Hosting film and photoshoots at Hackney House

We step inside Hackney House for a chat with the owner, Oli, to chat about life, sound, and the magic of living in a space that inspires both. Our conversation with Oli is a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the personality and charm that make Hackney House so special for film and photoshoot productions.

Hello, I’m a song-writer and music producer, from the middle of nowhere in Scotland living on the edge of somewhere in Hackney. I live here with my wife Jen and our two children. We’ve lived here since 2014 and timed our ambitious renovation with child birth, a global pandemic and lockdowns, which was nice. Seriously, it would have made a face melting episode of Grand Designs, but I’m glad it wasn’t televised. The struggling forged our perfectionism though and we were very happy with the outcome, and it gave us the space we needed to raise our Perfectly Well Behaved Children.

The music I’ve worked on in the ‘shed’ studio down the bottom of our garden has been all around the world and back, with artists like Snoop Dogg and Dre Dre and brands from Audi to Electronic Arts, and the shed itself was built in 2015 by Channel 4’s Joel Bird and features in his ‘Book of Shed’.

Our good friend at Semara House has been renting her place for shoots through Location Creation and had a great experience of the process. When she saw our renovation, she suggested we get in touch!

The place definitely started as a ‘fixer-upper’. We had a damp spare room with a mattress on the floor. Our friend Gunnar from Scotland came to stay, and the cat brought him a rat carcass and left it on the bed an east-London themed welcoming tribute. As it happens Gunnar is an architect, so we asked him what he would do with the place, and that, somehow, was the start of the project! 

We’ve always admired Gunnar’s work so we were super-happy to have him help on our place, Vogue recently called his style ‘Skand-Scot’  but I prefer ‘Skaledonian’. We love the minimal, raw plaster, douglas fir. There’s a wabi-sabi feel to it with perfection in the imperfections and complexity in the simplicity.

Architects: @_gras @andrewhodgkinson @gunnar_gras

The snug area, when the Perfectly Well Behaved kids are finally in bed we can snug up with a warm cuppa, and a good book… OK a trashy action film.

So far all the crew and cast have been great, I work from the studio in the garden so I’m usually around for shoots if something is needed, and get to meet everyone. 

Fave shoot – recently we hosted a shoot for a short film called ‘The Quiet Hours’ about a psychiatrist who goes slowly insane. I look forward to seeing that!

Get a cat, ours is very friendly, and has an unquenchable thirst for attention, she’s our artist liaison.