‘Change can hardly come soon enough’: UK set to become a VFX world leader thanks to tax cuts

30 October 2024, 16:28

The UK television and film industry punches well above its weight.

Think less Harry Potter or James Bond or directors such as Andrea Arnold or Danny Boyle or even stars like Idris Elba or Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

The real heart of the local industry is its world-class production facilities, its long tradition of hosting Hollywood and other international productions and above all its skilled technical workforce.

These include cinematographers and sound mixers, carpenters and make-up artists, location scouts and set designers, and editors and IT professionals. All of these people – working together simultaneously or sequentially over many months – are responsible for the content that graces our (home) cinema screens.

Even if you have no interest whatsoever in a new series of The Crown, this industry takes in over £5 billion of inward investment per year, directly supports about 100,000 UK jobs and creates a multiple of this figure in added value for the UK economy: demand for catering, hospitality, car rentals and a whole host of other services.

Visual effects (VFX) is one of the fastest-growing and important segments of television and film production in the age of CGI and artificial intelligence. More and more productions are harnessing the power of VFX, creating photorealistic imagery of faraway lands or unbelievable environments after staging actors in front of green screens or LED panels on local soundstages. Visual and audio effects artists create the ‘dream factory’ that television and film audiences escape to and cherish.

The UK is on the cusp of becoming a world leader in this field but will need continued and increased tax incentives (for both production as well as research & development) in order to compete with other global players and attract work from media producers across the world.

The Chancellor’s announcement of tax relief for television visual and audio effects could buoy the local industry and job market with inward investment flows from streamer-funded large-scale projects.

As ever, the devil will be in the details as well as the consistency of support – recent UK television and film policy has tended towards piecemeal action, rather than overarching strategic action. (Jeremy Hunt promised plans to spur on lower budget domestic films in the Spring.)

Nevertheless, this announcement has the potential to be the start of a recovery from the recent challenges to audiovisual media production posed by the disruptions of COVID and then the Hollywood writers’ and directors’ strikes. A recent survey by BECTU suggested that as many as 68% of Britain’s film and TV professionals may be currently without work.

Change can hardly come soon enough.

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Professor Mattias Frey is Head of the Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries and a film and media industry scholar at City St George’s, University of London.

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