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Early in 2006 GearBox relocated their company headquarters to a new 16,000-foot square complex in West London. The site houses the company’s existing Hire, Sales and Support operations, and is also home to one of the company’s latest business ventures – the White Rooms. We spoke to GearBox MD, Richard Eastwood, to get the lowdown on what it’s all about.

What are the White Rooms?

The White Rooms are a series of six high-quality, purpose-built studio suites, which are housed within the GearBox company headquarters in West London. Essentially a media production facility built within the GearBox complex - with their own dedicated 24/7 client access.

Why the name White Rooms?

‘White Room’ is a common media industry expression used to describe a room that is supplied without equipment, basically an empty room – there’s also the fact that the rooms are for the most part white in colour.

What’s so special about the White Rooms?

As with most things that GearBox does, we’ve put an emphasis on attention to detail - the White Rooms have been built to an exacting standard that we believe befits the working environment media professionals would and should expect. The studio design is by world-renowned acoustician Roger D’Arcy of Recording Architecture, and the build has been carried out by Wood’s Commercial, specialists in production facility installs.

We’ve installed a dedicated Sohonet leased line connection, and have Apple Xserve Gigabit Ethernet based networking and Digidesign DigiDelivery|GT systems to allow media files to be securely shared and zapped across to other facilities at lightning speeds.

What is undoubtably unique for a facility of this kind is that the studio suites share premises with Europe’s largest rental stock inventory of professional audio/video equipment, and a technical support team who are experts in the fields of non-linear and high-definition media production. This means that upon request, additional equipment or indeed a complete production suite can be installed and fully functional within minutes – as with all existing GearBox services, this facility is available 24/7.

What kind of clients does the White Rooms attract?

The White Rooms attract a mixture of music composers, programmers, audio engineers and producers, as well as video editors and other professional media creatives.

All the rooms are acoustically designed to be able to handle professional 5.1 monitoring, and all have sound isolation booths. Most of our existing clients are involved in music, film and TV production or DVD and multimedia creation, but we’ll happily accommodate anyone who’s interested.

How big is The White Rooms facility?

Phase one was completed in July 2006, and is ground floor level. This consists of three rooms of two different sizes - one large and two medium size. There is also a client lounge/chill out area.

Phase two was completed in February 2007, and is a duplication of phase one, but on the first floor level -so basically another large size room, two more medium size rooms, and another client lounge/chill out area.

Phase three is much bigger project altogether - a large-scale music recording facility called Cream Recording Studios. The build was completed in January 2008 and the studio opened in March 2008.

Cream Recording Studios is a partnership with Chris Dibble, formerly studio manager and chief engineer of the world-renowned Lansdowne Studios. The studio features a new 72-channel Solid State Logic Duality large-format analogue mixing console, a custom-built ATC SCM 330AL/SCM 150A 5.1 surround monitoring installation, and a Digidesign Pro Tools|HD3 Accel 48 I/O system as standard.

The studio also features an innovative double-height, galleried, 75 sq metre live area accessible by both the Cream control room and the other White Rooms production suites.

Park Royal isn’t exactly Soho - how does the White Rooms’ location affect the business it attracts?

We prefer to call it ‘Park Royale’ - we are painfully aware that the White Rooms location isn’t in Soho, and also that a great many of our clients, particularly those involved in post-production, have to be in Soho to work. We’re also aware that our location is seen as a plus to some other clients, a number of whom live in the West London area. There’s also a major bonus for any potential clients who live out of town. The White Rooms location is easily accessed by road: we are just off the A406 North Circular, and very close to the A40 and M1. Parking is not an issue as we have allocated an ample amount of spaces to accommodate the White Rooms clients. Plus we are very close to an increasingly freelancer-friendly BBC TV Centre.

We’re also very much aware that hardworking media creatives from time to time get peckish, and whilst there are no Gordon Ramsay restaurants in the vicinity, we have built a cafe area within the complex we are calling the Milk Bar, where clients can grab a bite, arrange a meeting or just take a break and have a coffee.

How much does a White Room cost?

The price of a White Room is very much down to whether it’s being dry-hired without equipment, or supplied as a complete working production suite. The duration of the rental also influences the price a room goes out for. Naturally we offer package deals for clients renting both a room and equipment, and also reduce the rates for any clients wishing to take a room for a longer than normal duration. Basically room rates are negotiable depending on the rental scenario. Part of my role as the White Rooms MD is to liaise with clients to make sure they get exactly what they want, at the most reasonable rates. I’d advise any interested parties to contact me and I’ll be happy to discuss rates in more detail.

For further information on The White Rooms please contact Richard Eastwood:

Telephone: 020-8963 8622
Email: info@whiterooms.com
Web: www.whiterooms.com

See Also:
Cream Recording Studios