A live production crew built around calm, clear work
How a small Ipswich company grew from directing festival broadcasts into a crew that runs control rooms for concerts, stage shows and streams across the region.
How simpliqra began
simpliqra was founded in Ipswich in 2013 by Daniel Whitcombe, a television director who wanted live production to feel less frantic. The company has grown steadily since. It still works from the same town, close to the venues it serves.
Daniel had spent years directing live television and festival broadcasts, and kept seeing the same avoidable trouble: crews who met for the first time on the day, plans that lived in one person's head, and kit that was chosen late. He started simpliqra to offer organisers a crew that arrived organised and stayed composed.
The first jobs were small stage shows and local concerts, with Daniel cutting and directing himself. Word spread among venues and organisers in Suffolk and beyond, and the company began to add operators for vision mixing, replay and graphics so that bigger productions could be covered properly.
Over time the work widened from single events to the rooms themselves. Venues and studios asked for help designing compact control rooms and production decks, and Daniel took on those fit-outs alongside the live crewing, keeping the same attention to how the people inside would actually work.
Today the team covers multi-camera switching, live streaming, outside broadcast crewing, replay and graphics, and show management. Each person has a clear role, and the crew changes shape according to the event instead of forcing every job into one standard package.
We have stayed deliberately small. That lets the person who plans your production be the person who answers the phone, and it means the operators you meet at the briefing are the ones who sit at the desk on the night.
A good control room is a quiet one. If everyone knows the plan and trusts the person beside them, the audience simply sees a well-made show.
Daniel Whitcombe, Founder and Technical Director
What we stand for
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Calm under pressure
Live shows throw up surprises. We keep our voices level, deal with faults one step at a time and protect the programme output, so the audience never sees the scramble behind it.
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Clear communication
We write down the plan, brief the whole crew and keep intercom talk short and precise. Clients always know who is responsible for what, before the day and during the show.
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Reliable delivery
We arrive when we said we would, with kit that has been tested and a plan for when something fails. Agreed scope is what gets delivered, and any change is discussed first.
Who we work with and how a job is shaped
Our clients are mostly event organisers, venues, broadcasters and streaming producers in the East of England. Some come to us for a single festival weekend, others for a run of stage productions or a series of recorded concerts, and a few return each season for the same event.
Every job begins with a conversation about what the audience, at the venue or at home, needs to see. From there we work out how many cameras are sensible, where the control room will sit, what graphics or replays are wanted and how the signal reaches its destination.
Hannah Brooks then builds the crew plan, schedule and kit list, so travel, load-in, testing and rehearsal are all accounted for before the day. Where a venue has limits on space, power or connectivity, we raise them early rather than discover them at load-in.
On the day, Priya, Callum, Daniel and the wider crew work to a shared running order. Priya cuts the show, Callum watches the streaming chain, and a production manager or show caller keeps cues moving. Afterwards we are glad to talk through what worked and what could change next time.
We do not push a fixed package. A two-camera stage show and a multi-stage festival need very different crews, and we would rather say so honestly than sell more than the event requires.
Tell us about your event and we will plan from there
Send a few details through the contact page and a member of the team will reply with questions, suggestions and, once the scope is clear, a written quotation.
Contact- Share the date, venue and kind of show
- We reply with questions and a proposed crew
- You receive a written quotation to review
