Partnership Between Creative Studio and University Addresses Skills Gap in Media Production Industry
Final Pixel Academy and the University of Greenwich have partnered to offer a Virtual Production (VP) Skills Course. Offered to third-year film and TV students, the agile course equips them with hands-on technologies and virtual production skills that are sought after in the media and production industry. The technology forward-facing course, called New and Emerging Technology, has embedded a practice-led, R&D, eight-week course that runs across four, two-week sprints, which allows for exposure to iterative workflows and clusters key elements of virtual production into key themes.
The course requires students to investigate and evaluate the use and impact of new technologies within virtual production capacities across the film, TV and advertising industry. This includes cutting edge techniques, the latest outcomes from creative industry research, introduction to virtual production, and explanations of how to work with Unreal Engine, the gaming technology that is used most often in virtual production. The aim of the course is to prepare graduates for employment opportunities within the emerging world of virtual production, a market that is estimated to be worth USD 2.4Bn in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 5.4Bn by 2026.
As visual effects start to embrace the film industry via virtual production amid a landscape shaped by high demands for content, the industry’s talent pool is also expanding and overlapping with other industries. There exists, however, a wide skills gap in the labour marketplace and it is vital that universities like Greenwich look ahead to the industrial needs of the future and ensure it is producing highly-skilled graduates with the correct skills to fill these critical shortages. This course helps ensure our graduates are more employable in today’s media industry.
Dr. Jodi Nelson-Tabor, Sr Lecturer at the University of Greenwich
The course covers:
- Creative development, including end-to-end virtual production workflow
- Production design, including VFX skills, Unreal Engine design, virtual art department skills and production design
- On-stage production, covering LED wall building, studio management and camera tracking
The demand for virtual production services is growing day by day. We rely on graduates from film schools, universities and apprentice programs to fill a variety of roles from producers to VFX artists to specialists in our virtual art department. Working with education institutions like the University of Greenwich ensures we can share our knowledge of real-world shoots and shape the curriculum to teach skills that the production industry is demanding.
Michael McKenna, CEO and Co-Founder of Final Pixel
