£3 million secured over three years for film and TV skills development opportunities in Scotland
Industry and training providers across Scotland will work together as part of the BFI Skills Cluster delivered by Screen Scotland
The BFI Skills Cluster in Scotland will include a focus on future-facing technologies in VFX, Virtual Production and Animation as well as further developing crew skills in Gaelic language production.
Screen Scotland announces £3 million of funding for the BFI Skills Cluster delivered by Screen Scotland, part of a network of BFI Skills Clusters across the UK to grow the country’s film and TV workforce.
The funding, largely drawn from the BFI (awarding National Lottery funding) and The Scottish Government, will support three projects initially: a first-of-its-kind fellowship in Virtual Production programme, broadcast skills training under the Stornoway Studio Training Programme, and RESET which is aimed at people from all walks of life looking to transfer their skills and start a new career in the animation, VFX and games sectors.
Virtual production combines physical and virtual filmmaking techniques – often driven by games sector technologies such as the Unreal Engine - to create advanced real-time 3D and photoreal environments for filming. It is an emerging technology, but one where Scotland already has a reputation as a global leader.
The BFI will contribute £1.1m of National Lottery funding over the next three years, while Screen Scotland, via Scottish Government funding, will contribute an additional £800k. A further £1.1m of investment in Scotland’s crew skills will be leveraged by the public agencies from a range of industry partners, taking the total investment between BFI, Screen Scotland and industry partners to £3m across 3 years.
Further details here