In June, Camosun College is launching its first film production assistant micro-credential course. FILM 100V—Film Production Assistant aims to train people to become production assistants in the film industry, which is poised to boom in southern Vancouver Island.
“Our plan has been for some time to start micro-credentials in the film space,” says Camosun vice-president of partnerships Geoff Wilmshurst. “As you know, we’ll have the development of a film studio at Interurban campus… It looks like there’s going to be a number of studios built and sound stages built in southern Vancouver Island in the next five to 10 years. We’re going to need education and training so that there can be film crews to staff those places.”
Vancouver has rapidly become almost the second largest film production area in North America, Wilmshurst says, but it’s incredibly saturated. Victoria, and the rest of the island, offer an abundance of new locations for film crews to utilize.
“This region offers all kinds of, as we saw with Maid, amazing places to film that are kind of untapped,” he says. “Vancouver is really saturated now, and you know, communities can kind of get burnt out on too much filming in the same neighbourhood over and over again. So I think there’s a fresh opportunity here.”
Along with all these new film location opportunities, many film crew members in Vancouver are from Vancouver Island, specifically Victoria.
“There are a large number of people working in the film industry in the Vancouver area who are from the island,” he says. “And many of whom… are dreaming of being able to take their career and move it back home.”
Camosun plans to offer various other micro-credential courses to better equip people pursuing a behind-the-scenes career in film, such as set design, set construction, and hair and makeup.
“We’re looking at some others that are right up our alley,” he says. “So, you know, set design and set construction… Another is hair and makeup, and that may be the next one we roll out. We’re pretty close to finalizing something on that.”
Wilmshurst anticipates that a few years into the future, Camosun’s film program will expand its focus to animation and advanced post-production courses.
“I think what we’re looking at for the future,” he says, “and certainly once we have a studio built and the education space is devoted to that studio that we would be focused on things like animation and post-production digital stuff… and that’s what I would assume five years from now that we would be engaged in.”
The Interurban campus film studio will be the main instigator of all this change, and it’s coming quick. While Wilmshurst can’t give an official date of when it’s launching, it’s on the horizon.
“We’ve done a lot of work in the last five, six months to prepare ourselves for the next stage, and I think that next stage is coming soon,” he says. “So, stay tuned, but it’s coming to a theatre near you.”
With the new production assistant micro-credential and the launch of the film studio, Wilmshurst hopes that students get excited about this new opportunity to pursue a film education in Victoria.
“I think this is going to be another corner post, you might say, of careers that people can choose from here,” he says. “What I hope is people get excited about it, and that will then stimulate us to want to offer more education.”