New Texas A&M studio builds on Fort Worth's ambitions to become film center of Texas | Fort Worth Report

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Fort Worth, TX (Fort Worth Report)

While the realization of a Texas A&M Fort Worth campus is years away, the university's virtual production studio space is closer to reality. A movie screen, LED walls and more than 20 motion capture cameras will create what college officials call "an immersive movie set" -- all in the center of downtown Fort Worth.

"You have these LED panels that can form a wall, can form a volume that wraps around you, can form a ceiling as well -- all like monitors. You're putting up an entire environment on this wall," said David Parrish, the director of the School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts at Texas A&M Fort Worth.

Parrish was standing inside a room at Winfield Place, a building in downtown that was originally designed as a parking garage. Texas A&M Fort Worth is renting space in this building, where the room will be transformed into a virtual production studio with a black curtain and a screen about 30 feet long and 11 feet tall. The Texas A&M studios, at Winfield Place and another larger stage at Red Productions in the Near Southside, are expected to be complete by January 2025.

Computer-generated images and scenes will be projected onto the screen and live action can happen in front of the screen. Instead of adding a background in post-production, the scene is set as it's being filmed.

"Instead of acting or performing in front of a green screen, you're acting or performing within the environment as it will look on camera," Parrish said, who has worked nearly three decades in visual effects, including on productions such as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and "The Polar Express."

The stage will be a space not just for film and television production, but for video game designers along with workforce training and simulation for first responders, health care workers, military members and architectural designers. Companies can rent out the space, and students can work on operating it.

"That's part of the experience that we want our students to get is that they can actually create content, learn the technology and be creative with it, in addition to understanding the technology," said Parrish, who grew up in Garland and graduated from Texas A&M University's flagship campus in College Station with a degree in architecture. "It's the marriage of art and science."

Upper division students in Texas A&M's visualization programs in College Station can take the classes at the Fort Worth studio. Students are already taking classes in Fort Worth, and at the beginning of next semester, they'll learn out of the studio.

The Texas A&M studio is just one way that Fort Worth and area colleges are training students for careers in the city's expanding creative economy.

"When productions are looking for a film location, one of the first things they ask about is our local workforce," said Taylor Hardy, film commissioner and director of video content at Visit Fort Worth. "When they have these locals that are highly trained in these specialized fields, they're able to come in and get to work right away, rather than bringing people from out of state."

Since the Fort Worth Film Commission was launched in 2015, it has worked with over 1,000 projects, driven $700 million in economic impact and supported over 30,000 jobs, Hardy said. The projects, she said, range from filming high-profile productions like the "12 Mighty Orphans" film and Taylor Sheridan's upcoming "Landman" series to music videos and commercial photo shoots. The demand to fill jobs on those productions has been "huge," she said.

To fill the workforce gap, the film commision has partnered with Tarrant County College and 101 Studios to create the Fort Worth Film Collaborative, a fast-track certificate program to train local talent for film industry jobs.

The program launched last fall, and more than 200 students have benefited from the program so far, with certificates in grip and lighting, hair and makeup, and light commercial set construction. Because of demand, additional certificates will be offered next year in the camera, sound, art and costume departments. All certificates can be completed in three months.

Sean Fousheé, the Fort Worth Film Collaborative program director at Tarrant County College, says that 100% of the students who have gone through the program and applied for jobs have been hired. He says there's a growing need for production jobs in construction and transportation.

"They're paying rates that are similar to what they would pay a union worker in LA for somebody to build sets here in Texas," said Fousheé. "It's a very good rate, but there's just not enough people to go around."

Students from a range of backgrounds are enrolling, including everyone from professionals who are making a career pivot to students who took film classes elsewhere and are looking to gain more skills to jump-start their project to recent high school graduates, Fousheé said.

"The whole idea behind this isn't just to turn Texas into Hollywood 2.0. Nobody's trying to do that," said Fousheé. "Our goal is to train up Texans to be the leaders and help grow a Texas-centric film industry."

He said one of the draws of the Lone Star State -- if outsiders broaden their perspective of cowboys and flat land -- is its diverse geography. It's a great place to shoot, and it's also a great place to attract, train and retain talent.

Disclaimer: The Fort Worth Film Commission is a department within Visit Fort Worth. Visit Fort Worth COO Mitch Whitten sits on the board of directors of the Fort Worth Report.

Shomial Ahmad is a higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report, in partnership with Open Campus. Contact her at [email protected].

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