Case Study - Gorton Studios

Neill Gorton teaching in the Millennium FX workshop in Redruth

The roots of film prosthetics business Millennium FX and its sister company, vocational training school Gorton Studio, are in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, on London’s periphery where many film studios are based; an obvious location for industry service providers like us to operate from. Not so obvious though, is choosing to locate a satellite Millennium FX workshop and the Gorton Studio main office in Cornwall!

 

Personal reasons brought us to Cornwall in 2007, from where we continued to run both companies at a distance and with endless travelling up and down the M4. Over time, and now with extremely adept co-directors firmly established at Millennium FX, we decided to set up shop in Cornwall, from where we would deliver some elements of Millennium’s industry work and run the business side of our training school.

 

Industrial buildings in Cornwall are far more affordable than around London, and consequently our workshop in Redruth is large enough to service film prosthetics and makeup FX jobs that help relieve the pressure in the frantic main Millennium FX workshop. The space lends itself to prosthetic makeup projects, and so far in 2021 these have included character makeups for Kenneth Branagh as Boris Johnson in This Sceptred Isle (currently in post-production), Catherine Tate in her up-coming film This Nan’s Life and Scott Adkins in John Wick: Chapter 4. Prosthetics were also created there for local writer-director Mark Jenkin’s next feature Enys Men. In addition, the building offers the quiet environment necessary for contained development work, which was always difficult to house in the constantly dynamic Aylesbury premises.

 

Gorton Studio’s admin hub is within the same building in Redruth, where its five employees co-ordinate ongoing courses at various locations as well as online, run an annual event staged in Coventry and publish a trade magazine - all with a distant view of the sea at Portreath through the office window. Luckily the organisation of the company’s whole portfolio of activities, all of which are squarely focused on film prosthetics, can be done from anywhere, and the country’s beautiful southwestern tip offers good business facilities as well as obvious lifestyle advantages.

 

Student work on the MA Prosthetic Effects course at Falmouth University

One of the major benefits of Gorton Studio’s Cornish location is its proximity to Falmouth University. The company has teaching film craftspeople in its DNA, so it has a natural synergy with the School of Film and Television. This has led to the development of a new master’s degree in partnership with the university, which is the most recent addition to the film school’s excellent postgraduate provision.

 

The first course of its kind, the Prosthetic Effects MA teaches the contemporary hybrid approach to creating prosthetics using digital design and manufacturing techniques in tandem with traditional skills such as sculpture, mould making and casting. Having launched in September 2020, the first cohort are now in their final study block and the inaugural course has been a resounding success, confirmed by the fact that it’s currently oversubscribed for September 2021 entry.

 

The state-of-the-art university facilities, staff expertise and a lot of personal involvement from Neill Gorton are a strong combination of educational assets unique to this thriving Cornish institution. Course lecturer Brad Greenwood relocated from Vietnam to take the job, bringing a wealth of industry experience with him in both live-action and animated films, including as a senior prosthetics technician on the Lord of the Rings trilogy (for WETA workshop), Scooby Doo (Warner Bros.), George Miller’s Happy Feet, Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians and DC’s Aquaman (for Fractured FX). He was a lead prosthetic makeup artist on Kong: Skull Island (for Bill Corso and Jason Baird/JMBFX) and has created work for numerous features throughout Southeast Asia. An accomplished teacher, Brad has trained artists in China and Vietnam as part of their emerging arts and entertainment industries and taught prosthetic makeup at his own studio.

 

Guest lecturers this year have included Academy Award-winner and KNB EFX Group Director Howard Berger, and Primetime Emmy-winner Donald Mowat, a renowned makeup FX designer and personal makeup artist to Mark Wahlberg, Jared Leto, Daniel Craig and Jake Gyllenhaal. We’re thoroughly enjoying our partnership with the university and further joint projects are already in development.

 

Almost a decade after setting Millennium FX and Gorton Studio up in Cornwall, the businesses are very settled here and we’re looking forward to the opportunities that remote working and hybrid prosthetics technology will afford on this vibrant, creative peninsula.