Meet the Members: Brendan & Giles

Meet our studio members and old friends, Brendan Lines and Giles Potter. Brendan runs Lines Productions, a video production company focused on global technology and Giles is a B2B marketer currently representing two main brands.

Brilliantly, the guys have been friends since they were children and now share our 2 person studio here at Gather Round. This week we chatted with them about their average days, TV shows with no likeable characters and how to survive sharing a studio with your best friend.

Can you both tell us what you do and what an average workday looks like?

Giles: I manage B2B marketing for two leading online casino game developers, NetEnt and Red Tiger. On a daily basis, I work with colleagues based in London, Malta, Sofia, Stockholm and New Jersey. I would usually travel to these places or to industry events in Europe or the US around twice a month, but with travel off the cards at the moment, I’m at Gather Round most days. I usually start between 8am and 9am. My continental European colleagues have an hour or two head-start, so I usually have plenty of emails waiting for me. At 10am, I have a daily catch up with the rest of the marketing team in Malta, which includes our excellent creative studio. We produce a lot of video and animation to support games launches and client marketing initiatives and also take care of social media marketing, PR, merchandise, advertising and events.

Brendan: I run a video production company creating content primarily for global technology companies. Typically I’m working on below-the-line marketing content for online distribution via social media, YouTube and other web-based delivery. In normal times, my work involves a lot of travel; last year we had a number of European shoots in Geneva, Paris and Stockholm and I also got to film in more far-flung places such as Egypt and Thailand, which was amazing. This year with Covid and travel restrictions, it has been a little different, filming in exotic locations such as ‘my kitchen’ or small studios in Bristol and London, as well as directing interview shoots remotely over zoom. If I’m not filming on location, I’ll be in Gather Round studio 4, where I
edit my videos, work on pre-production for upcoming shoots and manage the usual emails and admin.

Giles, what are you listening to/watching at the moment?

The best series I watched recently has been Succession, available on Now TV (Sky Atlantic). It follows a fictitious Murdoch-meets-Disney family-owned media empire and there are almost no likeable characters. But it’s superbly treacherous, the music is great and it’s totally compelling.

Brendan, what excites you most about the creative process?

The process of transforming what was just an idea into something tangible is always pretty exciting. There are so many creative steps in film-making, from pre-production and production to post-production, and it’s often a collaborative process involving many creative minds. Our work is typically corporate, so I love finding an interesting human angle on what could otherwise be a very dry business story. When the subject matter is dry, you have to get really creative to unearth a compelling and emotive story and present it in a visually interesting way.

What kit/tools can you both not live without?

Giles: I only really need a laptop and I get most of my work done on Google Suite, Slack and Trello. I’ll leave it to Brendan to provide the geek-fest on the kit.

Brendan: For production, I need lots of kit and I’m always travelling with at least 4-5 bags in the hold. Cameras, lenses, lights, microphones, tripods, slider, Gimbal, monitors, MacBook Pro, lots of coffee for the daily late night data transfers on location and of course, terabytes of hard drive space. I’m really loving my latest bits of new kit though – my new Sony FX9 and A7S3 cameras.

Giles, anything you’re working on at the moment that’s exciting you?

We’re having fun at the moment experimenting with different ways to run digital launch events for new games where previously we would have thrown a party. Personally, I’m not a big fan of scheduled live digital events. I think we can get more engagement by running events that people can dip in and out of in their own time, a kind of on-demand experience where the event content is available for a stretch of time like a whole day or even a week. It’s also better that way when we have clients in so many time zones. We’re experimenting with online game tournaments, green-screen presented game demos and mini-Q&A blogs to keep digital events fresh and relevant.

Brendan, why did you choose to work at Gather Round?

We both live locally and had noticed the building was up for sale and had been keeping a close eye on it. When we heard about the plans for Gather Round I think we were among the first knocking on the door. The mix of people and companies is amazing and of course, the space is beautiful too.

Giles, any top tips for sharing a studio space with your friends?

Brendan and I are old friends, both originally from North Wales. We don’t work together but we were both looking for an office, and Gather Round had a studio for two people so we decided to share it. We sat down beforehand and tried to work out what problems could arise. Brendan’s often working on long video edits, and I have lots of phone/video meetings. But if there’s ever a clash then there are meeting rooms as well as plenty of shared open space that we can spill over into, so it’s never really an issue. We’ve established that Brendan is allergic to taking old coffee cups back to the kitchen, and I have a LOUD BOOMY PHONE VOICE but we can live with these things. The first day we moved into the studio we bought a beer fridge – this also helps.

–

Thanks for reading our Meet the Members Q&A with Brendan & Giles. If you’re interested in working with either of them, drop them an email: brendan@linesproductions.com and giles@cadairberwyn.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to read about our other members.