Hot Spots: How Northern Ireland Is Plotting Its Next Steps To Meet The Demands Of The Global Production Boom
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Northern Ireland has long been known for bewitching locations from its dramatic coastlines to its abundant forests and rugged mountain scenery. Couple that with a well-reputed crew base and it’s not hard to see why HBO’s Game of Thrones called the region its home for nearly a decade.
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International productions have continued to flock to the territory with Netflix’s Paul Feig-directed fairy tale adventure The School for Good and Evil, which drops today, marking the streamer’s first major production to shoot in Northern Ireland. The streamer also just wrapped Kevin Hart comedy heist film Lift there, while Alcon Entertainment’s new Amazon TV series Blade Runner 2099 is set to shoot in the region next year.
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But as the goalposts for the film and television industry continue to shift and the global production boom shows no sign of abating, Northern Ireland is ramping up efforts to strengthen its skill sector and give a leg up to its next generation of storytellers from the region for the benefit of its local industry and international productions looking to shoot in the territory.
“The global boom in production is a big, big strain everywhere,” says Andrew Reid, Head of Production at Northern Ireland Screen. “We have been growing our crew base for the last 15 years or so and we have a very deliberately structured training program, which we are expanding.”
Last week, the national screen agency, which promotes and supports development of a sustainable film, television and animation sector in Northern Ireland, unveiled its new four-year strategy titled Stories, Skills and Sustainability, with the plan to do exactly what it says on the tin: create avenues for its local storytellers to climb up the ladder while also investing government money into its skills sector.
Funding for the initial year has increased by £4.8 million ($5.4 million) to £17.3 million ($19.4 million), backed by the Northern Ireland Department for Economy, while it’s also planning to more than double its investment in the skills sector to £4 million ($4.5 million) all while introducing environmental sustainability in the process.
“To the international side of things, I would say that we have been very serious and dedicated towards properly reflecting a makeup of the people in the screen industry,” Reid says. “But secondly, we also get to make real-value careers in Northern Ireland.”
The exec adds that the new strategy is “going to be the first strategy where the priority, in just about all of our areas is, by large scale, indigenous.”
“It’s about getting creative talent to work at a higher level,” he says, pointing to Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee as a prime example of emerging talent that has come through the pipeline in recent years.
“She was someone who came through our new and emerging talent a decade ago and was the kind of filmmaker we were supporting,” he says. “Now, our big challenge is about how we are going to get somebody from the network drama level up to the larger-scale film projects. We need to give them a foot up and that’s our big challenge as well as inclusion, wellbeing, health and all of the other global things we have to do. We just have to keep that pipeline going.”
Last March, the Creative Industries New Entrant scheme was launched through a BBC/Northern Ireland Screen partnership, which is exclusively targeted at offering new entrant opportunities to those least likely to enter the industry. It focuses on three groups: those with a disability, those from an ethnic minority or those from a lower socio-economic background.
“If we make the opening of the pipeline as wide as possible and capture as many young people as possible, we are going to have a much more diverse industry coming through – that is genuinely how our pipelines mature,” says Reid.
Northern Ireland Screen is also pushing innovative growth, driven by a £25.2 million ($28.3 million) Belfast Region City Deal investment into Studio Ulster, Ulster University’s virtual production facility at Belfast Harbour Studios. The cutting-edge filming location will be a 57,000 square foot building, housing two large-scale virtual production stages with an in-camera visual effects stage, a motion capture stage, a 3D scanning stage for full body, facial and object scanning and an R&D smart stage with virtual production technologies to support research. It’s expected to be open for filming from early 2024.
While studio capacity issues and crew shortages in and around London continue to cause producers to look further afield, Northern Ireland’s Belfast Harbour Studios and Titanic Studios have provided an ideal alternative for those looking to access UK talent and the territory’s 25% Film or High-End Television tax relief.
Belfast Harbour Studios, an eight-acre site located within the 340-acre Giants Park, is the newest purpose-built studio in Belfast. With two 32,000 square foot sound studios (which can also operate as one large space), workshops and production offices, it’s housed projects such as The School for Good and Evil, epic Viking saga The Northman and Warner Horizon Scripted Television’s Superman prequel Krypton.
Titanic Studios, meanwhile, is one of Europe’s largest film studios with a combined set area of 106,000 square feet. It was the main studio and post-production facility for all eight series of Game of Thrones and has housed international productions such as Your Highness, City of Ember and Hugh Grant and Chris Pine starrer Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
“We are open for business with anyone who wants to come and work here but we want partners,” says Reid, pointing to the country’s long relationship with Warner Bros. and HBO. “We want people who will treat our crews with respect and who will treat our locations and owners with respect. We’re not into this sort of short-term thinking and exploitative relationships. We want partners in production that share our values and want to diversify the industry they work with and who will buy into our skills strategy and give the opportunities to Northern Ireland residents to grow.”
He adds, “We have great facilities, great locations but the vast majority of the screen industries are the people and that’s where the ideas come from – that’s where the skills and the creativity come from and we want to work with people who share our common values in terms of allowing as many people access to the screen industry for the betterment of the region.”
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