New studio’s big plans
Queenstown’s planned $6 million digital studio will provide a blank canvas, and also modern-day brushes and paint, for filmmakers, game designers, content creators, and a host of other creative and corporate projects.
Target3D is building the facility in Remarkables Park’s Research & Innovation Queenstown (RIQ) hub.
The London-based company are the “mechanics behind creativity”, providing the latest cutting-edge tools in virtual production (think green screen) and motion capture.
They’re also big on education, both in terms of educating those industries on how to make the most of the tech, and also educating people to work in those industries, filling the massive skills gap in New Zealand and abroad.
As such, the Queenstown studio will be a lesson in what can be done, and how to do it, from the very start.
Shannon Dowsing, Director of Target3D New Zealand and former Tairāwhiti Gisborne councillor, says: “From the day they give us the keys, we’ll be documenting everything from an R&D perspective.
“We’ll share the journey of the build, what it takes to build one of these studios in New Zealand, the challenges, why we select particular products over others.”
The company has already designed and managed studio builds at elite education institutes including LIPA (Paul McCartney’s former school), Cambridge University, the University of Liverpool, Rose Bruford College and Goldsmiths, University of London.
It is a supplier of the tech to other organisations in the UK and Spain and has also established the UK Institute of Virtual Production, supported by the UK Government, as a resource for the film industry.
“We want to do the same here and provide a resource for the NZ film industry,” Dowsing says.
The Queenstown studio will have essentially identical specs to Target3D’s new studio in London.
“The reason is we want to be able to do co-location projects. We want to be to have one actor on our stage in Queenstown, another in London, and have them interacting as if they were on the same set.
“We can create scenarios where we have two perfectly indistinguishable plates, with matching robotic camera movements, identical background, lighting etc.”
The exacting specs for the 450sqm space will even influence Remarkables Park’s building design, such as weight-loading for the foundations, ceiling heights, electronics and other considerations.
Even Chorus has come to the party, upgrading its exchange capacity in Frankton to take the fastest high-speed fibre broadband.
Creating educational pathways is also at the heart of what Target3D does, along with its sister company Rāngai.
“I looked at bringing Target3D to New Zealand about five years ago. At the time I was a district councillor and on our economic development agency here in Tairāwhiti.
“And the problem with introducing the business was the concept of talent importation, and gentrification, creating issues in the region.”
Realising there was a very small workforce for such industries, Dowsing set up Rāngai to provide education. It is the first company to have a contract with the new Te Pūkenga (New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology) as an accredited education provider.
It provides screen production training from its Tairāwhiti Gisborne studio, including paid work on real-world productions, and operates a cast and crew agency.
The aim is to have a workforce which is 75% local and that ethos will come to Queenstown’s Target3D studio, although how it will tie in with Te Pūkenga’s Southern Institute of Technology, Otago University and neighbour Wakatipu High School is still to be worked through.
“In Tairāwhiti very few people go on a tertiary pathway, but that’s different for Queenstown. So those are the conversations we’ll have. What gap do we need to fill? Are we workforce development, rather than an education provider, helping students upskill with real-world experience outside their student hours?”
The relatively small studio expects to employ six permanent staff, with dozens more working there on productions.
