Malcolm Ryan Studios: Where Incredible Things Happen
The legendary Malcolm Ryan Studios are designed for everything from TV commercials to fashion shoots, music videos, rehearsals and live events! The five studios boast infinity coves, green screen facilities and a massive array of world-class lighting and equipment.
From intimate to epic, the studios can accommodate any prop or set necessary and indeed, some incredible subjects have been filmed and photographed, right here at Garratt Business Park:
Giraffes
Sheep
Eagles
Houses
Pop stars from Kylie to Take That
Lots of tennis players during Wimbledon
All the Chelsea footballers will only shoot at Malcolm Ryan (they say it’s because it’s nearest to their training ground... But we know it’s because they’re the best Studios around)!
...And of course... The story behind the studios is just as fascinating as the subjects in front of the cameras....
Interview: Amanda Ryan - Director
"Malcolm Ryan Studios was established in Covent Garden 1988: warehouse spaces, infested with pigeons, that my dad bought back then... The late Malcolm Ryan!
He converted them by his own hands, over a few years. He was a set builder by trade, so he wanted to have his own studios.
Then he was up in Macklin Street in Holborn - in a little Studio, which has now been converted into these luxury, massive apartments (that we should have hung on to!).
We moved into Garratt Business Park in 1997. A real cultural hub, just by coincidence! There’s a prop house over the road and a music recording studio behind us. There are ice sculptors too [Hamilton Ice Sculptors]. We often have clients that are shooting with one of their sculptures... Then there's the photographers over the road and ‘Time Flies’ as well! So we're all interrelated and linked, in a similar industry.
I never worked with my dad, but my brother Luke did. And then after my dad passed away, I came in to just sort of be here for six months in between jobs. I thought I didn't want to be in an industrial estate renting out warehouse space and working with my brother... And that was about 17 years ago! All of our staff, despite it being quite a hands-on physical job, tend to stay quite a number of years!
Nick is very good at keeping up with the times: wanting to put aircon in or a lift or move the restaurant from where the makeup rooms were to above the studio. So he's quite forward-thinking with everything like that, because our clients have changed over the years... First it was like little car shoots, just really small teams, and now it's more TV commercials, and now lately; it's fashion.
I know how stressful filming and photography shoots can be, so the vision was to create a space that had such an instant appeal to people!"
