Screen Production on the Sunshine Coast

Since the late 2010s, there has been an increasingly active screen community and growth in grassroots film and television activity on the Sunshine Coast following the establishment of the Sunshine Coast Screen Collective (hereafter ‘the Collective’) in 2017. The Sunshine Coast Council (hereafter ‘the Council’) identified the film and television industry as an emerging high-value industry and, in collaboration with the Collective, held the Sunshine Coast Screen Industry Summit in 2022. The summit brought together industry representatives, members of the Collective and local practitioners to discuss how the local industry could benefit from the current state-wide boom in film and television production as well as recent changes to federal screen incentives. The majority of research into the Queensland screen industry has, predictably, focused on film and television in the larger production hubs of Brisbane and the Gold Coast. However, at the time of writing, there has been no detailed study of the characteristics of the screen production ecology on the Sunshine Coast. The Economic Development Branch for the Sunshine Coast Council commissioned the authors of this report to conduct a scoping study to investigate the size, activity and characteristics of the local screen ecology to identify both barriers and opportunities for future growth. The current state-wide industry boom, growing local grassroots activity, and the release of the 2021 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) National Census data provide an opportune moment to evaluate the local screen workforce on the Sunshine Coast. This project supports the Council’s strategy to grow emerging industries, such as screen production, and the proposed outcomes will support evidence-based decision-making.The aim of this study is to investigate the size of the local film and television workforce, production activity and the characteristics of the local screen ecology on the Sunshine Coast to identify barriers and opportunities for growth. The study’s key questions are: 1.What is the current state of screen production on the Sunshine Coast? 2.How many screen practitioners live or work on the Sunshine Coast? 3.What is the competitive advantage of making film, television and games on the Sunshine Coast? 4.What are the challenges facing the industry, and what can be done to support the development of the screen industry’s capability and capacity on the Sunshine Coast?