Vine FX: Why we moved out of Soho

As a VFX supervisor with nearly 30 years of experience, I’ve seen the industry change and develop, shifting through the ups and downs of the 21st century. Long has London been the centre of visual effects in the UK. Despite studios moving out of the Soho bubble over the last 10 years, the stops along the Central Line remain synonymous with the post production industry.

Individuals have been making this move out of London for some time, and some VFX businesses are choosing to join those people and move out of London altogether. 

I founded Vine FX in 2007. Initially, it was, like so many others, a London-based studio (you could find our offices on Berners Street). Several factors, including increasing costs, came into play throughout the 2010s and, eventually, I decided to move the company away from the big city.

For some, this is a monumental step; abandoning the Soho safe area and setting up shop miles away from the nearest major airport. But it’s not as dramatic as you might think. People have been migrating away from city centres for decades. The spiralling cost of living has accelerated that process, which is driven by the need to be financially secure while maintaining a positive work-life balance.

For me, and for Vine FX, there’s more to this story than a simple ’let’s head out of London.’ It’s been a move years in the making and one made possible by advances in the tools we use.

I’m always excited by new technology. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, I was already working to create a clean office – no wires, no trailing cables, no noise from machines. This necessitated a relatively new approach to networking solutions. Working with Escape Technology we used Teradici’s PCoIP tools to create an environment free from the usual boxes and wires. Little did we know that this would become vital, with a pandemic just around the corner. To this day, I’m proud that Vine FX was one of the first studios to enable remote working during the lockdowns.

The knock-on effect of this is a shift in our new normal. Our team can work from anywhere – whether that’s in the UK or abroad. We have people on the south coast, London, Bulgaria, and those down the road in Cambridge who just prefer to work from home.

Equally, we have a regular studio-based team for much the same reason. This is the crucial component of how we do business – choice. It’s important for people to have a say in where they work. After all, we have the tools to enable collaboration from anywhere with an internet connection. So why wouldn’t we allow that?

We’re not the first to move out of London and we won’t be the last.

With the help of the operations and production teams at Vine FX, I’m continually looking to improve what we do and how we do it. Not just the work, but how we look after our people. Giving them that choice.

Liberating our staff to work from anywhere in the world gives us more opportunities to recruit and nurture talent. Moving away from the city has enabled us to take advantage of local opportunities and partnerships with world-leading technology businesses that have done the same thing. And with a reduction in operating costs, we’re able to invest more in our technology and in our people.

Besides, it’s not like we’re far from London. Cambridge to Kings Cross is a 50-minute train ride, so we’re not exactly cut off.

This move away from quartering businesses in the biggest cities in the world – or even just one location – is a boon to visual effects. By giving our teams a choice in where they work we get the best out of them, and they get the best out of us.

Michael Illingworth is founder of Vine FX