Great Point Media invests in £6m Welsh virtual production hub

UK finance and sales outfit Great Point Media has invested in a shiny, new, £6m virtual production hub at Great Point Seren Studios in Cardiff. 

Great Point Media, which has invested more than £500 in the creative industries worldwide, is joining up with Fields Park, US-based Volume Global and Media Cymru, a consortium of creative and educational institutions in South Wales to build the facility, that is due to be open for productions by the autumn.  

To be known as Seren Virtual Productions, the new offering will also house a virtual production research and training academy in collaboration with Media Cymru, aimed at continuing to develop the region into a thriving global hub for media innovation - with a focus on emergent and green technologies.

The whole of the Great Point Seren Studios complex is powered by green electricity, generated on-site by a dedicated wind turbine – and planned new studio buildings will feature “green rooves” as part of a landscape masterplan aimed at enhancing and protecting the habitats of the local flora and fauna. The site recently hosted Gareth Evan’s Netflix action-thriller, Havoc, staring Tom Hardy and is currently home to a high-end US TV production; A Discovery of Witches (pictured, above) is among other projects to have used the studio. 

(Great Point Seren Studios)

Jim Reeve, Great Point Media’s co-founder and CEO, said: “LED walls and virtual production workstreams are already beginning to reshape the business of making films and television programmes. We want to keep pace with that innovation to ensure that we can offer any production the facilities and systems required to meet their diverse and changing needs.”

Professor Sara Pepper, deputy director of Media Cymru said: “The development of a world-class virtual production studio and training and research facility at Seren will have a profound impact on the media cluster in the Cardiff Capital Region and a ripple effect throughout Wales and the UK. It signals a clear ambition: to provide a high-end facility which will attract interest from content creators across the globe. We look forward to the potential for boundary-pushing research and development (R&D) activity in this new space in our city region.”

Great Point Media was founded in 2013 by Jim Reeve and Robert Halmi.