Timeline North post-production director Eben Clancy and Chris Groom, former head of post-production for Timeline Television’s BT Sport operation, have set up a ‘pop-up’ post-production firm.

Phantom Sun Post Production will specialise in providing remote editing and finishing facilities for production companies.

Along with project management and workflow expertise, it will offer producers the chance to install short-term facilities at their offices or on location that are operated by freelance talent.

The equipment will either be hired for the job or provided remotely by its owner-operator.

Phantom Sun will use cloudbased services and high-speed connectivity to link the ‘pop-up’ facility together, adding a central ingest, MCR, media management, shared storage and engineering operation.

The firm’s first project is the 12 x 30-minute Bear Grylls Survival School for CITV. The Potato-produced series used ITV’s South Bank building and various freelancers, including former Deluxe colourist Trevor Brown.

Phantom Sun will also look to establish a physical facility, probably at MediaCityUK in Salford, which will house much of the centralised elements for each project, along with high-end suites for grading, dubbing and online.

“With advanced cloud technology and the acceptance of remote working, production firms can cut costs by doing many elements of the editing process at a location that suits them,” said Clancy.

“The Bear Grylls project was perfect to illustrate how this can be done.”

Groom added: “We’ve been developing a production management system with Quad Logic Systems in Bristol and combined this with advanced workflows using NAS and Cloud storage to come up with some enormously flexible and cost-effective workflows.”

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