Sticks & Glass: The Leeds production company linked to Welcome to Wrexham and women's football
Verdy Oliver and Adam Bennett took a ‘punt’ on setting up a production company in Leeds – now their footprint is all over TV. John Blow reports.
Now well established and working with some of the biggest broadcasters, Sticks & Glass was initially something of a “punt,” says Verdy.
Adam adds: “My first trip to Leeds was signing the lease on the place, and then I came up with my old man and built some edit suites over the weekend with plywood and timber.”
Verdy and Adam met around 20 years ago while camera operator Verdy was freelancing and they would create branded content together.
Adam produced and directed, or as he puts it, “I’d tell you where to stand and what to point it at.” He also lived in Dubai for about 10 years and Verdy would join him to film conferences and concerts.
Then they decided to formalise their years of casual work together, incorporating Sticks & Glass and searching for the right location.
London was too expensive and Manchester oversaturated. “We came and looked at Leeds and found this office straight away,” says Adam.
Verdy had been freelancing for sports broadcaster DAZN, previously situated on Park Row in Leeds, and they gave him a heads up that they were desperate for editing space – so they opened around the corner and the channel “kept us busy for a couple of years”.
DAZN then moved to its White Rose office park as they had always intended.
They were at a crossroads, wondering whether to stay, but when Channel 4 situated its headquarters in Leeds, it convinced them that it was the place to be.
Verdy says: “We stuck a huge loan on which we’re still kind of paying down now, but it’s done well for us, and now we’re up to a headcount of 11, something like that, and then on a weekend anything up to 60 or 70 freelancers working on our live sport production as well.
“We’re kind of one of the success stories of Leeds and we couldn’t have done it anywhere else because of the support we’ve had from WYCA (West Yorkshire Combined Authority) and the local ecosystem. The local industry has been great for us.
"When we came looking at the premises that first day, about seven or eight years ago, you could feel something in the air, there was definitely change happening. It felt like this was going to be a new hub and I think that’s been realised.”
Along with a WYCA grant, they got investment from the Creative UK not-for-profit organisation and opened their “modern, world-class” facility. Innovate UK and Leeds Enterprise Partnership grants also helped them to develop.
“We wanted to build a facility for the work we wanted to do, not the work that we were doing,” says Adam. “We wanted to build a facility that could do Netflix and Apple and these big global streamers.”
He adds: “You need that third party validation as well. If somebody gives you a first grant, you go, okay, so maybe this isn’t just two lads pointing cameras at stuff, making it up. Maybe there’s something here, and that gives you the confidence to go and have bigger conversations and more bold conversations.
"And now we really do feel like we’re part of the West Yorkshire creative community here and we’re trying to build something that’s not really just for us, but actually for Leeds.”
Working within television production, in-house services they offer include post-production finishing such as colour grading, sound design and remote editing.
They have a sound department that does ADR (automated dialogue replacement) voiceovers and podcasts. On the production side, they still go out to shoot footage for advertising agencies, television shows or sports events.
Recent post-production credits include the recent Channel 4 documentary The Sycamore Gap Mystery, which was made by another Leeds company Candour Productions (the first outfit profiled in this series on Saturday) and ITV’s Torvill & Dean: The Last Dance.
Verdy, meanwhile, was part of the crew for Welcome to Wrexham, the documentary about actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ takeover of Wrexham AFC – and he was nominated for an Emmy for his work as Director of Photography.
“They’re nice guys,” he says. “They’re really pleasant and they care about it as well. They’re two comedy actors, so they’re fun to work with because they know how to play the game in terms of when to give you that little bit on camera.”
As much as anything, Welcome to Wrexham, says Verdy, was good for networking.
Sport has been fruitful for the company generally – particularly with the demand for female football – and things change a little at Sticks & Glass on weekends and evenings as they operate as a live facility for the Women's Super League 2, delivering football match broadcasts from their suites.
Journalism students from Leeds Beckett University get paid work on these projects too, so the company has a hand in helping the next generation of talent gain skills.
How does being friends and co-directors work?
Adam: “One of the things I say to lots of young people or business owners, whatever phase they’re at, is it’s the best thing we ever did going into business with one another. Because deep down, we’re all lazy protagonists, right? And so to have somebody that you’re accountable to and that is also working really hard kind of pushes you on to work harder.”
However, providing a good work-life balance is important.
Adam says: “Nobody gets into television to become rich anymore but we do want to see that we're giving people a good quality of life. Occasionally that quality is destroyed by the hard deadlines and turnarounds and having to burn the candle at both ends.
"But also, generally speaking, there's a really great industry in this part of the world and a really good quality of life. And I think that's probably the biggest metric for us for success.”
Yorkshire, the pair who are in their mid-40s believe, needs to embrace itself as a major production centre.
“We have to lose this chip on our shoulder about there not being enough work here and we need something from London. I don’t think we do,” says Adam.
“We’ve got Hollywood movies shooting down the road. That wasn’t happening 10 years ago. And I think if we can also be the post production part of that growth and the live facility part of that growth, then so be it. It’s our job to keep pushing the boundaries and making sure our facilities are world class.”