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AlUla Hosts Creative Boot Camp to Develop Saudi Cinematic Talents

The program is designed to prepare and train Saudi talents at the hands of a group of professional expertise (Film AlUla)
The program is designed to prepare and train Saudi talents at the hands of a group of professional expertise (Film AlUla)
    AlUla (Saudi Arabia) - Asharq Al-Awsat
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AlUla Hosts Creative Boot Camp to Develop Saudi Cinematic Talents

The program is designed to prepare and train Saudi talents at the hands of a group of professional expertise (Film AlUla)
The program is designed to prepare and train Saudi talents at the hands of a group of professional expertise (Film AlUla)

Saudi Arabia’s AlUla is preparing to host a creative boot camp to train a generation of cinematic talents, empower them with knowledge and practical experiences, and develop the film industry in the Kingdom.

This comes as part of AlUla’s endeavor to promote its transformation to a new cinematic destination, after it opened its doors to local and international productions in 2020.

Film AlUla, the Royal Commission for AlUla’s film agency, has partnered with the UK’s industry-led Creative Media Skills Institute to host a 10-day hands-on boot camp led by award-winning film professionals who will head to AlUla in north-west Saudi Arabia to pass on their invaluable knowledge and expertise to a new generation of local filmmakers.

The two organizations have teamed up to give 25 local trainees from AlUla the opportunity to pave their way into the world of cinema.

The training program, which will be held in AlUla, Saudi Arabia’s northwestern region, will prepare talents for employment in production, assistant directing, and the art, locations, costume, make-up and hair departments.

Aspiring talented and committed creatives will have the unique opportunity of developing new skills to build a career in the film industry from top screen professionals from the Creative Media Skills Institute which is based in the heart of the world-famous Pinewood Studios in the UK.

Charlene Jones, Executive Director at Film AlUla, has affirmed that Saudi Arabia’s film industry is beginning to flourish, and developing local film professionals is crucial to the success of building film production in AlUla.
The Kingdom, according to Jones, is home to a large pool of creative and technical talent.

Jones also noted that the Creative Media Skills Institute has a team of highly experienced screen industry professionals that will be sharing their expertise with a new generation of a young film crew to help them break into the industry and ensure they are set ready for more Film and TV production coming to the region.  

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Varieties

'Dinosaur Highway' Tracks Dating Back 166 Million Years are Discovered in England

In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)
In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)
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'Dinosaur Highway' Tracks Dating Back 166 Million Years are Discovered in England

In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)
In this undated photo provided by the University of Birmingham on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, work underway as five extensive trackways that formed part of a "dinosaur highway" are uncovered, at Dewars Farm Quarry in Oxfordshire, England. (University of Birmingham via AP)

A worker digging up clay in a southern England limestone quarry noticed unusual bumps that led to the discovery of a “dinosaur highway” and nearly 200 tracks that date back 166 million years, researchers said Thursday.

The extraordinary find made after a team of more than 100 people excavated the Dewars Farm Quarry, in Oxfordshire, in June expands upon previous paleontology work in the area and offers greater insights into the Middle Jurassic period, researchers at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham said.

“These footprints offer an extraordinary window into the lives of dinosaurs, revealing details about their movements, interactions, and the tropical environment they inhabited,” said Kirsty Edgar, a micropaleontology professor at the University of Birmingham, The AP reported.

Four of the sets of tracks that make up the so-called highway show paths taken by gigantic, long-necked, herbivores called sauropods, thought to be Cetiosaurus, a dinosaur that grew to nearly 60 feet (18 meters) in length. A fifth set belonged to the Megalosaurus, a ferocious 9-meter predator that left a distinctive triple-claw print and was the first dinosaur to be scientifically named two centuries ago.

An area where the tracks cross raises questions about possible interactions between the carnivores and herbivores.

“Scientists have known about and been studying Megalosaurus for longer than any other dinosaur on Earth, and yet these recent discoveries prove there is still new evidence of these animals out there, waiting to be found," said Emma Nicholls, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Nearly 30 years ago, 40 sets of footprints discovered in a limestone quarry in the area were considered one of the world's most scientifically important dinosaur track sites. But that area is mostly inaccessible now and there's limited photographic evidence because it predated the use of digital cameras and drones to record the findings.

The group that worked at the site this summer took more than 20,000 digital images and used drones to create 3-D models of the prints. The trove of documentation will aid future studies and could shed light on the size of the dinosaurs, how they walked and the speed at which they moved.

“The preservation is so detailed that we can see how the mud was deformed as the dinosaur’s feet squelched in and out," said Duncan Murdock, an earth scientist at the Oxford museum. "Along with other fossils like burrows, shells and plants we can bring to life the muddy lagoon environment the dinosaurs walked through.”

The findings will be shown at a new exhibit at the museum and also broadcast on the BBC's “Digging for Britain” program next week.