SCREEN WEXFORD @ FOCUS, THE MARKETPLACE FOR INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION

2020 marked Screen Wexford’s inaugural year and it would not have been complete without attending FOCUS – THE MEETING PLACE FOR INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION. This year’s market took place online and proved to be a vibrant space to connect and share global production expertise across film, TV, advertising, animation and games. FOCUS has established itself as an important date in the screen industry calendar offering a plethora of filming solutions, potential partners and production intelligence for all types of project and all levels of budget, from pre through to post-production. A number of Ireland’s Screen Offices were also in attendance as well as The Locations Guild of Ireland, Screen Producers Ireland, Commercial Producers Ireland and of course Ireland’s lead agency for screen production – Screen Ireland.

There were too many valuable talks and workshops for us to share but the stand out event for us was:

THE REALITY OF VIRTUAL PRODUCTION

2020 witnessed an enormous development in the area of virtual technology or virtual production.  Its potential appears to be limitless.  The release of The Mandalorian in 2019 and the pandemic has created a tremendous interest in the potential of VFX and an acceleration of what creatively, might be possible in terms of production. eg. It allows production design to be realised earlier and also it allows more control.  But advances such as these require large teams of people and are currently massively expensive. The discussion looked at what we can expect over the next 5-10 years.

Speakers:
Tim Keene – Managing Director, The Third Floor London
Hasraf ‘HaZ’ Dulull – Director / Producer,  HaZ FILM Ltd.
Brian Mitchell – Head of Rebellion Film Studios
Glenn Kelly – Head of Production, Imaginarium Studios

The FOCUS programme is developed in consultation with a Content Advisory Board featuring representatives from leading industry bodies. Members include the British Film Institute, British Film Commission, Pact, Directors UK, Advertising Producers Association, The Production Guild GB, ScreenSkills, UK Screen Alliance, Creative Europe Media Desk UK and Women in Film and TV. The content programme is presented in association with media partner Variety and sponsored by Production Service Network.