FEATURE | PRODUCT ION BOOM
Production spend has almost doubled over the four years since the tax relief was introduced in 2013
of development expenditure in 2016, up from £228.8 million in 2015. The animation and children’s television tax reliefs have helped these smaller but culturally vital sectors develop ‘green shoots’ and generate expenditure of £97.1 million and £61.0 million respectively. For the first time, the impact of the tax reliefs on the visual effects (VFX) sector has been analysed. While VFX is not a direct recipient of its own tax relief, it has become a vital and creative element in film and TV production, driving business growth and innovation through UK-based productions such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens , Paddington and Gravity . This success has fuelled significant private investment in VFX facilities, establishing the UK as a global leader in delivering award-winning VFX work, in turn attracting further inward investment, creating jobs and tax revenues. HIGH-END TELEVISION High-end television (HETV) production in the UK has also boomed since the introduction of the tax relief in 2013. Production spend has almost doubled over the four years since the tax relief was introduced, from £414.9 million in 2013 to £896.7 million in 2016. An estimated £179.4 million of tax relief was claimed against the 2016 expenditure. High-end TV production expenditure rose by 4.5% in 2016 to a record of £896.7 million (£858.1 million in 2015). Growth in inward investment and co-production has
IMAGES Cornwall was the back drop for Poldark but Bristol’s Bottle Yard Studios was used for interiors
continued, reaching £554.2 million in 2016, a 28.4% increase on £431.6 million in 2015. The video games tax relief (VGTR) was introduced in 2014 to support the creation of UK-made and culturally-focused games such as Down on the Farm, The Secret Life of Boys and Peter Rabbit: Hop To It, and to enable the UK industry to grow and maintain its competitiveness in a growing global sector. Production supported by tax relief contributed an estimated £389.9 million expenditure on developing 228 video games. In 2016, an estimated £78.0 million of tax relief was claimed against total game development expenditure of £389.9 million in the UK; 68% of the expenditure under the tax relief was additional and would not have occurred in the UK without the relief. UK games companies are attractive to international investors – between 2015 and 2017 inward investment primarily from Chinese investors amounted to approximately £1.75 billion. NEW HOLLYWOOD? Another sure sign that the good times are
here is when a new company enters the market from another territory. For the UK aerial business, this is quite rare, as relationships are built up over many years – aerial cinematography is an expensive business and you need to know the company you use will get the shot in the best and safest way. New to the UK aerial business is a company called XM2 Aerial, with engineering and some production based in Melbourne, Australia, and strong connections with Pursuit Aviation in the US. Aidan Kelly from XM2 explains why they are now the UK. “We were established in the US and Australia, with offices in both countries. We managed to get on the Jordan component for Star Wars late last year and on that shoot we met a lot of the UK crew, and made connections there. We had been waiting for a project like that to be able to establish ourselves in the UK. The UK now has more production than Los Angeles.”
screenskills.com bfi.org.uk
46 DEF I N I T ION | JANUARY 2020
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