Two months ago, Honua Studios was a warehouse that needed work. Tuesday, the 12,000-square-foot movie production studio below Costco in Kailua-Kona was home to a sound stage, editing bays and areas for conferencing and brainstorming. It’s also where the Global
Two months ago, Honua Studios was a warehouse that needed work. Tuesday, the 12,000-square-foot movie production studio below Costco in Kailua-Kona was home to a sound stage, editing bays and areas for conferencing and brainstorming. It’s also where the Global Virtual Studio Transmedia Accelerator program will make a home for aspiring filmmakers and those working in other entertainment media as well.
“We really believe we can’t wait for Hollywood to call and we can’t wait for them to show up,” said GVS Transmedia Accelerator’s founder David Cunningham, a Big Island filmmaker known for such productions as “Beyond Paradise” and “To End All Wars.”
“We have to facilitate that from the grass roots,” Cunningham said to about 150 people who packed the reception and gathering area of the studio as the facility and its first teams to work and train there were unveiled.
The six companies selected for the accelerator get $50,000 in seed money and six months of intensive mentoring from such coaches as Cunningham; Ralph Winter, producer of “X-Men,” John Fusco, the screenwriter for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon II” and “Young Guns;” and Grant Curtis, producer of the “Spiderman” feature films.
Michael Lienau, who survived the eruption of Mt. St. Helens and filmed “The Fire Below Us,” dreams of creating an IMAX movie based on Kilauea. Through the accelerator program, the CEO and founder of Global Net Productions will do just that. He wants the 3-D film to be about “how the volcano shaped the people, the history, the culture and science of Hawaii,” he said.
Cunningham said that traditionally IMAX sends a crew, hires a few people locally and leaves to take the results around the world.
“Isn’t it time for a Hawaii-based company to tell that story, with the nuances, and the history?” Cunningham asked.
The HI Growth Initiative invested $1.2 million in the accelerator program. Hawaii County has approved a $113,00 grant and pledged $200,000 a year for the next three years. Private investment is also backing the initiative, which is essentially an incubator that provides a workplace and funding for companies to launch their creative offerings across a variety of platforms, with the goal that the projects will reach a broad audience and commercial success.
Transmedia is the practice of telling a single story across multiple platforms — film, Web, mobile, music, games — via digital technology.
“In the traditional Hollywood model, you sell your work and the rights and you’re done,” said Big Island Film Commissioner T. Ilihia Gionson. “Here, we want to have Hawaii-based creators owning their intellectual property and sharing it with the world. It’s really business development.”
Also working in the studio — put together with donated tables and chairs from Starbucks and Borders and finished out with reclaimed wood from local wood shops — will be Maui filmmaker Joey Rocha, who will create a film about youths who enter a kite flying tournament. Showcasing the beauty, folklore and history of the islands, the film will show kite flying and kite boarding on a scale not seen before in Hawaii, he said. Working with him to perfect the screenplay will be Tad Murphy, who wrote the screenplay for “Tarzan.”
Andrew West, a marlin and shark expert who has lived in Kona for 30 years and has appeared on National Geographic and searched for wild pigs on the Discovery Channel, plans to use the new studio and accelerator funds to create a documentary series celebrating the wildlife and adventure of the island.
“We got the talent here and we got the stories here,” West said. “We want to produce something that honors the land and honors the people.”
As one of the accelerator projects, Cunningham will work with Fusco on a film for which Fusco has written a screenplay, called Koolau, about a paniolo who took on the provincial government in the 1890s after he contracted leprosy.
The accelerator program will mentor and fund six new creators each year, Cunningham said.
