Research
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By Geraint D'Arcy, Lecturer in Media Practice, School of Art, Media and American Studies
I’ve been working with our partners in Norfolk Screen to increase our connections to the county’s screen industry and seek ways of making the sector grow with our students along for the ride.
The UK film and television industry is seeing the kind of attention and industrial development that it hasn’t really seen since the golden age of the mid twentieth century. It is riding the waves of a perfect storm created by Brexit, three years of COVID-19, war in Eastern Europe and the boom in the streaming networks. But even as Amazon, Apple and Netflix descend across the UK creating new studio developments, the UK screen industry is also contending with the implications of AI on the creative industries, union action in the US and a slew of IPs reaching the point of exhaustion or repulsion. It’s a stormy affair, there is both a glut of long-term opportunities and short term precarity, but this has ever been the case in the screen industry.
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'The Shepherd' starring John Travolta & Ben Radcliffe and directed by Iain Softley. Filmed at West Raynham Business Park (Raynham Hangars), Castle Acre and RAF Sculthorpe in Norfolk.
In Norfolk meanwhile, there are plenty of screen businesses all quietly getting on with things, making their way, making great impact and trucking through regardless. They’ve been here for ages, but they haven’t received the attention or the accolades they deserve. Part of the problem has been that Norfolk has had no screen office for over a decade. It had no centre of gravity, and no entrance-way to the grand Broadland mansion with many different rooms that Norfolk offers.
Well now it does: Norfolk Screen has been appointed by Norfolk County Council as Norfolk’s official screen office and as such we now have a place to go to which is working to connect these areas and businesses. You can find out more information in the official press release. But it isn’t just a matter of knowing where to go, there is a task ahead that the local screen industry needs to get onboard with. We need a flotilla to ride out the storms and it’s not enough to know where there are businesses or where the relationships between them need to be strengthened, we need a direction to go in and a sustainable future for our graduates and UEA has been working with Norfolk Screen on projects looking at exactly those things.
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Happisburgh in Norfolk
While other areas in the UK are wooing US streamers we need to think about the long term. We need a workforce that’s well trained and holistic, one that incorporates the whole spectrum of tasks and positions and thinks about an entire career not just the next job. The screen industry is a rapid business, tight deadlines, tight budgets, it brings people together to produce things and then immediately disbands afterwards. Folk go onto new projects, new challenges, sets get skipped, designs go in a box in an attic, costumes and props go in the bin, whole treasure troves of pre-production materials are forgotten and post-production materials get deleted.
We need to think about the future and about an industry that is sustainable. That means thinking about the reuse and recycling of production materials, reducing the traveling circus of production by giving it more permanent homes, or attractive longer-term prospects.
Working with Norfolk Screen, we are asking what makes things cluster together in the screen industries? To find answers we are helping develop a circular economy for screen production. We’re building a recruitment pipeline that makes talent stay in the region without pressure to flee to London and its environs. We are seeking ways to create reuse centres for sets and costumes so that visiting and local productions reduce waste and lowers their carbon footprints. We are pursuing opportunities for incentive schemes that will make Norfolk’s many attractive locations, more attractive. In short, we are busy developing a sustainable environment to nurture UK independent screen content.
You can find more information on the Norfolk Screen website.