Seren Studios to house virtual production hub

Great Point Seren Studios is to establish a high-end virtual production hub at its Cardiff base. 

Billed as Seren Virtual Productions, the facility will offer an end-to-end solution supporting all aspects of virtual - as well as physical - production, including a range of volume configurations designed to meet the specific needs of any project.

In addition to hosting full-scale film and high-end television projects from the UK and internationally, the facility will comprise a virtual production research and training academy in collaboration with Media Cymru, a consortium of creative and educational institutions in South Wales. The academy is being established to develop the region into a thriving global hub with a focus on emergent and green technologies.

Seren Studios was previously known as Pinewood Wales Studios before being bought by media investment firm Great Point in 2020. The establishment of Seren Virtual Productions is a collaboration between Great Point, Fields Park, US-based virtual production specialist Volume Global and Media Cymru. The facility will welcome outside productions from the autumn.

Great Point Media co-founder and chief executive Jim Reeve 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, added that Seren Virtual Productions will have a “profound” impact on Cardiff’s media community and will have a ripple across the UK and beyond.

“It signals a clear ambition: to provide a high-end facility which will attract interest from content creators across the globe,” she said. “We look forward to the potential for boundary-pushing research and development activity in this new space in our city region.”