AN Edinburgh-based media production company which provides photographic and motion services for high-profile advertising campaigns has rebranded and launched an office in London.
Location Scotland, whose clients include Vogue, Boden and Harper’s Bazaar, has changed its name to LS Productions.
The switch, which comes with LS on track to lift turnover to
£2 million this year, reflects the company’s wish to offer clients locations for shoots outside its native Scotland.
One example is the LA-based NBC, with which LS shot a TV programme with Bear Grylls and Ben Stiller last year. NBC has also asked to work with LS in Wales.
However LS boss Marie Owen, a former air steward who set up the business in 2006, insists that Scotland will continue to be the main focus of its operation.
Ms Owen said: “Our main office is here in Scotland, and it always will be. It’s the heart of what we do and who we are.
“But people are saying ‘can you help me out in other areas of the UK’, some of whom don’t really have service production companies set up as we have done here in Scotland. Our feelings are that we keep our staff employed here in Scotland, but if someone wants to work in Northumberland or Manchester – or anywhere – we’re still able to produce that for them.”
That broadening out will see the company build its database of stock photographs outside Scotland, which has already begun with shoots in locations across the north of England. It will continue to build its stock of stills in Scotland, which already extends to a library of more than 100,000 photos.
Ms Owen noted: “We go four or five hours north to Skye without batting an eyelid. It just makes a lot of sense. Sometimes a client does not want Scotland for a variety of reasons which are nothing to do with the quality of locations or what Scotland has to offer. We’re just broadening it a little bit.”
The name change comes as LS expands its office network, with new premises in London following the launch of an operation in New York around a year ago.
The London office, located in Soho opposite the Groucho Club, is headed by Meriel Bunney-Gillies, a business development manager who has been with the company for two years.
Ms Owen said the move was designed to position the company closer to potential clients.
The changes come with Ms Owen aiming to raise turnover at the company to £2m in its current financial year. It turned over £1.6m in the year to the end of December, having leapt from £876,000 the previous year.
Ms Owen said: “I’m not advocating that doubling turnover every year is where we are aiming to go, but we are always ambitious in pushing the business forward, while cautiously reinvesting profit.”
LS Productions now employs 16 staff, and recently became a Living Wage employer.
Ms Owen said the company is seeing more demand for moving images from clients, rather than stills. At present around 60 per cent of business is derived from motion images, with 40 per cent from stills.
Recent motion projects carried out by LS included the filming of a music video for a single by Florence and the Machine, shot on Skye, and a TV ad for travel app Kayak.
However, Ms Owen insists that stills remain an important part of the business, noting that shots by LS taken in Scotland feature in this month’s Harper’s Bazaar. She said: “The spend is moving that way – I think it’s a sign of the marketplace. But there are still some great people spending money on print. There is a space for both.”
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