History

Ten Years of Xube (2001-2011)

Looking back

In January 2011 Xube will celebrate its 10th birthday. 10 years of video production that has ranged from educational and training films to web virals. We have filmed the length and breadth of the UK and were even allowed into The Netherlands in early 2010 to shoot our first pan-european, EU funded project. Xube places a premium on learning from its past production experiences. Various developments have meant this has been an exciting decade for video: the rise of the internet as a video delivery platform (YouTube, Vimeo, iTunes, BBC iPlayer, etc), the emergence of social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter etc) and the proliferation of user-generated video content. Video is everywhere.

The omnipresence of online video might be regarded by some as a threat but Xube have approached each new development in its stride. How? We have stuck to our 3 guiding principles:

1. Maximise creativity and high production values.

2. Provide a clear project management structure.

3. Complete on time and on budget.

Every Xube project is driven by this clear and simple ethos and has meant that the company can negotiate new technical developments and client expectations with a solid approach to production. Please read the client testimonials. The message is clear: Xube delivers with added eXUBErance!

Since the launch in 2001 Xube has built significant relationships with clients in the education and corporate sectors. Xube’s clients include: Becta (British Educational Communications Technology Agency), JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), Emap Education and CIPD (Chartered Insititute of Personnel and Development). The size and range of projects are continuously growing. Over the last two years Xube has produced: films for awards ceremonies, best practice case studies, internal communications, training films, motion graphics for events, internet virals and web adverts.

Xube is testing and exploring new camera and editing technologies all the time and has filmed several major projects in full High Definition (HD). The next decade is full of technical possibilities such as DSLR technology and 3D and there will always be new creative communication challenges. Engage Xube and make your next project an eXUBErant one.

Pre-Xube History (1996–2001)

Xube Directors Jeremy Henderson and Richard Woolfenden left their teaching jobs in East London to set up Flick Films, their filmmaking partnership. Their first two projects were called ‘Passionate Men’ and ‘Your History’ and were shot on SVHS and mini-DV respectively. ‘Passionate Men’ was a 10-minute documentary about 3 East London characters with obsessive pastimes. ‘Your History’ was a 15-minute drama about the struggle of a history teacher to engage the hearts and minds of students with his millennium time-capsule project. With a cast of 25 former students they had their work cut out.

‘Your History’ was shown at film festivals and gave Flick Films an opportunity to experiment with the new DV format. On the back of these experiences Flick Films began to market its production services to secondary schools that needed a cost-effective, high-impact digital promotional video. This product particularly appealed to schools that wanted to reach out to prospective parents and so began Flick Films’ first commercial venture.

1997 was a year of rapid development. Flick Films was awarded an A4E Lottery grant for its initiative to run film workshops for Key Stage Three students in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. This fed into a three-minute script writing competition where the prize was to shoot their film on DV with Flick Films. Also in this year Jeremy and Richard began their research into the British film industry by volunteering their bodies as “pond life”, which is the derogatory term in the film business for extras or background artistes. Some of Jeremy and Richard’s best extras work can be seen in films that range from the downright obscure to the big blockbusters including ‘Sliding Doors’, ‘Wings of a Dove’, ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, ‘Gladiator’ and ‘Notting Hill’ to name but a few.

1998 was the year that Flick Films got hungry to shoot on film. Jeremy and Richard co-wrote ‘Futures’ and put the money they had raised from freelance work into producing the film. They decided to shoot on 16mm film and teamed up with a casting director to help find the actors. Every new step in the production process involved confronting new questions and challenges.

Futures, a tale about the reunion of 3 ex-City traders, was premiered at the De Lane Lea screening room in Soho and went onto to be shown at various festivals including Raindance 1998.

It was 1999 and Jeremy and Richard had the film bug big time. They got wind of a new film competition being organised in East London to commemorate the centennial of Alfred Hitchcock’s birth and wrote a seven-minute called ‘East by Northeast’ inspired by Hitchcock’s 1959 film ‘North by Northwest’ and his ‘Strangers on a Train’ (1951).

This time it had to be 35mm film and just to complicate matters they wrote a script that had to be filmed at night at a venue that had no electricity. The shooting location was Woolwich Arsenal and it was early December. The millennial chill came off the Thames over three nights as Jeremy and Richard tackled crane shots, classic cars and diesel-guzzling generators.

The post-production on ‘East by Northeast’ was finished in 2000 and exhibited at that year’s Raindance festival. The dot-com bubble was about to burst, and Jeremy and Richard’s gainful endeavours in London’s freelance IT sector started to look precarious. New challenges and opportunities lay ahead. ‘Isn’t about time we set up our own production company?’, thought Jeremy and Richard.  And so they did and they called it Xube.