Students at Bournemouth and Poole College have a ‘Heady’ Part in new Sci-Fi Movie

A likely-to-be blockbuster movie is set to come alive in 2025 with a Bournemouth and Poole College Computer Generated Image (CGI) flavour to it. 

The film has both background and landscapes made by Bournemouth and Poole College students and lecturers – using scenery sculpted out of clay and combined with a process called ‘photogrammetry’ - where hundreds of photos are scanned with a particular software into a 3D model to create stunning visuals. The environment team on the film uses clay sculpting and photogrammetry as their many techniques (along with traditional polygon modelling and virtual sculpting in software).

Students from Bournemouth and Poole College, including student Emilio Nunez, became involved with the project after the college was approached by Treehouse Digital, Realtime production Filmmakers, based at The Fulcrum Centre, Poole – which is a part of Bournemouth and Poole College’s buildings. 

Emilio, a Studio Assistant for the film, said: “I’ve been involved in the studio helping with the organisation of the equipment and helping to build anything they might need such as setups for our new artists, or systems such as VCAM – a virtual camera you see inside of Unreal Engine 5. I’ve learned a lot of technical skills whilst helping the artists. It has been lots of fun, with lots of opportunities for me to learn.”

Bournemouth and Poole College’s 3D Animation course is tailored to industry trends, with modules including Animation, Graphics Communications, Lighting and Rendering, Mods and Maps and Post-Production. With the Unreal Engine 5 software at the heart, which is also used in filmmaking, the course fully equips learners for a unique and exciting career – as Emilio and other students involved with the film have experienced, first-hand. 

Kieran Hall, former student and now lecturer in CGI at the college said: “To be a part of this amazing filmmaking experience is an absolute delight. Our former students working on the project – Chelsea Bradford (Senior Environment Artist); Kieran Andrews (Junior Environment Artist), William Andrews (Mid Environment Artist), and current student Emilio Nunez (Studio Assistant) have all put in some tremendous effort to get the images and backdrops looking fantastic for the big screen. The Unreal Engine 5 software is also used in the course itself.” 

Phil Sayles, Principal of Bournemouth and Poole College, said: “This is the kind of project our students were made for. The mettle, determination, and participation of all those involved in this prestigious project put Bournemouth and Poole College students on the world stage. I simply cannot wait to be in the audience feeling proud of what our students have achieved and watch some amazing backgrounds to the film. The level of technical skill involved in work of this calibre is thorough and involves a great level of diligent and industrious processing.”