PRODUCTION
UK FILM STUDIOS
Gorton site with plans for the development of two new 20,000sqft stages with supporting accommodation. July ‘20 Liverpool’s Littlewoods Studios project takes a step forward with a £17 million funding commitment from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s Strategic Investment Fund. July ‘20 Sky Studios Elstree starts construction. The final design will have 12 sound stages on site, with the ability to merge and sub-divide multiple sound stages simultaneously. This means that the biggest sound stages on site can now increase to cover 60,000 sq. ft April ‘20 Planning consent is granted for the new Ashford International Film Studios. The £250m studio-led transformation of Kent’s derelict Newtown Railway Works by The Creative District Improvement Company (TCDI) and Quinn Estates is set to launch the complex in early 2022. March ‘20 Bridgepoint Studios, a new film studio in Rye, East Sussex, announces it is to open. December ‘19 All Studios confirms it will open the doors to its new city centre state of the art production facility, Leeds Studios, in May 2020 February ‘19 Shepperton Studios’ plans for expansion are given outline planning permission allowing the progression of Pinewood Group’s £500m investment to expand the facility.
Enola Holmes
The sticking point is whether there will be enough people with the right skills to service all this demand. “The challenge is that by its nature skills
progression lags behind space delivery, because it takes longer to train skilled employees than it does to retrofit a warehouse to film in,” says Read. “The impetus really needs to be on training,”
says Iredale. Because without those extra numbers of skilled crew, the end product will suffer. “We are lucky in that there are a lot of people that have very transferable skills from sectors that have been very hard hit by COVID, that can traverse across and develop what otherwise would be maybe three- or four-years’ experience, in maybe a year, because they’re already coming with a lot of core skills.” Wootton says: “We’ve estimated that we’re
going to need at least another 30,000 jobs in the industry over the course of the next five years. Many new entrants who need to not only train but then get real life placements and then real- life jobs and then they have to work their way up and through. That’s the longer curve. And that’s why there’s such a massive emphasis on this. We need new entrants and people coming from other industries – theatre, live entertainment retraining and reskilling and also people moving up because we need the heads of department as much as
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we need runners, we need key grips, we need production secretaries and production coordinators and location managers and also we’re going to need new skills. The advent of virtual production means that we’re also having to bring people in from the games industry.” As Page says: “It’s going to be a challenge.
There’s a fair amount of work being done on the more immediate skills shortages. But the time horizons for the skills piece are decades not years” and the industry needs to reach out to “primary school kids, secondary school kids, it’s about engaging with higher education to make people aware that there is a career here for them.” There’s an opportunity here too. The need for
such numbers to enter the sector means the net must be cast much wider and further than the film or drama business has ever done before. The opportunity for a greater diversity of backgrounds in the business has never been greater. Location Collective’s Iredale is not alone with his studio’s plans to make sure “everyone that we’re employing at the studio, beyond studio manager level, is going to be locally employed. And the agenda is to make sure that they’re from a background that wouldn’t otherwise jump themselves into the television and film industry. It could really do with a shake up in that sense.”
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