WOW

Universal Innovations at Ashford Film Studios

Today members of the Wicklow Chamber were invited along to a tour at Ashford Film Studios, located at Ballyhenry, Ashford. The film studios are situated beside the Glanbia garden centre on the Dublin Road out of Ashford village ( just before the N11 entrance)

Joe O’Connell and his daughter Shelley divided the group into two halves and took us on a spellbinding tour!

The Ashford Film Studios work on an ethos of minimum wastage, local product sourcing and environmentally friendly power. This was explained in detail and quite obvious to us during the tour where we were shown the solar power sources, wind turbines ( pretty and small but enough to power the Lots’ street lighting) , water tanks,  system layout and so so much more!

I am not an engineer but even I could see the amazing planning and attention to detail that has been put into this project.

With 3 studio stages, 2 of which are equal in size to Ardmores’  largest stage, and one that is big enough for both indoor and outdoor set filming, the Ashford Film Studios have been carefully developed to cater for (and attract) multi million pound movie making! ( and all that it brings)

With the Irish Tax Breaks (Section 481) appealing to overseas film producers, having a top facility such as Ashford Film Studios in the garden county has the potential to create hundreds of local and national jobs, opportunities and economic growth.

The tour included a visit around these facilities which were very exciting – you could imagine the buzz of the studio in the throes of a movie!

There are individual rooms for the day actors to rest in, with small living areas practically for the Stars, hairdressing studios, makeup departments, design etc.  Very inspiring stuff!

Shelley explained how they worked alongside film makers, crew, engineers etc to focus on their needs to the point where the actual layout of the rooms have been preplanned to reduce time wastage and increase productivity

An example of this is how the costume making area is leading to the fitting area and then to the extras’ changing area.

The technical aspects were also given extreme attention to detail with the 3 stages being close enough for the engineers above to rig them out easily and efficiently and a ‘no cables on the floor’ rule that sees them neatly run across shelf-type fittings above ones’ head. Every pipe, lead and power source is labelled and named clearly to allow the film crews a clear understanding of whats what and what goes where.

I think everyone on the tour was astonished, delighted and invigorated about such a wonderful project, however there was one point that I believe the people of Wicklow, and indeed Ireland should shout about, and this was the frustration being felt at the seemingly lack of support from the council planners in speeding up the approval of the development of the workshops (amongst other things) which would allow the studio  to begin attracting the service providers that it needs in order to remain a viable and sustainable business.

Finally we were treated to a short talk wth Morgan O Sullivan who explained how himself and Joe O’Connell got together in the first place to create a film hub for Ireland  with the creation of a modern film studio, one to compliment that of Ardmore studios, in order to be able to facilitate a larger number of movies being created here in Ireland.

As Morgan himself said ‘It’s a people business’ and I think we all know real people who could benefit greatly from this project. So make your voice heard and get on to your local TD and ask them to help this projects’ vision become a reality.

Step one would be for them to get the local planners to physically go out and visit the place before they make any decisions….(Seriously!)

p.s. Well done to the Wicklow Chamber – and new president Roy Conway – for making this tour possible and best of luck to all at Ashford Film Studios from us here at The Wicklow Way Of Living.

Ashford Film Studios, Ballyhenry, Ashford, Co Wicklow, Ireland
SatNav: Lat: 53.021030,Lon: -6.104793

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