%20(1).png)
EKC Broadstairs College Margate Digital Campus is Preparing Industry-Ready Talent across the UK’s south east
- Rebecca Flynn
- 19 hours ago
- 3 min read
Purpose-built for the creative industries and equipped with the same technology shaping professional studios, EKC Broadstairs College Margate Digital Campus partnered with Target3D to bring motion capture and virtual production capabilities to students and local professionals.
The Brief
EKC Broadstairs College Margate Digital Campus is a specialist further education campus focused on creative digital industries.
Designed from the ground up with a dedicated studio space, the campus had the infrastructure in place, but needed the right technology partner to fill it with production equipment that could serve students and professionals across multiple disciplines.
The sought after solution was a dual-purpose studio. A motion capture system could be used for visual effects students, and a virtual production setup for multiple uses across the wider range of courses offered at the Margate Digital Campus. Crucially, the system needed to be flexible enough to bring all students together on collaborative, cross-discipline projects.
The Background
Head of Campus Ross Buttery first encountered Target3D through a prior project, working with the University of Kent and the ICC on the Docking Station in Chatham, where a Target3D installation was already in place.
Seeing the motion capture system first hand and comparing it against other systems on the market, Ross concluded it was the best fit for what the Margate Digital Campus needed.
“Having worked with the team and seen the equipment they were using - it was really, really good. Industry standard. Looking at other systems available, I thought this would be the best fit for what we needed.”
The Solution
Target3D installed a studio built around an 18 camera PrimeX 22 OptiTrack system currently running marker-based tracking, with the cameras also capable of markerless tracking as a future upgrade path. An OptiTrack Prime Color reference camera completes the capture setup, while a Cinepuck mounted on a Blackmagic Pyxis 6K brings virtual production into the same space, allowing the studio to serve multiple disciplines from a single, integrated system.
The result is a facility where VFX students can work with professional motion capture workflows, while the virtual production setup opens the studio up to the full breadth of courses at Margate Digital, with clear room to grow as the technology evolves.
The Result
The studio is designed to be used by every student on campus in some capacity. Beyond individual course use, it enables large-scale collaborative projects where students from different disciplines come together and apply their own skill sets as part of a shared production, mirroring the way the industry actually works.
For Ross and the team, the measure of success is simple: students leaving EKC Broadstairs College Margate Digital Campus ready for industry, trained on the same technology they'll encounter in professional studios.
With markerless tracking already available as an upgrade on the existing cameras, the system is built to evolve alongside the campus as its ambitions grow.
The Feedback
“Working with Target3D has been absolutely brilliant. They're extremely knowledgeable about what it is that they're doing, really helpful about how we can improve the system further and developments we can make.
If we had any questions about the entire process, we were able to contact someone very quickly and they would come back to us and answer any questions that we had, any concerns that we had, and were able to discuss and explain what needed to be put in place and what would be the best fit for our students.
It's been absolutely brilliant.”
Ross Buttery
Head of Campus, EKC Broadstairs College Margate Digital Campus
Interested in bringing motion capture or virtual production to your campus? Get in touch with the Target3D team. Email us at sales@target3d.co.uk or visit our website at target3d.co.uk.
Comments