Pinewood Studios has joined forces with Amersham and Wycombe College to build a centre of excellence for the TV, film, animation and video games industries.

The joint initiative will look to address some of the priorities outlined in the Next Gen report that was led by Eidos president Ian Livingstone, Double Negative managing director Alex Hope and innovation foundation Nesta.

Courses at the proposed centre of excellence will focus on visual effects, including 2D and 3D, FX, animation and rigging, pipeline and compositing.

It will also develop programmes for the video games sector and support services such as data warehousing and wrangling, as well as areas that do not require a computer science foundation, such as studio management, sound engineering and production.

In 2006, Pinewood was granted outline planning permission for up to one million sq ft of new facilities by redeveloping the existing studios, some of which has been implemented in the form of new sound stages.

Pinewood is about to submit another plan for further expansion of the studios and development of the centre of excellence will depend on planning permission being granted.

Pinewood Studios director of strategy and communication Andrew Smith said: “We are thrilled to be announcing these plans today to develop a centre of excellence for the screen based industries here at Pinewood.

“We hope it will help to provide the next generation of talent with the skills they need to turn their ideas into commercial success.

“By basing the centre at Pinewood it will allow students to work with and learn from industry colleagues who are at the top of their game, working on award winning and international productions on a daily basis.

“We are especially pleased that this announcement comes as the government introduces its new system of tax relief for high end TV, animation and video games.”

Most of the students on-site are likely to be apprentices, with the majority of students 16-24 years old.

Pinewood said it would be open to considering “innovative delivery models”, such as Apprenticeship Training Agencies, so that students can be made available for project work to the 200 firms based at Pinewood for on-the-job training.

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