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Commercial Property

Neighbourhood Watch: Bishopscourt

Edward Zwick, director of Blood Diamond, reportedly told his close friend Anant Singh, chairman of Cape Town Film Studios (CTFS), that filming in South Africa was ‘a career highlight’ and that he wished he could have produced the entire film here.

‘If we’d had the resources, they wouldn’t have had to complete the production in Britain,’ Anant commented.

 Addressing the crowd at the opening of CTFS, Anant called the studios the first high-end, custom-built, Hollywood-style studio complex on the continent.

Owned by an influential team of shareholders, including Videovision Entertainment (Anant Singh), Sabido Investments/e.tv (Marcel Golding), the Rico Trust, the Helderberg African Chamber of Commerce and the Western Cape’s investment and trade promotion agency, Wesgro, CTFS will become Africa’s leading digital media hub, offering the most advanced new media telecommunications centre on the continent, with broadband highways that connect to North America, Europe and Asia.

‘We are exploring infrastructure that will enable the studios to host advanced 3-D and hologram filmmaking,’ Marcel says, ‘as the future of high-end filmmaking lies with 3-D, advanced CGI [computer-generated imagery], and special effects.’

The Film Studios are situated on 200 hectares, of which 100 are wetlands that will remain undeveloped. The remaining 100 hectares will be dedicated to film and film-related use. Seventy per cent of this is earmarked for studio use and the remaining 30 per cent is intended for residential, commercial and retail developments. The main studio designer is ex-pat Veronica Sieve, now settled in Australia, who also designed Fox Studios in Sydney.

Four sound stages of different sizes will be constructed, and each gantry will have a hanging capacity of 150kg/m2 and a point load of 1,8 tons to ensure that heavy items like cars, planes and boats can be suspended. The studios will have at least three electricity supply distribution boards with 400A per board (1 200A for each studio), while two 630KVA generators will ensure constant power. Each stage will have the capacity to connect to mobile air conditioning units for flexible climate control.

All joints in the stages’ concrete walls will be acoustically treated and sealed. The internal walls will be treated with sound blankets and the roofs will be designed to international standards. Specialised studio doors are being constructed to allow for easy access and operation while meeting stringent acoustic requirements. Studios will also be fitted with dimmer rooms as well as space for additional mobile generators.

Indigenous landscaping will prevail, and the mixed-use development will echo the Cape-Dutch style. A long boulevard lined with fever trees will lead to a paved square; this will form a recreation area with restaurants and cafés.

A number of specialists are involved in this one-of-a-kind project, which, it’s estimated, will cost in the region of R430-million. Phase One of the development – four studios, two workshops and the production house – is expected to be complete by early 2010.

Cape Town Film Studios, +27 (0)21 462 1838, www.capetownfilmstudios.co.za