Haarlem Studios: Flexible, High-Quality Video Production in the Netherlands
Located in the Netherlands, approximately twenty kilometres from Amsterdam, Haarlem is a historic, walkable city, close to the North Sea coast and easily accessible from almost anywhere in the country. According to Sjoerd Wess, an accomplished content creator and joint owner of Haarlem Studios, it can take longer to find a parking space in Amsterdam than to drive from there to Haarlem.
Sony cameras are central to the studio’s operations. After using other brands, Sjoerd naturally gravitated towards Sony cameras due to their close fit with his clients’ varied aesthetic demands and their ability to quickly adapt to diverse situations.
Ready for anything
Today’s content creators have a wide spread of requirements. Video is now possibly the most effective medium to communicate virtually any message. Nothing can match its visual appeal, immediate engagement and ability to deliver storytelling as intense or as nuanced as a client’s artistic and commercial vision requires. Most contemporary content also needs to perform well across a wide range of delivery mediums, from television to social media, as well as be adaptable across both vertical and horizontal aspect ratios.
You could sum up a modern studio’s ideal characteristics in two words: Adaptability and Quality. A facility has to be ready for virtually anything, and, despite no two projects being the same, be able to create content at a consistently high quality.
There’s another essential ingredient: price. Today’s creators don’t necessarily have large budgets. So studios have to keep their running costs down to a level that’s affordable across a range of clients.
Haarlem Studios can cater for almost every kind of production short of high-end scripted projects. The studio’s modular design means it can be quickly set up for podcasts, unboxings, interviews, “explainer” videos, fashion shoots and TV shows.
The studio space comes equipped with a variety of backdrops, rugs, lighting setups, and Sony cameras. With a choice of background rolls, it’s easy to change the look dramatically within minutes.
We designed our production space to feel creative, inviting and to encourage innovation and experimentation. Quite often, studios spend too much on their physical presence, with expensive reception areas and plush buildings. We do things differently, making our clients comfortable and delivering fantastic quality, while at the same time charging significantly less.
Sjoerd Wess
The studio has grown organically and is so popular with clients that the company has never had to advertise or promote itself on social media.
Sony cameras are absolutely central to the Studio’s facilities. Sjoerd again:
“We experimented with multiple camera brands, but after I had used the FX6 and FX9 on larger productions, including a children’s TV show with 36 shooting days, we settled on the Sony camera system. I found that the images were dependably rich, deep, and – crucially – consistent across the range. I also found that, as I learned the menu system, which is common between Sony cameras, the cameras were incredibly quick to work with.”
The studio’s cameras include the FX2, FX3 and FX30, each of which is versatile, but even more so due to the commonality of the lenses and the consistency of the images across camera models.
Sony’s colour science is a feature of all its Cinemaline cameras, from top-end Venice 2 to the newest arrival, the FX2. Today’s content creators are more conscious than ever about the look of their work, and colour is one of the most noticeable characteristics of video content. By standardising on Sony cinema cameras, Haarlem Studios can deliver material that is acceptable to virtually every post-production facility. For clients, who are always conscious about budget, getting a quality result straight out of the camera means that post-production work is easier and faster. They will always be closer to getting their desired look.
The Sony cameras’ sensors are so good - you have more than enough colour for the whole pipeline. The files work well in editing.
Sjoerd Wess
The ever-growing lens range encompasses zooms and primes, covering virtually any type of project. A favourite is the 24-70 G Master Lens Mark II, which, says Sjoerd, is exceptionally versatile – to the extent that it is often the only lens he needs for external work. For other kinds of shoot, he enjoys the Sony Prime lenses, which seem to complement the high-quality imaging available from the cameras. He sometimes also uses long lenses for creative, unusual shots that can grab an audience’s attention.
Sjoerd likes to capture video in a high-quality format, with 10-bit 4:2:2 a minimum technical requirement. Where necessary, Sjoerd will shoot in the highest-quality compression, but he has found that, typically, this is not necessary, and that because of the richness of the image from the sensors, he can shoot at a much lower bitrate without losing visual quality. This is good for clients because they can still take away excellent video but using less storage and with faster offload times to post production.
Haarlem Studios’ business model is based on responsiveness, high quality output and price. By fine-tuning this combination, it has a strong advantage over other studios that are typically slower to adapt between productions and are intrinsically more expensive. The studio’s modular design makes the maximum use out of its Sony cameras and lenses which are compact, cost-effective, with cinema-quality and technical and artistic consistency across a wide range of projects and environments.
