Sunday, November 09, 2008 Movie studio opens in SRP
AN INTERNATIONAL movie studio was inaugurated Saturday at the South Road Properties (SRP), giving taxpayers their first close-up look at investments there.
Only the first phase of the project has been built, a rectangular building with four shooting stages, production rooms and a helipad.
In his State of the City Address hours later, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña said that Michael Gleissner’s investment in Cebu has already amounted to P2 billion.
A Filipino architect designed the studio, a project of Bigfoot Entertainment.
Osmeña used the story of how Gleissner chose Cebu to invest in as an example of giving “personal attention to investors,” which he said is high on the City’s priorities.
Aside from having less pollution and a lot of beaches, it was the “good treatment” that Gleissner got from the Cebuanos that made him pick Cebu to setup Bigfoot Entertainment and his film industry ventures, the mayor said.
“(Gleissner) is training Cebuanos to make movies not Manila-style, but for Hollywood,” Osmeña said in his speech.
Cebuanos are currently a minority at Bigfoot’s film school, the International Academy of Film and Television (IAFT).
Most of IAFT’s Filipino students come from Manila, said Sarah Abadia, the architect who designed the studio.
Abadia added that majority are foreigners, coming from countries like Germany and India.
But Gleissner said he is confident that Cebuanos could make Hollywood-quality films and added that more structures and production facilities will be added to their SRP site.
The shooting stages can be converted into soundstages that are sound-proof and do not carry echoes, said Abadia. This, with its accompanying rooms and helipad, cost P150 million and took 13 months to build.
Outside the shooting stages, a five-story studio set for a film is being constructed. The film, “Collider”, is a science-fiction movie named after the Large Hadron Collider that began operating in September this year in Geneva. (KAB)
