Six months in, and a call for help
Screen Queensland published a piece about us yesterday. It is generous, it is accurate, and I am grateful for it.
I want to add the part that does not usually make it into an article about a new Gold Coast film studio.
What six months looks like
Since April we have had 47 on-site visits and events at Varsity Lakes. Forty of those were tours, walkthroughs and recces with producers. We have hosted nine productions and activations, including work for Werner Film Productions, The Onset Productions and WildBear Entertainment. We ran the Gold Coast Virtual Production Showcase in July, with 202 registrations and more than 150 people through the door in a single day. We put 21 Gold Coast and Queensland businesses on a preferred supplier list and point every production we host at it first. The Mayor came in June. The Minister for Education and the Arts came in July. The Council's 2032 Games team is visiting this month.
That is real activity, and I am proud of it.
And here is the honest part
We have no confirmed bookings on the board for the rest of this year.
Of the productions we have hosted so far, one was led by a Queensland producer. One.
I do not think that is a failure of this studio. I think it is the clearest evidence I have of how hard it has become for domestic producers, especially in Queensland, to get a project financed and into a stage.
The interest is there. Forty tours in six months says so, and so does the state of our board: 66 live conversations with producers across Australia, covering low-budget independent features, music videos, short films, simulation travel work and our own in-house projects. Plenty of pencilled dates. Not one locked-in booking.
What is missing is the money that turns a development project into a shoot.
Running a building like this costs real money every week in rent and overheads before anyone takes a wage, and I have not taken one. We have got here by being ruthless with expenses, and by the goodwill of people who believed in this before it existed.
Why I built it anyway
My last documentary, Hating Peter Tatchell, featured Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry, with Elton John and David Furnish as executive producers, and it sold to Netflix. After five years of work on it, what came back to me was six months of wages. I decided I did not want to keep making content without skin in the game, so I put my own projects on hold and set out to build something I would own.
I wanted to make my first low-budget independent feature using an LED volume, and I could not do it in Queensland. I would have had to take it to another state. That made no sense to me, so I spent three years building the thing I needed.
Along the way I did a three-month residency at World of Wonder in Hollywood and completed Screen Producers Australia's Ones to Watch program. Screen Queensland's Capital Grants Program funded a substantial part of the build, matched by our own investment.
Creative Business Plus helped us establish our Social Traders certification through a program funded by Screen Rights last year, and our social value has been measured using the Australian Social Value Bank methodology.
Invest Gold Coast contributed $2,000 towards the Virtual Production Showcase in July, and the city supports the sector through the Gold Coast Film Commission. We have also had a construction dispute that is now behind us, and it cost us time and money we did not have.
As a social enterprise, I said I would be transparent about how the business is really going. This is me keeping that promise.
This is about Queensland IP, not about one studio
An independent studio is only as useful as the projects that come to it. Queensland's screen economy leans heavily on work commissioned somewhere else.
When that work slows, and it will, what is left is what we own.
Every locally created and locally owned project puts Queensland people to work: writers, heads of department, actors, stunt performers, art department, crew. That is the whole argument. Make more here, own more of it here, and the jobs stay here.
We are not alone in this. The Miami Arts Depot creative precinct, anchored by Bazmark, is minutes from our door, and Shadowbox Studios is proposed for Yatala. Serious infrastructure is coming to this city. Infrastructure without local IP is just real estate.
We are also building the people side. We run student placements, and we are in conversation with Bond University, QUT, Griffith and TAFE about pathways onto real sets. That only works if there are productions for them to work on.
What I am asking for
If you have a project, talk to us. Any size. A one-day commercial, a web series, a short, a feature block. Tell us the shape of it and we will tell you honestly whether we can make it work, and we will be creative about how.
Refer someone. If you know a producer looking for a stage, an LED volume, or production offices on the Gold Coast, send them this.
Book a block. Our diary is open from now through 2027. The quickest path is the Production Enquiry button at www.chrysaor.com.au. It takes a few minutes, and we come back within 12 hours with a complimentary quote estimate.
Share this. Quietly or loudly, both help.
I have spent thirty years in the media and screen industry in Australia and the UK: short films, film criticism, documentaries, screenplays, and a few critical successes along the way. I have asked for help before, usually to get a single project funded. This is different.
This is about building a stronger Gold Coast screen industry by compounding what we already have, the skills, the hardware, the software, the locations, the talent and the facilities this city grew by servicing international productions, and turning it into work we own. I am asking now, because the studio is built, the doors are open and the industry this city says it wants is not going to build itself.
Or call or text me on 0423 729 245, or email chris@chrysaor.com.au. I would rather have the conversation than the form.
Christopher Amos, Founder and CEO, Chrysaor Studios
492 Scottsdale Drive, Varsity Lakes, Gold Coast, Queensland
Proudly supported by the Queensland Government through Screen Queensland's Capital Grants Program.
