Happy Hour Productions

Company profile

Happy Hour Productions was formed in 1999 by Tom George (producer), and in association with Michael Percival (director/editor). Happy Hour was initially designed as a creative outlet for Bristol based film makers in the production of short films, music promos, and independent film & tv projects.

Over the years, that remit has grown to include tv and cinema commercials, corporate films, and animation productions. In 2003, Happy Hour became a limited company, with Colin Gardiner (director/editor) joining the directorship of the company.

Since then, Happy Hour has focused on TV commercials work, music video production and high-end corporate video production. We find this work tremendously rewarding. Being able to apply feature film production quality to TV & Video based projects gives us a real sense of satisfaction as film makers. It is in our interest to provide our clients with the best 'production value' possible for their projects.

What do we mean by 'production value'?
The perceived value of the production on screen, compared to actual monetary value. A TV commercial may have had a budget of £50k for instance, but we will make it look at least double that! Looks good for us, and looks good for you.

How do we do that?

Well, that's one of the reasons we are based in Bristol. London has typically dominated our industry for some time now, and yet we are still scratching our heads and wondering why many agencies persist in using London production companies. The facilities in Bristol are just as good, our crew are the very same crew working for the London companies, our director's have won all the same awards...in a nutshell, part of the reason we can provide high end productions at lower cost is our address (and we are in the nice part of Bristol!). Likewise the facilities and crew don't need to charge London weighting...The rest of the savings are down to good producing!

And why the name 'Happy Hour Productions'...?

Well, we do get asked that a lot...to cut a long story short, Tom directed a play in 1997, in Derby, entitled 'Unsuitable for Adults' (an extremely funny play by Terry Johnson). The play is set in a pub, and hence Tom named the production company, Happy Hour Theatre Company...and the name just kind of stuck when he started making short films.

However, on a serious business point, we have tried to think up some USP tag lines for Happy Hour, but the likes of "we only want to work one hour a day", or "only call between 5 and 6" don't really give the right impression.

Ultimately, we want to make people happy for at least an hour at a time, and we are great fun to work with!

If you are still reading this, well, then frankly we are amazed...dont you have work to do?