How Tyrell Cloud is helping bridge the growing skills gap in Ireland

The biggest problem facilities in Ireland are facing is talent. And it’s a big issue. According to the Creative Media Academy Ireland (CMAI), which was established last year) there’s around 500 graduates annually who specialise in animation – whether that’s VFX, 2D or 3D, who leave university without the real-world skillset that facilities actually require.  

Having carried out an in-depth assessment of the situation, CMAI was born to address this problem, with well-known industry figure Brian Gilmore as Course Director. A key priority was to establish a way to bridge the equipment/training gap to close this skills gap, with the aim of being able to fast-track graduates into the industry.  

Gilmore says, “Without the right equipment to provide this real-world graduate training, we could not move forward. How do we build the technical infrastructure to cater for a range of courses from 2D/3D/VFX to video editing and live production? This requires differently specified machines, applications, storage and so on and trying to cater for all course types using traditional workflows and technologies would create a cost burden that simply isn’t viable.” Enter Tyrell Cloud.  

Tyrell Cloud provides a set of services powered by AWS and leading manufacturers that allow anyone involved in content creation to take advantage of the power and agility of the cloud without the often-associated runaway cost or steep learning curve. Tyrell Cloud provides companies with a turnkey managed service based on their project workflow requirements, which gives instant access to solutions from multiple vendors. It redefines system integration across the media and entertainment industry.  

The fact that Tyrell Cloud is a next-gen, fully automated virtual production environment is crucial to what CMAI is now doing. It provides instant access to solutions from multiple vendors, all in the cloud, and allows CMAI to create and deliver courses without having to find the capex to fund the course infrastructure. Gilmore says, “We can provide training for any course, at any time, with multiple courses running concurrently without having to build infrastructure to match that concurrency. More students being trained at the same time means more open headcounts being filled to help fuel the skills gap. For the students, it’s the same creative tools they are used to. For CMAI, technical and financial agility are primary requirements to help a next generation training academy deliver technical and creative courses to the next generation of creatives.” 

The courses take place either at a central training location or students can complete courses from home and this is where the huge flexibility and speed of deployment of Tyrell Cloud, is also critical.  

Looking in more detail at an example of how CMAI matches supply with demand, it had been receiving feedback  from broadcasters last year that there weren’t enough editor graduates who had the skillset to start work. CMAI discussed this with funding partner Screen Skills who were also aware of this problem. 

Gilmore explains, “As a result, we created a specific video editing course. We set up 12 edit systems, landed all the project assets, the e-learning collateral by and by 8am on a Monday morning, we launched the systems on Tyrell Cloud. Tyrell Cloud really made it that simple. Using Tyrell Cloud, we could spin up the instances we needed in the morning and then down again at the end of the day. We don’t face any costs when the students aren’t using the systems as we use Tyrell’s dynamic scheduling feature.”  

During the first editing course, several students wanted to work later on a Thursday evening before their exam on Friday. All that was required was to simply extend the up time of the cloud workstations with a few, easy button clicks. This was extended until 8pm and by 8:10pm, those workstations were shut back down. Of course, using Tyrell Cloud no information is lost, workstations and servers are simply hibernated. Gilmore adds, “There are two sides to the benefits of this workflow: it’s highly cost-effective while also being technologically elegant; and, equally as important, it’s a brilliant demonstration of the benefits of cloud for the future of post and 2D/3D/VFX production. For a training facility like ours, it offers absolute agility to offer any course, any time without the traditional capex burden.” 

Gilmore concludes, “Having launched CMAI at the end of last summer, we have had 70 students enrol on our courses, with 70 per cent of them already finding employment, which is a tremendous achievement. This is an initiative by the industry, for the industry powered by the flexibility, dynamism and cost-effectiveness of Tyrell Cloud.” 

Click here to find out more about CMAI’s courses. 

Speak to Tyrell’s cloud experts to see how you can take advantage of the flexibility of Tyrell Cloud- sales@tyrellcct.com.