Multi-million dollar film hub at Remarkables Park by end of year
Queenstown’s film industry’s set for a major shot in the arm from a multi-million dollar production facility.
Best described as a large film shed rather than a full-blown studio, it’ll be sited near the airport at Frankton’s Remarkables Park, and be able to house indoor sets, production offices and wardrobe and art departments.
Called ‘Frame’, the hub’s the brainchild of local cinematographer/director of photography Heath Patterson, and his family trust, who’ve secured a site 200 metres north of SITE Trampoline.
‘‘The plan is to start building within the next few months and hopefully be up and running by October/November this year,’’ Patterson says.
‘‘We’re accommodating the Queenstown film industry and just hoping it will bring more work.’’
Patterson, who’s about to file for resource consent, says he’s been planning the facility for about a year.
‘‘We totally need it for our industry, which is actually quite big.
‘‘Productions can all be housed in one roof so there’s not this jumping around between buildings in industrial areas and making good of what they can find.’’
He’s adopting a ‘build it and they will come’ philosophy.
‘‘It’s just under 1200 square metres, and it really is just a big space we’re providing.
‘‘It will have a little office space to the side, but it’s very small.’’
Patterson says the building ‘‘will be engineered in a way we can do whatever we like with it’’.
‘‘It can be many things, it’s what ever the person who hires it wants to do with it.’’
The only rule is they take out whatever they put in.
‘‘We’re not providing anything else like lighting, we’re not providing anything Queenstown already has.’’
Wānaka film studio ‘not competition’
Patterson says they haven’t specifically looked at the space as a post-production facility, ‘‘but it’s definitely on the cards’’.
Due to ‘‘some element of secrecy’’ in the film industry, he expects producers would hire the whole facility, ‘‘but if we’re talking about building interior walls temporarily to split up two productions, that’s totally something we could do’’.
‘‘We’ll just see what the industry throws at us.’’
Patterson — a former pro snow boarder who’s shot for TV commercials, web advertising, reality TV, Netflix and a bit of feature film work since 2011 — says his motivation’s ‘‘to help the industry that has brought me up and all my friends in the film industry family that I know in the area’’.
He doesn’t see plans for an international film studio complex in Wānaka posing any threat.
‘‘We’ll be right next to an international airport, and we’re closer to Milford Sound and Glenorchy.’’
The extra hour’s travel to Wānaka could also deter producers ‘‘looking for a way to shave any money off their production’’.
Queenstown’s Brett Mills, who’s hired out gear to the industry since 1987, says Patterson’s proposal’s ‘‘a fantastic, benevolent contribution to the local industry’’.
He’s in no doubt it’ll make a difference to producers weighing up whether to shoot here by offering ‘‘a large space you can build sets in, shoot, do weather cover and potentially use as a production base’’.
‘‘Most other towns you go to, you can find some abandoned industrial buildings.
‘‘The problem with Queenstown is, apart from our yard, there’s no industrial buildings available.’’
Last year, local-based Great Southern Television boss Philip Smith, who’s brought TV drama series One Lane Bridge to the resort, told Mountain Scene the Whakatipu needed such a hub, believing if it existed then, it’d be ‘‘over-subscribed’’.
Last month, it was announced Target3D, a multi-million dollar virtual production studio, is a tenant in a research and innovation building under construction else where in Remarkables Park.
