DEFINITION February 2018

08 NEWS INTERVIEW

In its third year at its home in Battersea Evolution, the event now caters for a developing industry organiser as we find out from organiser, Rob Saunders BSC EXPO 2018 THE ONES TO WATCH

were very different. You had to have had x amount of feature films under your belt.” This has changed, and the move of television drama towards feature-film working practices has expanded the base of both exhibitors and attendees. Rob describes the expo as “a very strong hardware show – camera, grips lighting. We do now get more of a broadcast element coming into the show. Is that because those guys are looking to get into the feature film market? Probably.” Attendance at the BSC Expo is now around 4000, a huge expansion since the mid-90s shows which often attracted around a tenth of that. Exhibitors, says Rob, are happy too. “When you have some of our major exhibitors saying to us, ‘you’re one of three shows globally that we absolutely adore doing and are always in our budgets and we’re always going to be there,’ we feel that we’re getting something right.”

booth from another. It was sort of publicised within the circles of the BSC but not hugely outside of that, So they brought us in to take the event to the next stage.” The event grew significantly in moves to Pinewood and Leavesden in the following years. This attachment to a sound stage venue, while appropriate, would eventually become a limitation. “We had a good loyal base of exhibitors who would say that we know that the show will be on next year, we know it’ll be in February, March or April, but it was a logistical nightmare because we were only given a few months’ notice by a studio saying, you’ve got the space, you can run your show.” The move to dedicated exhibition space at Battersea Evolution came in 2016, arguably at a time when the BSC itself was refocusing. Rob continues, “If we go back to when we took on the show, the requirements to be a BSC member

he event which formed the genesis of the BSC Expo was originally suggested by Joe Dunton MBE BSC, who’s history of innovation and engineering in film equipment dates back to the 1970s. Held on a small stage at Shepperton, the event was called the New Equipment Show and would move on to venues including Grip House in Greenford, Elstree Studios, and the Mister Lighting studios (now Dukes Island) in Hangar Lane. In this format, the show lasted until 2003 at Elstree before expanding scale and growing numbers of exhibitors and attendees demanded more. SCS Exhibitions’ Rob Saunders became involved in 2005, discovering an event which, while successful, could clearly go further. “It was a bit of a rough and ready type of event at Elstree Studios,” he begins. “It was a one-dayer, it was a bit of gaffer tape on the floor that marked one

ABOVE BSC is now in its third year at Battersea Evolution.

ATTENDANCE AT BSC EXPO IS NOW AROUND 4000

DEFINITION FEBRUARY 2018

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