Production Park: South Kirkby site's role in the Bank of Dave as its Backstage Academy trains new talent

With last week’s launch of new building XPLOR – a research and innovation centre dedicated to “evolving” live production, entertainment, arts, and creative industries - the possibilities are only increasing. Where the site has generally catered to the live performance industry, the emergence of something called ‘virtual production’ is one area allowing new digitally-driven, cross-platform visual showcases.

“The world of entertainment technology is rapidly evolving, and that's instigating huge shifts in working practice and demanding new skills,” Lee Brooks, co-founder and CEO of Production Park told the audience at the launch. “When you think about it, the stage and screen environments are traditionally developed in diametrically opposing ways - tours are planned meticulously and controlled to get the best and most repeatable products.

“But films are captured time and time again, each differently honed and optimised to give the ultimate final cut. And yet those two worlds are colliding at an incredible rate. Real time and generative video technologies have allowed the concert industry to create increasingly rich visual feasts over the last decade. And the development of those capabilities now means that we can transpose an actor into a far-flung world for live capture that is both beautiful and authentic.

“This is leading to a whole new middle ground between the two worlds,” he said.

Such technology, he tells the audience, is the sort which has elsewhere enabled the likes of hybrid live shows such as ABBA Voyage - a spectacle wowing audiences by blurring the line between physical and digital performance to recreate the Swedish pop group’s heyday.

A similar example of what modern tech can do is in new Netflix film Bank of Dave. Sheffield rock band Def Leppard make a cameo, performing on stage at Turf Moor, the ground of protagonist Dave Fishwick’s team Burnley FC. Only the footage was actually captured at an immense studio space at Production Park and made to look like the stadium.

In his launch speech, Lee continued: “What I personally love about the stage and the screen environment is the intersection of art and engineering.

“Creatives and artists bring a beautiful impetus - they can imagine the impossible and then it comes down to the mixture of collaborators, makers, engineers and technologists to realise this. It might not be boundless but it's always ambitious and it's as close as I've come, time and again, to building a space rocket.”

However, with emerging technology comes the need to sustain the industry with a continual supply of young people keen to enter careers in the creative sector.

There is a concerted effort to promote jobs in film, television and live entertainment as viable career options for youngsters.

Sir Peter Bazalgette, former chair of ITV and now a co-chairman of Creative Industries Council, was part of a panel discussion during the XPLOR launch. He said: “There was a piece of research done by British Film Institute recently which said that 41 per cent of 16 year olds polled didn't know there was a career in screen industries. At a time when we have got the most unprecedented expansion in studio space in the UK, and the demand from Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Apple, on so on.”

Backstage Academy at Production Park equips young people with the skills and experience they need to build careers in creativity. There are around 180 learners and Lee says that 90 per cent of graduates go on to work in the field in which they trained. Jonny Wood, 35, was born in Wakefield and has worked as a performer and production manager in the past but attends Backstage Academy. Despite his real world experience, he wanted to boost his skills, so signed up for a Stage and Production Management degree and is in his third year.

He says it has provided him with “opportunity after opportunity”, and has recently come back from Saudi Arabia, where he and his peers conducted live events training for its Soundstorm festival, teaching people about lighting, sound and other technical equipment. “But as a student, I got the opportunity to go out and do that,” he says. “Whilst being a student I was also getting wage and being paid to go across seas and work on behalf of them.”

As a youngster he studied at Wakefield’s CAPA College, which specialises in performing arts, and went on to teach there but also set up his own dance and performing arts company, Attitude Academy.

He then took up roles in Portsmouth, but has returned home and, referring to his life at Production Park, now says: “I genuinely don’t think I’ll ever leave this place. Because it's so innovative. It's so creative. There's so many people. We’ve got such a wide network in this area.”

However, Jonny – who ran the XPLOR launch event - thinks his line of work should be introduced to young people as a career option much earlier.

“I think it's through events like this (the launch) that we can actually pull in people now and create an atmosphere where people want to work together and collaborate.”