Nine WintersSCENESC 14TAKETK 03LENS40 mmSTOPT1.3TC00:00:12:06
STORY & DIRECTIONPRODUCTION & CREWPOST & COLOUR
STORY & DIRECTIONPRODUCTION & CREWPOST & COLOUR
Halide.
We make films, commercials and the occasional stubborn documentary.
Nine years, one building, and a crew who would rather wait forty minutes for the right light than fix it later. Most of what we shoot is quiet. Some of it travels further than we expected.
ROOM 01 · STAGE 2,400 sq ft, 19 ft grid, blackout to daylight in under an hour.
inside. who we are
A small unit that keeps the same people on the film
Halide started as three people and a borrowed Bolex. It is now a stage, a cutting room and a crew of thirty-seven who have mostly worked together long enough to argue productively.
We take on around fourteen projects a year. That number is deliberate. It means the director who pitched your film is the one standing behind the monitor, and the editor knows why a take was printed before you have to explain it.
Founded
2017, in a garage on Vancouver Street with one light and a great deal of optimism.
Rooms
Stage, grade suite, sound booth and a cutting room with a door that actually closes.
Kit
Large-format bodies, vintage spherical glass, and a dolly older than most of the crew.
Marguerite Auer Director & founder
how a film gets made. in order
Four stages, and we tell you where we are in all of them
You tell us the thing you actually want said. We come back with a treatment, a look, and an honest number — not three tiers designed to push you upward.
1—2 weeks
02
Prep & scout
Boards, casting, locations, permits, kit list. By the time we lock, every department has seen the same document and signed off on it.
2—4 weeks
03
Principal photography
Shoot days run on a call sheet you receive the night before. Dailies land in your inbox by ten the next morning, graded rough so they read properly.
1—10 days
04
Cut, colour, deliver
Two rounds of notes are built into the schedule, not sold back to you. You get masters, socials, subtitles and the project archive on a drive.
3—6 weeks
showreel. 2026 cut
Two minutes and fourteen seconds of the last nine years
Founded Halide in 2017. Directs the narrative slate and reads every treatment that leaves the building.
CAMERA
Tobias Fenn
Shoots on vintage spherical glass and will argue for a longer lens in almost any situation. Usually right.
STORY
Idris Kalu
Writes and structures. Turns a client brief into something a crew can actually shoot, usually by cutting half of it.
PRODUCTION
Wren Castellanos
Runs the board, the budget and the permits. The reason shoot days finish when the call sheet says they will.
on the record. clients & collaborators
They turned up with a shot list, a spare battery for everything, and one very good idea we had not thought of.
Elena MarchettiBrand Director, Rowntree Whisky
Two rounds of notes, both honoured, no invoice attached to either. I have worked with eleven studios and that has happened twice.
Samuel OkerekeHead of Content, Fieldnote
The dailies were graded well enough that our board understood the film three weeks before it was finished. That saved the project.
Priya RaghunathanExecutive Producer, Ash Grove Trust
We asked for a ninety-second commercial and they told us where the story actually started. The cut we ran was forty seconds shorter and much better.
Hana SorensenMarketing Lead, Meridian Group
shoot planner. rough numbers, honestly
Sketch the shoot before you write the brief
Every studio hides the number until the third meeting. Here is ours, in advance. Set the shape of your project and you will get the range we would quote, the crew it needs and how long it takes.
What are we making?
Crew scale
Finishing
Indicative range
—
—People on the floor
—Brief to delivery
Indicative only. Locations, cast, travel and rights move the number, and we will say so before you commit to anything.
If yours is not here, write to us. We answer in a day, and we answer properly rather than booking a call to say the same thing.
A single shoot day with a skeleton crew. We have made films that ran eleven hours and films that ran ninety seconds, and the second kind is often harder. If the idea is good and the schedule is honest, the size does not put us off.
Regularly. Roughly a third of last year's work was shot elsewhere, in eleven countries. We travel with a core team of four and hire the rest locally, which is usually better for the film and always better for the budget.
You do, on commissioned work, including the rushes. We ask only for the right to show the finished film in our reel and to submit it to festivals, and we will hold that back if there is a reason to.
Two, at the offline stage, and they are built into the schedule rather than billed afterwards. Structural changes after picture lock cost money, which is why we spend so long on the treatment.
Yes, and it often makes sense. We will tell you honestly where a swap saves money and where it will cost you a day. Our camera and grip package is available on its own if you only need the kit.
Six to eight weeks is comfortable for most projects, and two weeks is possible if the idea is clear and you are flexible on locations. We are currently taking bookings from the fourth quarter of 2026.
start something. we reply within a day
Tell us what you want said, not how to shoot it
The best briefs we receive are three paragraphs long and contain no camera directions at all. Send us the argument, the audience and the deadline — we will bring the rest.
