This year we are celebrating Studio Giggle’s 15th Birthday. Like all great British ideas, the company was conceived in a pub over a beer. It was born out of a desire to create work on the cutting edge of technology and creativity, which is still at the very core of what we do.
When I asked Steve about the intriguing name, he smiled; it’s a question he’s been asked many times.
“Giggle really sums up the way we work. Creativity should be fun! It is often stressful, but by keeping a sense of humour and a lightness to our approach, we can make the whole process more enjoyable for everyone involved.
The creation of The Giggle Group wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. Steve had honed his skills over ten years, starting in theatre then working for various production companies as an editor, director and writer. He met James Carnaby and Adam Castelton, who helped him set up the company and whose continued support and advice are always welcomed. It was this experience that prepared Steve to open The Giggle Group in 2006.
In 2013, two worlds collided as Steve met Jonathan Brigden on a flight to Dubai as part of a UKTI creative industry mission. Jonathan had been running his own company, Knifedge, for 19 years. Knifedege created immersive and innovative events and groundbreaking projection content for an impressive list of global clients. It was evident that Steve and Jonathan shared similar creative ambitions, a love of immersive and live events and most importantly, a sense of humour. We also moved to our current home in the heart of Bristol’s creative community at The Paintworks.
In 2014 when Jonathan and Steve decided to merge their companies, they could create one cohesive animation and event machine.
In 2017 a new era of Giggle began when we rebranded from ‘The Giggle Group’ to ‘Studio Giggle’. This better reflected the growth and transition of the company over the years, from film to animation to creative studio. The “Studio” part of the name was to draw attention to the incredible team, which enabled us to deliver our award-winning work.
In its 15 years, Giggle has weathered some major global events. In 2008 Giggle overcame the financial crash by switching the company’s focus to animation over film production. In more recent years, the Giggle team showed extraordinary skill and creativity during the early days of the COVID19 pandemic. This was a challenging time for the company as we shifted to a remote working model and pivoted our production pipeline to deliver virtual events. This resulted in our most successful year to date. We won Manchester United as a new client, we hired 4 new staff members and developed XR and Virtual production solutions, all in just 6 months.
Studio Giggle in 2021 is a very different company from The Giggle Group of 2006. We now have offices in Bristol and Brighton, with our own Green screen virtual production studio which doubles up as our R&D test space. We can deliver live and virtual events anywhere globally, producing work for some of the biggest brands on the planet. As 2021 comes to an end, and we take a moment to celebrate 15 years of Giggle, we also look to the future. We intend to continue to create spectacular content for both live and virtual events, combined with beautiful animation and film with storytelling at their heart. We aim to always be at the forefront of our industry. We will continue to research and develop new technology solutions that can enhance the work we create for our clients.
We would like to take this momentous occasion to thank all of our team, suppliers, partners, freelancers, family and friends but especially our clients. Their continued trust and belief enable us to evolve and grow in ways we could never have imagined.
Roll on 2036 for our 30th Birthday!
If this has inspired you to work with us then please contact Jon@studiogiggle.co.uk or call 0117 972 0081.
If COVID 19 has given us anything, it’s an increased amount of zoom calls and webinars. This is a great way to stay connected and learn something new during a tough time. Studio Giggle’s managing director, Jonathan Brigden was on an expert panel of an EVCOM animation webinar last week (to watch the webinar and find out more, click here). But participating or hosting a webinar can really test your working from home set-up. It can also test your patience as having video conferences all day, one after another with bad sound and broken connections can create the worst kind of fatigue: Zoom fatigue.
1. All-in-one headphones and mic. Whichever you pick, the mic is a lot closer to the mouth, and so the quality increases dramatically. But if you go for this option try and avoid Bluetooth connected headphones and choose a wired set instead, for added reliability.
2. A lavalier microphone sometimes referred to as a tie or lapel mic. These are clip-on wearable mics, that plug into the audio jack or USB. There’s a lot of options on Amazon, and if you’ve got the budget I’d recommend a well-known brand like Sony or Røde (if you can’t find what you need on amazon check out CVP, Thomann or SCAN). With all mics, the price usually dictates the quality. The one downside is that this mic will make a distorted sound as it brushes against clothing, so if you do intend on moving around or being a bit more animated, option 3 might be for you.
3. The top-level mic would be a condenser studio microphone. This is the type of mic a professional voiceover artist might own because it is far better at processing sound waves and will pick up the nuances of speech. This should be reserved for those who want or need studio-quality sound. You’ll need to sit with it in front of you, so while it’s not hidden; it does look slick when talking into one, particularly if it’s held up with a boom arm. We recently bought a Røde NT1-A, which is great for webcasting.
Some more general tips for audio:
It’s fairly likely that your inbuilt webcam will leave a lot to be desired so I’d recommend investing in a decent HD webcam. We recently bought the Logitech Brio and the difference to the inbuilt cameras on my Mac was pretty drastic. The Logitech will record up to 4K, and the inbuilt mic was superb. You can treat it like a real camera and choose the field of view, frame rate, resolution, exposure, colour balance, autofocus and more, which will lead to a much better image. This is a great article for the top webcams on the market.
In reality, an HD 1080p camera would be fine though as most platforms compress everything down anyway.
If you are using a phone, then a tripod is a must-have purchase. This will raise your production value instantly (and save your arm from falling off!). A phone tripod is a piece of kit you can buy cheaply, and I would ignore the big brands to save some money here. Make sure the phone is on its side in landscape mode and if possible, stream in HD.
First and foremost, you should maximise the natural lighting in your room, by positioning yourself close to a window. Ideally, the camera would be in-between you and the window to help light your face. Try and avoid sitting with your back to a window as this is likely to have the opposite effect creating you as a silhouette and making you seem like you are in a witness protection scheme! While you may think the window makes a nice background, if you are talking for an hour, the lighting can dramatically change outside and by the end, you might end up looking quite gloomy.
If you do fancy getting a proper light, always go LED. They last longer and won’t get hot. A lot of Youtubers use a “ring light”, as they are soft and flattering to film faces with.
By now you may have experienced the custom background feature on Zoom. For me, this has led to many great calls with friends with the Tiger King looming over their shoulders. For Giggle’s Steve, a keyed background is the ideal way of hiding mess…
If your computer, like mine, can’t handle the background swap outs, or your webinar software doesn’t support them, then it might be an idea to actually tidy up.
If someone is watching you for an hour, don’t sit with your back to a plain wall like you’re steaming from prison. Up until now, the trusty bookshelf has been the go-to when it comes to Zoom backgrounds, but maybe check what books are visible first, otherwise, you could fall into the same hole as Michael Gove. Our own Jon has quite an interesting background when he is doing important video calls.
With all the kit in the world, your internet connection will play the biggest part in how clear you come across as streaming takes up a good chunk of bandwidth. If home webinars are going to be a regular fixture, it will be worth performing some speed tests on your connection and making sure you are in the best spot in the house, and with the best supplier for your area. Your streaming software should have a minimum and an optimal connection speed. A really simple way of doing this is a free test on speedtest.net. Make sure you check your upload speed as this will play the biggest role. If three of you are doing video conferences at the same time, ideally you need a connection that is something like 10-20mbps per person uploading.
If possible use a wired ethernet connection for increased reliability. Turning off any tabs in the browser background, stopping files that might be downloading, and turning off other Wi-Fi enabled devices during the webinar may improve the connection. You could also try and limit the number of people and devices that are using the internet at the same time as the webinar, as this may increase the risk of it interrupting your stream.
We hope you’ve found these tips and tricks for successful webinars helpful, and if there is anything that we can help you with then please get in touch.
*= delete as appropriate to Teams, Skype, Webex, Skype, Skype for Business, Slack, Whatsapp, facetime…the list goes on and on.
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