Minister for Education and the Arts visits Chrysaor Studios
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
A real honour to welcome the Honourable John-Paul Langbroek MP, Minister for Education and the Arts, and Hermann Vorster MP, Member for Burleigh, to Chrysaor Studios in Varsity Lakes recently, together with Ian Lynch from Screen Queensland.
Stepping inside the scene
The Minister stepped onto Queensland's only permanent open-access LED volume and experienced our simulated travel demonstration first-hand: sitting inside a scene as the world moved photorealistically around him.
It is a simple demonstration of something that has quietly changed how films get made. A vehicle sits static on the stage floor. The world outside the window is rendered live on the LED wall and moves in response to the camera. What the lens captures is finished, in camera, on the day. No location convoy, no traffic management, no weather risk, no second unit.
It is the same virtual production method our films use to shoot any place, any era, without leaving the Gold Coast.
A trading facility, built for the industry that is coming
Chrysaor is a purpose-converted, trading facility and Australia's first Social Traders certified social enterprise film studio.
The site brings together the Kevin Weldon AO Soundstage, named for Christopher Amos's great-uncle, and the Animax Virtual Production Stage housing the LED volume, alongside production offices, a canteen and crew base. Everything on site is open access, which means an independent producer can book the same volume a studio production books.
Since opening in January we have welcomed more than 300 visitors and serviced four internationally financed productions, while building the education-to-industry pathways the Gold Coast will need as Shadowbox and the Miami Arts Depot arrive.
Why the pathways matter
As a certified social enterprise, more than half of Chrysaor's profits are reinvested into career pathways for emerging screen practitioners. That is not a side programme. It is the reason the studio exists in the form it does.
The new stages coming to the Gold Coast will need crew, and crew are not delivered with the buildings. They are trained, placed and mentored over years, on real productions, in real facilities. That work has to start now to be ready then.
Thank you, Minister, for taking the time to see what is being built here, and to everyone who helped make the morning run smoothly.
The studios of 2028 will need a trained city behind them. That city is being built right now, at 492 Scottsdale Drive, Varsity Lakes.
Chrysaor Studios is proudly supported by the Queensland Government through Screen Queensland's Capital Grants Program.
