Come September, Belleville, Ontario-based Loyalist College is launching a 3D Video Production post-grad program.

Or, as dean of media studies Jane Harrison jokingly referred to the program’s alternate title, How Not To Make People Sick.

Individuals trained in 3D production are still few and far between, as Dave and Stacey Hatch of Picton’s WhistleStop Productions discovered when they were getting requests for 3D projects. And while courses at that point were available, they were mostly for bigger productions, such as feature films. The duo was looking for folks to work on single- and multi-cam on a smaller scale, so they contacted Loyalist to see if there were any corporate training possibilities.

“Anybody who was working in 3D was just experimenting,” Harrison tells Playback Daily. “It became apparent that this may become valuable training for recent grads. It’s about getting the camera movements and angles right so it’s pleasant for the viewer, and there’s a lot of math involved.”

In collaboration with The Headland, a not-for-profit set up by the Hatches, Loyalist received a grant from the federal government to set up a 3,000-square foot space at the WhistleStop studio, now dubbed The Headland 3D Centre of Excellence.

The 14-week program allows individuals to migrate their skills from 2D to 3D, and Loyalist faculty members in TV production and animation have been upgrading their own skill sets to prep for the September launch. Harrison says she also hopes to see enrollment in January and April.

“Primarily we’re looking at broadcast (projects) initially, but as the bandwidth is getting friendlier, we’ll be looking at 3D in other ways,” says Harrison, with 3D online projects being potential ground to cover.