in 2018.
Daniel and Erin from Brick Studios
What is Brick Studios?
Brick Studios is a boutique production studio based in South West Sydney. We’re a collective of filmmakers and creatives who love to excite, engage and create the stories that are important to our clients. As a collective we have a massive pool of creative talent to draw from, all specialists in their fields, with the flexibility to expand or contract the team depending on the scope of the project. Primarily a short form film production company we also offer Creative Services and Animation, and are actually gearing up to expand into our first long form projects.
How can industry professionals get involved or support Brick Studios?
We’d love to hear from you, if you’re a creative, crew or a potential client looking to do something cool with your brand we’re always up for a banter. Drop us a ‘hello’ on our socials or let's link up for a coffee. To get involved and support Brick Studios, have a peek at the feature film section of our website.
What is one piece of career advice you would give an individual in your industry?
Invest in your education. Learn as much as you can about your craft and then expect to work hard, get out on set and put your knowledge to practice. Put your hand up for a variety of short-term projects, or to assist other HODs before you get a shot at your dream role and spend time with the crew as a whole to get an understanding of who does what and how they do it. (Bonus Tip: Be prepared to work some weekends!)
What has been your biggest challenge to date?
Finding the right team and building the collective sustainably, we grew from a couple of freelancers into a busy production company. It took a few years, but we now have a solid support network of crew, talent, a management team and creatives on speed dial.
What has been your biggest win to date?
Signing on our first major sponsor to our first feature film ‘The Blind Sea’ in motion. (Ocean pun intended!). With their support we were able to head straight into development and within a matter of weeks, our crew were on a plane to Pismo Beach, USA to start rolling.
We always had the long-term dream to create Brick in three tiers: corporates and socials, TVCs, and then long form. With our first two tiers establishing the company’s foundation, we are excited (and a little terrified) to be producing two feature films in 2022; Christmess (an Aussie Christmas dramedy) and The Blind Sea (a feature documentary) on the life story of Blind champion surfer Matt Formston.
What is something you didn't know about your industry / job before you started?
When we started, disposable film cameras and VCRs were still mainstream so we didn’t really know how quickly technology would change the game. Be open to getting retrained and spend time learning and experimenting with new tech and gadgets as they come to market.
What does well-being mean to you?
Well-being is being able to think clearly, and calmly as new situations test you. We encourage each other to look for the positive outcome (or least-worst outcome) and make logical decisions. Filmmaking is often about managing compromises. Outside of work we both enjoy spending time to cook well, eat well, drink good coffee (flat white's thanks) and get outdoors every day.
What does Brick Studios do to maintain a mentally healthy workplace and team?
We absolutely respect everyone we work with and check in with them regularly just to have a chat. Our people are our friends.
We encourage flexible working and working to deadlines rather than clocking on and clocking off – if we deliver early then we wrap early... actually, a lot of our designers prefer to work through the night so if that’s when they’re at their best, who are we to stop them, right?!
What is one thing you’re proud of?
We’re very proud of our team. The crew and creatives in Brick Studios are professionals, positive, supportive and really really nice people. We’re lucky to have them.
What else is on the cards for Brick Studios in the future?
This year we have two feature films coming up, ChristMess will start shooting in May in Southwest Sydney and The Blind Sea documentary will start shooting in Winter. In between that, we’’ll continue to produce excellent stories for our regular clients, support like-minded creatives (like the superstars at ‘Hey Mate’) and look forward to working on new projects.
