Whisper International: Wales

Whisper now produces entertainment across the globe, with busy, working offices in Wales and New Zealand, as well as in Manchester and London in the UK. It also operates from several international Sony Hubs. ??

With a success story to date and big growth plans for the future for the Whisper Cymru office in Cardiff, we caught up with Managing Director, Carys Owens. ?

Carys, how has Whisper Cymru grown in recent years?

It’s been a fantastic 12 months for our team, we have expanded the office and edit facilities in Cardiff and grown our team to 27 people, from a small team just a few years ago. It’s been a really accelerated period of growth for us, in what’s been a tough economic and creative climate.?

The focus for this financial year was to expand our work to include more unscripted work alongside our live, highlight and digital sports content. Over the past 24 months we've delivered four documentaries, a three-part series and have been awarded our first six-part factual entertainment series.?

We also got nominated for an international Emmy for one of our documentaries, which was mind blowing!

I’m really proud that we launched the Whisper Academy at Whisper Cymru, which began with a two-day taster bootcamp for new starters in the industry. Over 200 individuals applied and 96 took part in the event, with four cohorts being awarded a 12-month fully paid placement with Whisper Cymru.?It was a great example of the Whisper Group impacting positive change and improving opportunity in under-represented areas of the industry.?

The trainees are part of the team, working across RWC, W6N, WRU, British & Irish Lions and The Paralympics. It’s been so successful we will begin further training in April with additional exciting training news coming up soon!

?Alongside our growth, we have retained our showpiece live programmes, the W6N for BBC and RWC for S4C, which are hugely important to us as a business. We also work with the WRU and the British & Irish Lions.

What opportunities are there in Wales at present?

We have further training opportunities coming up this April plus, as we prepare for C4's Paralympic Games coverage, there will be plenty opportunities for local staff to be part of this iconic event.

We are also looking into ways of collaborating with other companies to expand our live portfolio, there’s nothing I can confirm right now, but there are lots of opportunities coming up this year!

What is your focus on in the next few weeks and months?

The Paralympic Games will really be a catalyst for demonstrating a more sustainable and efficient way of producing our content and alongside this we are focusing on finding other events and clients that would like to become part of this journey.?

We are also focusing on elevating our training opportunities through the Whisper Academy to develop the next generation of broadcasting talent here in Wales.

What's been your biggest success in recent times??

Well, it's not all about awards... but the International Emmy has to be a big highlight for the Wales office! To put Welsh production talent on the international map and be recognised among the best of the best in unscripted work is just sensational and I’m so proud of the whole team.?

Also covering the RWC for S4C this year was brilliant with a team of 40 on the ground in Paris.?

And also, one of my favourite things has been seeing our Academy cohorts flourish on productions. They’ve blended seamlessly into our productions and the first Whisper Academy process has been a huge success!

What's been your biggest achievement at Whisper Cymru??

We are pleased how we have expanded on screen from digital content, through to live coverage and highlights and now have a slate of varied unscripted work.??

Alongside that is our expansion off screen and seeing the team evolve, including multi-skilled technical staff, an experienced and knowledgeable editorial team as well as developing upcoming newer team members.

Are you able to tell us about plans for the Paralympics as yet??

The Paralympics is going to be huge for us and bring a host of opportunities to our Welsh production staff. Also to the wider economy as the impact of a production of this scale to coming to Cardiff is felt. As you can imagine, we have a lot of developments underway to prepare for the production.

What's next for Whisper Cymru?

We’re focusing on bringing more productions to Wales by utilising our remote production capabilities, bringing more young people into the industry by expanding the Whisper Academy and continuing to be innovative in the way we produce content to bring our clients the best production possible.