Yongchuan aspires to build high-tech 'movie city'

Home to China's largest digital technology movie studio that uses virtual shooting scenes throughout the entire filming process, Yongchuan district in Chongqing aims to become a high-tech production hub for movies and TV shows.

"Film technology is our new economic development area, and we are building a high-tech movie city in western China," said Zhang Zhikui, Party chief of Yongchuan.

Chongqing, a megacity with over 32 million permanent residents, is a hot destination for film shoots with its unique landscape, long history, distinctive culture and futuristic skyscrapers. The southwestern municipality draws over 300 film crews a year, according to local authorities.

With good geolocation, beautiful natural scenery, ample local talent and complete film production service, Yongchuan is an ideal place for film production, Zhang said.

The district government has set up a 1 billion yuan ($143 million) fund to develop a digital cultural and creative industry and has introduced a series of policies to help establish a film and television industry ecosystem.

Yongchuan Technology Studio, which was launched last year, consists of three 3,000-square-meter virtual filming studios and one 1,000-square-meter motion capture studio, and it can accommodate 1,000 people at once. It is equipped with the largest LED virtual filming screen in Asia with an arc length of 42 meters and a height of 7 meters, providing 800 square meters of virtual shooting space, according to local authorities.

Last year, the studio handled 12 film shoots.

In recent years, AI-generated content has advanced significantly and has been rapidly applied in various aspects of film creation, production, management and analysis.

"The use of LED virtual shooting can greatly improve the efficiency of filmmaking," said Lu Qi, president of Dawa (Chongqing) Imaging Technology.

He said that in the early stages of the production, a crew only needs to send a small team to the studio to conduct tests. The company then facilitates digital scenery production, creates shooting plans and holds trial shootings based on the crew's scripts and art designs. After that, the crew organizes a larger group to shoot, significantly streamlining the filming process and reducing labor costs.

Dawa, which settled in Yongchuan in 2018, is the first company in China to integrate the production of film, television, animation and games with technologies such as virtual reality, intelligent imaging and big data. In recent years, with the strong support of the local government, it has become a national leader in digital visual content production.

In order to better serve the crews, the Yongchuan government established a one-stop services center last year to help film studios garner customs and props, find accommodations for crew members and survey sites for scenes, among other services.

"We hope the film crews can come here with scripts and leave with films made," said Zhang Yucheng, president of Yongchuan Sanhe Huibi Media, which runs the center.

In June, the district hosted the first China Chongqing Science and Technology Film Week, which featured cutting-edge film technologies. During the event, the Terra di Siena International Film Festival of Italy signed an agreement with the local government, establishing a sister festival partnership with the China Chongqing Science and Technology Film Week.