So yesterday some of us went over for our first look at the new Rare Birmingham facility, part of Fazeley Studios in the Digbeth area of the city. It opened for business a couple of weeks back, and our Flex art department and contract test staff have already moved in. This seemed like a good time to get footage for an eventual video tour of the place and pull together some thoughts from the people running it. So the four of us (Leigh, Mike and Ben from the web/community/publishing side of things plus designer Dale who’s a bit handy with a camera) piled into the big automatic company Volvo and took to the M6.

It turns out that Rare’s suite of units within the impressive Fazeley Studios complex is more or less divided in two, with the artists gathered in one sprawling open-plan room and the Kinect testers in dedicated bays over on the other side. We sneaked a look at plans for slick wall art based on the new branding, got a whistle-stop tour from site manager Lynne and test manager Huw, then went off to storm the city centre for appropriate establishing shots. And burgers. After that, we split into teams in the style of 1980s British TV series Treasure Hunt (Mike was Anneka Rice) and embarked upon the serious business of making people look really uncomfortable in front of a camera.

One whirlwind afternoon later, we’d put away footage of all the Digbeth top brass, testers at work trying to break Kinect Sports and scenic views of Birmingham including the Bullring (note: not a real bull ring) and giant Green Man sculpture a few streets from the studio. The next job is to hammer all that into shape as soon as we can and get it uploaded for those who are interested. Then at some point we’ll have to balance it out by giving our Twycross HQ the same treatment…

Other things discovered or confirmed on the day:
- If you’ve only driven a manual car, prepare to be truly freaked by the absence of clutch in an automatic.
- Fazeley Studios’ main entrance hall is seriously swish. The fancy chairs are beaten only by the elephant sculptures.
- At one point Dale expessed an inclination to carry around an ‘emergency pie’ at all times.
- Rare Birmingham has Old Jamaica ginger beer in the free drinks fridge – where’s ours in Twycross?
- The best photo of the day is often the last one you take (see below right).