Waterfront Film Studios

ABOUT WATERFRONT FILM STUDIOS

Well-known as the most technologically-advanced home of the biggest creative post-production team in South Africa, the Waterfront Film Studios Group is a truly unique ecosystem, accessing the expertise, passion and technological nous of a hard-working, passionate team.

The divisions in the group encompass:

Producers is a collective of producers who shepherd Film, broadcast, corporate and other media projects from conception to completion. They are a lean, efficient and high-speed production team, contracting the very best people and services in for any specific job, expanding the team to fit the exact scale required for the project. There is a good balance between heavy weight producers with a depth of experience and energetic younger talents, all with a “can do” philosophy. The production team consists of commercial, broadcast and features expertise. Producers is hungry to produce content that is internationally competitive, responsive to global television trends and tells the South African story in innovative ways to our most important client: the viewer.

Studios - Africa’s two of the largest live broadcast-enabled sound stages are located at the Waterfront Film Studios complex at the V & A Waterfront, servicing TV series, features and commercials. Stage 1 (1110sqm) and Stage 2 (800sqm) are fully sound proofed and air- conditioned and have make-up and wardrobe rooms and exclusive-use toilets. Each studio comes with control rooms, lighting grids, lights and dimmers. Stage 3 (400sqm) is ideal for use as a tabletop studio, with a fully equipped industrial kitchen adjacent to the studio. This stage will be increased to 1000sqm by the middle of 2015.

Two new sound stages are planned for 2015 and 2016 respectively, Stage 4 (1000sqm) and stage 5 (2400sqm) both with grid height to 13m.
There could not be a better space to host the top studio productions in Cape Town: against the backdrop of Table Mountain, bathed by the ocean breeze of the V & A Waterfront, the well- equipped studio space has hosted projects from Penguin Films, Moonlighting Films, Film Afrika, Out of Africa, Warner Brothers, Universal, Tandem Communications, BBC, Left Bank Pictures and many more.

Some of our most recent studio productions have ranged from music videos (Freshly
Ground’s Too Chicken to Change music video and SA indie band Dirty Skirts’ Strike the Match) to the daily live SABC2 teen smash-hit for SABC2 Hectic Nine 9. International clients have included the Universal TV series shot in Stage 1, 2 and 3, Dominion and scenes for the feature film The Giver Stage 1 with actor Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep.

Waterfront Post is home to our full front-end services: Flame, Pablo, Base-light, digital data management lab, telecine, Protools audio suites and Final Cut and Avid edit suites. High-end digital post-production alongside an established offering for local and international commercial markets. Our studio brings together 2D and 3D animators, LiDar and Cyber Scanning, motion graphics artists and master compositors with in-house post-production line producers.

Film Lab, Digital Remastering and Data wrangling is committed to the highest standards of quality in their film and data handling and processing. Recent high-profile projects have included Safe House, The Giver, 10 000 BC, Dominion , SPUD 2 and SPUD 3, Vrou Soek Boer, Knysna, Trompie, Wallander and various digital remastered films,
Waterfront Audio let pictures be enhanced by our multi-award winning audio team and 4 suites including Dolby e 5.1 surround sound studio. We've had the privilege of doing ADR with Matt Damon, Ryan Reynolds, David Beckham and Morgan Freeman to name a few.

Our post-production wizards have worked on productions as diverse as The Giver, Dominion, Wallander, Vrou Soek Boer, District 9, Invictus, The Departed, The Informant, The Change Up, Green Lantern, SA Story, Beaver Falls, Robert Mugabe...What Happened?, Glitterboys and Ganglands, Yes We Can, Spud, League of Glory, Crusoe, Hansie,Jakhalsdans, Nature of
Life, The Unforgiving, The Consequence, Master Harold and the Boys, Ice Man,Confessions of a Gambler, Natalee Holloway, The Philanthropist, Nothing but the Truth, Surviving Evil,16th Man, My Hunter’s Heart and Into the Dragon’s Lair.

Our Data lab (digital data management) is one of the most technologically advanced in the country, with technical talent to match, including international expertise. The varied technical expertise in this team has seen this department pull off some tight deadlines, and complete many international features, commercials and broadcast. A fully-digital infrastructure allows editors to work across our facilities and engage various services all from the convenience of our comfortable, individual suites.

The team is headed by experts with more than 30 years experience each, such as Ivan Bridgens, Steve Harris, Hilton Treves, Barry Donnelly, Alun Richards, Neels Bester, Eddie Steyn. This solid foundation is complemented with a team of multi-skilled young talents.

Our producers, technicians and artists take on challenges with relish and using the infrastructure of Waterfront Film Studios, can achieve the impossible.

The Waterfront Studios Group shareholders are LaserNet, Bladeworks, Cut & Past and FuseFX

The Waterfront Film Studios remains a leading and relevant company in the South African film and television industry.