Television production house Aquila is at the centre of a drama, literally, by producing the first script to screen a TV drama series in Birmingham for years.
Birmingham and The Heart of England already provides the backdrop to some of Britain’s biggest serials, such as Hustle and Survivors. Now Aquila – which has been part of the city’s media landscape for 15 years – is launching a new venture to make a drama wholly conceived, written, filmed and produced in the city.
Business development manager Julia Higginbottom, who runs the company with her “technical ninja” husband Nat, says: “In early 2010 we’ll be forming a new company to produce drama. We need to keep the details close to our chests at the moment for commercial reasons.
“But, in addition, we’re in the process of setting up yet another company to handle purely digital work, both for television and online”.
Aquila has made a point of being based in The Heart of England, and one of its key aims has been to raise Birmingham’s profile as a destination for digital and interactive commissioning. Its experience ranges across light entertainment, feature films, documentaries, and corporate films for conference or web as well as event management.
Julia added: “For most of its history the business has served mainly as a post-production house, working on some of Britain’s best television programmes. But we’ve decided that we need to evolve and diversify into areas like event management, originated production and feature filmmaking. And it’s an approach that is working - already our turnover has gone up five fold in just two years.”
For more information on Aquila TV, visit www.aquila-tv.com