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Three friends, no money and a cracked iMac
Three of us, Richard Penfold, Sam Hearn and John Roe, set up Omni Productions in May 2002 in Studio 44 at the Easton Business Centre on Felix Road, Bristol. We started together with no money, no clients and no real idea what we were doing. We had a trestle table that wobbled for meetings and an iMac with a crack down the side, because John had hit it when it would not work. For the first few days, until we found a flat, we slept on the office floor. We have been on Macs ever since.
Three friends from university, a rented studio and the belief that the same small team could make a music video, a website and a short film without any of them being a compromise. Twenty-four years later the films are bigger, the kit is better and the address has changed twice, but the people making them are largely the same, and so is the reason.
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Things start to come together
Slowly the work arrived. The first clients were 4AD Records, The Big Issue, the Royal Photographic Society, the Salvation Army, Somerset County Council and St Paul's Carnival. Our first film with a cause was a short made to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS, screened at the Cube Cinema and shown in schools.
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Young Entrepreneurs, and a dog's-eye view
We won the Avon final of the Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards. The same year Sam and Richard shot Dog Years, a short film from a hound's point of view, on Super 8 in a 48-hour film challenge. The entire budget was £3.99, spent on sausages for the dog. The Evening Post's media page took notice.
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Award
A royal visitor, then two awards in one night
In July, Princess Anne visited us in Easton and was taken through the post-production workflow. In November Dog Years won twice at Brief Encounters, Bristol's international short film festival, in its tenth anniversary year: the ITV West Award and the UK Film Council Audience Award, voted for by the people who bought tickets.
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Dog Years goes round the world
Nobody expected much of a film whose entire budget had gone on sausages for the dog. Then Dog Years kept winning: festival after festival, and it took us with it, all over the world. The furthest was Aspen Shortsfest in Colorado. John had not worked on the film, so we made him executive producer for the trip, which meant he came skiing with us and answered questions about a £3.99 production with a straight face. The run of wins also earned us a sequel, commissioned by Atom Films, the viral video company of the day, which is why the original now carries the title Chapter 1.
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Award
Indians
A six-and-a-half minute film about an elderly war veteran who, as he lies dying in the snow, remembers a boyhood spent playing cowboys and Indians. Shot at Old Down Farm near Thornbury with four local schoolboys, and chosen for the South West Showcase at Brief Encounters, where it won the ITV West Award and its £1,000 prize, the second year running for an Omni film.
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The last winter in Easton
All of us at the Easton Business Centre in November 2006, four years and a good many films after we took the lease on Studio 44.
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Dove Lane, eight people and a 360-degree studio
We moved to Dove Lane in St Pauls, Bristol, and renovated it from the floor up. Business Link's profile that year counted eight of us, turnover grown to £280,000 since the start, and a client list that had just added a complete rebrand for the Royal Photographic Society. Richard's line to the interviewer still holds: "We pride ourselves on being able to offer 360-degree creative services."
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Awards
Leaving at the IVCA Awards
A drama about a woman leaving an abusive relationship, and the beginning of the work on domestic abuse that runs all the way through to Safe Spaces for AXA nearly twenty years later. At the IVCA Awards in March 2007 it took first prize and three Gold awards, including Best Drama. It went on to win the Official Jury Prize at the British Independent Film Awards, Best Cinematography from Fujifilm and the Silver Dragon for Best Fiction at the Krakow Film Festival.
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Award
Leaving wins again
The team behind Leaving at the Turner Classic Movies Short Film Awards in October 2008, where it took first prize.
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The team days begin
Snowdon in October 2010 started a habit: every few months all of us go somewhere with no phone signal. Canoes, sea kayaks, waterfalls, Dartmoor, the Gower, the Mendips. It is where most of the good ideas and all of the good stories come from.
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Milestone
The move to Underfall Yard
In January 2018 we moved to the boatyard on Bristol's Floating Harbour and built our own edit suites and voice-over booth. The same year we became one of the first production companies in the UK to certify as a B Corp, and have recertified every three years since. What that means day to day. By the autumn there was a software team in the meeting room as well as a film crew in the suites, the beginning of the work that became Campaign Studio.
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Filming through Covid
The year the industry stopped, we mostly did not. Masks, distance, testing and smaller crews, and the work carried on: this is the UWE Bristol commercial being shot in a sports hall in November 2020, the one that was highly commended at the Brand Film Awards two years later.
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Award
The Telly Awards, and Wiltshire Farm Foods
A Silver Telly Award in the education film category for Last Date, the drama that helps teenagers see the signs of coercive control, arrived on 30 October 2020. The same year brought Sylvia & Fred, the first of a run of television commercials for Wiltshire Farm Foods that is still going: Rainy Day Deliveries, Bring Me Sunshine, Don't Tell Geoff.
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Auto Trader on TV
Britain's Biggest Matchmaker, then First Date and Instant Offer: three national television campaigns in a year for Auto Trader.
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WaterAid: Water Means Life
A direct response appeal shot on location for WaterAid, and the year our DRTV work for charities became a specialism in its own right. The same year the UWE Bristol commercial was highly commended at the Brand Film Awards.
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FixMyCar: The Riddler
A brand launch campaign with a character at its centre: a Riddler who appears from nowhere to talk in riddles about your car, so that FixMyCar can be the one talking plainly. Written, produced and directed in-house, and cut into nearly fifty edits for TikTok, Meta and TV. It was also the first job where the software around the films mattered as much as the films.
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Award
Best Video at the RAD Awards
RWE's employee value proposition films, shot offshore among the turbines, won Best Video at the 2025 RAD Awards, the recruitment industry's own.
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Safe Spaces for AXA
A drama series on domestic abuse for AXA's people, directed by Richard Penfold and delivered in twelve languages. Twenty years after Leaving, the same subject at a very different scale.
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Award
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Now
AI films and Campaign Studio
The first films made with generative tools under a written policy, and the first campaign software built alongside the films. Below, the trailers for Unmerciful, a drama about the wreck of the Sea Venture in 1609, and A Dragon's Oath, for a fantasy novel. How we use AI and what Campaign Studio is.
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What has not changed
In 2002 it was three friends who cared about getting a film right and about who it was for, and that is still the whole of it. We care about the work, so it gets the time it needs and the people who know how to do it. We care about our people, which is why most of the team has been here for more than a decade and why the company goes up a mountain together every few months. And we care about the world the films go out into: the subjects we take on, the way we treat a crew, a supplier and a set, the miles we offset and the standard we certified to in 2018. The kit, the address and the tools have changed many times. The intention has not: to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.