Facilities and Infrastructure
We have bases in both of Northern Ireland's main cities, with Music, Drama, Cinematic Arts, Computer Games, and Heritage at Derry ~ Londonderry campus, and other Film and Screen topics at our Belfast (York Street) campus.
Major facilities include the £72 million Studio Ulster virtual production facility in Belfast Harbour (which will incorporate Northern Ireland's AHRC CoSTAR ScreenLab), a c. £1 million campus-based virtual production studio at our Belfast campus (external funding: NI DfE), and a new performance studio, the £465k Presence Lab, at our Derry campus (external funding from NI DfE).
Studios, performance venues and specialist equipment at our Derry ~ Londonderry campus includes the following:
- Performance venue: the Great Hall (1865) has recently been upgraded with professional PA equipment, facilitating its use for the regular Music at One series of guest concerts (including leading international figures from across Europe and the US such as Grammy winner Cassandra Wilson, alongside PGR practitioners) along with hosting the Walled City Music festival, the Jazz Hub at the City of Derry Jazz Festival, and many academic conference and festivals
- Mo Mowlam Studio: Film/Cinematic arts studio equipment includes Davinci Resolve colour grading, Blackmagic 4K camera and Canon C100 full-frame 4K cameras (with Zeiss lenses), film studio and green screen facility
- Performance venue: drama/performance facilities include three drama performance studios (one with sprung floor, for dance/physical theatre; one ‘white box’ 12m x 6m (50 capacity) and one ‘black box’, 18 x 6 m, which can be provided with tiered seating up to a capacity of 100). The latter space is a fully equipped performance venue with moving truss, a broad range of stage lanterns, 512 DMX Channel Lighting Control, and 16- channel sound desk.
- Music studio facilities include one standard stereo production studio, based around an Audient analogue desk (ASP4816) and one multichannel (8-speaker ambisonic, adaptable to 7.1) array, additionally hosting a VR headset and modular synthesis system (monitors: Genelec 1020 - stereo; KRK VXT 6 for 8-channel array)
- Classic vintage analogue synthesiser: EMS Synthi AKS (c. 1972 recently serviced by EMS in Cornwall)
- Various microphones, including spatial audio (ambisonic) Sennheiser Ambeo
- Mobile recording and mixing equipment
- Two 21-seat Apple Mac labs
Our campus-based studio at Ulster’s Belfast campus features the following, available to both students and researchers:
- a full Blackmagic based 4k ATEM live studio and outside broadcast unit
- a dedicated film/TV studio with 270 green screen infinity curve and B & W cyclorama
- 4 x 4k-capable edit suites, and a dedicated 50-seater screening room with 4k projector and Dolby 5.1 Surround sound
- Northern Ireland Screen Film Archive and Study Resource in dedicated space
- The facility also contains two 38-seat Mac labs
The £72 million Studio Ulster facility in Belfast Harbour is a large-scale virtual production studio featuring some of the most advanced equipment and workflows in the world. It features an integrated research and development lab (AHRC CoSTAR project), researching the advancement and fusion of real-time technologies, including cutting-edge cinematography, computer-generated imagery (CGI), augmented reality, immersive audio, and motion capture.
In addition to these facilities, researchers within this unit have presented creative work and other public events at partner venues in Derry/Londonderry and beyond, including the Nerve Centre, Void Gallery, Echo Echo Dance Theatre, Cultúrlann uí Chanáin/the Glassworks, the Playhouse Theatre, the Abbey Theatre, with 8-channel spatial music concerts as part of Cultúrlann’s Imbolc International Music Festival facilitated through the use of a portable array of Genelec 8020s from the research unit.