Redcat Studios Independent film, photography & design from the UK.

Redcat Studios

Independent film, photography & design from the UK.

Latest Articles

The Radiator Gets a Credit: Cutting a Short Film’s Sound From Domestic Life
Filmmaking

The Radiator Gets a Credit: Cutting a Short Film’s Sound From Domestic Life

For our latest short, we skipped the polished library tracks and went hunting for character in kettles, drawers, radiators and back-garden rain. Here’s what we learned about recording household Foley on a tight budget — and why the familiar clatter of a British home can say more than a sweeping orchestral cue.

Solder, Patience and a Table of Dead Cameras: A Repair Café Shoot Diary
Documentary Photography

Solder, Patience and a Table of Dead Cameras: A Repair Café Shoot Diary

We spent a Saturday at a UK repair café filming the volunteers who mend old cameras, lenses and radios instead of replacing them. What we came back with was less a glossy brand film and more a lesson in patience, honest portraits and kit that deserves a second life.

Ninety Seconds to Care: What We Kept When a Ten-Minute Film Went Feed-Sized
Filmmaking

Ninety Seconds to Care: What We Kept When a Ten-Minute Film Went Feed-Sized

Turning a ten-minute independent film into a ninety-second social cut is not just a trim job. It is a rebuild. This is how we found the story spine, lost some favourite shots, captioned for sound-off viewing, and kept the client on side when the runtime fell off a cliff.

Small Enough to Squint At: Designing a Studio Logo for the Feed, Not the Boardroom
Design

Small Enough to Squint At: Designing a Studio Logo for the Feed, Not the Boardroom

A studio mark can look sharp in a pitch deck and turn to mush as a favicon, a social avatar or a tiny sponsor credit. Here is how Redcat Studios stress-tests its own logo at the sizes that actually matter, and what small UK creative businesses can borrow from the process.

A Film With a Boundary Problem: Shooting a Short Inside Half a Mile
Filmmaking

A Film With a Boundary Problem: Shooting a Short Inside Half a Mile

We set a rule for our latest short: every frame had to be captured within a half-mile of one UK postcode. Here is what that did to permissions, casting, location reuse and the way we told the story.

Nine UK-Made Gifts We'd Actually Tuck Into a Creative's Kit Bag
Design

Nine UK-Made Gifts We'd Actually Tuck Into a Creative's Kit Bag

A Christmas 2026 gift guide with a bias: small, useful, UK-made, and tough enough to survive a real shoot day. Nine picks for filmmakers, photographers and designers, reviewed honestly and sized for a stocking.

Three Metres in the Drizzle: Designing Film Key Art for Bus Shelters, Not Monitors
Design

Three Metres in the Drizzle: Designing Film Key Art for Bus Shelters, Not Monitors

Our billboard-first process for an independent short film, from squinting at a printout from across the road to picking colours that hold up under sodium light and wet glass. A practical guide to key art that survives the actual British outdoors.

Documentary Photography

Rewinding the Nineties: What a Shoebox of Video8 Tapes Taught Us About Rescuing Old Footage

A client arrived with forty-odd camcorder cassettes and a reasonable question: were her kids still in there? Three months of capture cards, perished belts and colour bleed later, here's our practical UK workflow for anyone with a drawer of 1990s tapes and a story worth keeping.

Nine Lives, One Logo: Giving Our Studio Cat a Personality Without the Cringe
Design

Nine Lives, One Logo: Giving Our Studio Cat a Personality Without the Cringe

Our red cat started as a doodle on a call sheet and ended up on idents, invoices and the studio door. Here is how we built a character-led identity that still lets the work do the talking.

When the Render Looked Finished and the Film Wasn't: Our Month With AI Storyboards
Filmmaking

When the Render Looked Finished and the Film Wasn't: Our Month With AI Storyboards

We spent a month using AI storyboard tools on live pitches and shoot plans. The speed was real. So was the weird emptiness. Here is why our sketchbooks came back off the shelf.

Grey Is a Colour Too: Building a Brand Palette That Survives British Daylight
Design

Grey Is a Colour Too: Building a Brand Palette That Survives British Daylight

Most palettes get signed off on a bright monitor at midnight and then fall apart the moment they meet an overcast Tuesday in Leeds. Here's how we test colour in real British light, and a simple framework any independent brand can run before committing to print, packaging or a shoot.

Ninety Minutes, One Clipboard: Our Street-Level Recce Routine for UK Shoots
Filmmaking

Ninety Minutes, One Clipboard: Our Street-Level Recce Routine for UK Shoots

You can't get a permit for a pavement, and most days you don't need one — but the ground you're standing on almost always belongs to somebody. Here's the ninety-minute recce we run before any low-budget shoot in a British town, plus a checklist you can print and take with you.

The £500 Film School: Lessons from a Leeds Short Shoot
Filmmaking

The £500 Film School: Lessons from a Leeds Short Shoot

We made a short film across Leeds on a £500 budget in 2026. Here is what worked, what did not, and the practical lessons we would take into the next Redcat Studios shoot.

Shopfront Stories: Photographing the High Street Before the Shutters Come Down
Documentary Photography

Shopfront Stories: Photographing the High Street Before the Shutters Come Down

Redcat Studios spent weeks photographing independent shopkeepers and high-street details in a UK town. The series is part portrait project, part design archive, and a reminder that shopfronts are cultural documents.