by Dov Kornits
The crew behind Central Coast Studios (CCS) have just received Secretary’s Environmental Assessment Requirements (SEARS) approval from The NSW Department of Planning to build one of the largest purpose-built film production precincts in the Southern Hemisphere. Positioned just 14km from the Sydney border, Central Coast Studios stands as a visionary project integrating ten premium sound stages, state-of-the-art LED and virtual production, advanced games and creative technology spaces, and a comprehensive industry education precinct. The studio represents a major investment in Australia’s creative future – encompassing film, television, games, and live events – while responding directly to Australia’s need for modern, globally competitive production facilities.
“Australia is entering its biggest creative opportunity since the 1970s, fuelled by global production demand and new federal streaming quotas,” says CCS co-director Craig Giles. “With CCS, we’re addressing national capacity constraints and positioning The Central Coast as the engine room for future projects, skills and jobs.” The appointment of actors Luke Hemsworth (Westworld) and Ana Thu Nguyen (Mortal Kombat) as ambassadors – alongside its advisory board of industry leaders, including director Phillip Noyce, Catriona McKenzie, Clayton Jacobson, Sam Lukins, Lisa Scope, Carolyn Constantine, Ian Sutherland, Kingston Anderson, Ian Anderson, Simon Alty, Hugh Wilson, Claire Pullen, Petrina Waddell and Joshua van Tongeren – gives Central Coast Studios an even starrier feel of polish and optimism.
Do you guys have any relationship to Central Coast personally?
Luke: “Ana is a Sydney girl. I live in Byron Bay. The reason I got involved is purely because a buddy of mine, Justin McMillan, who’s a director, was friends with Craig Giles, who’s the guy spearheading this. I’ve been talking to Craig for a bunch of weeks and he’s a beautiful sweetheart…his heart’s in all the right places. The whole studio project is designed to help the crew spend less time at work, and to give them a place where they can stay. They can bring their kids. There’s a learning centre there. There’s childcare. This is a place that is working towards dropping the time that the crew has to spend at work. It has a centralised hub where they can take the family. It’s also an alternative to Sydney as well.”
Ana: “I worked with Craig and Amanda on a feature film [Get Free] made on The Central Coast. So, I have a feel for the environment around there, the fantastic crews that they have, and the local community. The natural environment is great for shooting too. It’s similar to The Gold Coast, where I’ve spent a lot of time filming Mortal Kombat II and Primitive War. The Central Coast is such a great area to have this big innovative studio to bring down these large-scale productions from Hollywood. It can definitely mimic what has happened on The Gold Coast. We have world class crews here. We lose a lot of big projects because we don’t have first class facilities. It’s about trying to get ahead of the game so that we attract the bigger guys. We also want to support independent productions and give them another option that’s not stuck in the middle of Sydney.”
Luke: “And somewhere where you don’t have to travel to The Gold Coast or travel to Melbourne, right? Let’s bring everything a little bit closer. What happens is then you’re creating jobs locally. Businesses, cafes and restaurants…they’re all economically doing a lot better during these productions. Also, all the films that I’ve shot here are pretty much location, right? And the location is incredibly expensive and time consuming to shoot in. So, this is just another thing that will support these smaller films.”
Do you think it’s a good way to keep productions here too?
Luke: “If a production can’t go in a specific time that it wants, it’ll go somewhere else. You just lose it. No one ever waits for something to be built. So, we need to have infrastructure in place, and we need the support of the community. We need people to come on board and become members, to donate and get involved.”
Is it that important to have an actual studio set-up?
Luke: “Shooting in a studio is easier in the sense that everything is localised and you have everything at your fingertips. You have your sets which transport you into the future, the past … I’ve done a lot of period stuff, and stuff that was futuristic. And that stuff all has to be built. We don’t have that in our natural environment. So, we really need studios to fill that gap between location stuff and the other parts. It’s just so much easier to hop from one scene to the next within a localised space as opposed to traveling two hours to the next location. We need to shoot stuff efficiently, which lowers the cost of shooting.”
These days, the mix of studio and location seems to be the ideal situation…
Ana: “In my opinion, you need both. You need a marriage of location stuff because it’s exciting, it’s tangible, and you need to be able to move around. But these stages are enormous and will accommodate a whole bunch of stuff very close together. The good thing about it being The Central Coast is the natural environment. You have both the studios and the location and the space as well to move these large trucks in and out; in Sydney, it’s just terrible getting from one place to the other. The whole lot here is 70 acres or 90 acres…90 acres in the middle of Sydney is absolutely impossible.”
By being ambassadors, are you guys hoping that you’re going to be cast in a production happening there when it kicks off?
Luke: “Yep. I’ve got a couple films ready to go. I’ve pencilled in my times. We need to finish construction by this date so that I can get in on this date. But seriously, the community benefits, that’s the exciting part. If you can somehow contribute to economic value going forward, that’s really exciting.”
Ana: “A lot of the time young actors look overseas for inspiration, but to have something here would be really great.”
Luke: “Working overseas is a blessing and a curse. You get to travel the world and you get to go to these places that you would probably never go to. The chance to live there for a few weeks is actually a huge win for me. But then the drawback is, yes, I’m gone from my three daughters, my wife, my beautiful bed…you’re sleeping in shithouse hotels most of the time. As I get older and the more I do, I try to keep it as close as I can, but you still have to go where the work is. So, yes, let’s bring the work here.”
For more on Central Coast Studios, head to the official website.
