Renowned animal wrangler Luke Cornell has been hard at work since December 2009 to turn his life’s dream into a reality.

Union Pictures will offer the film industry access to a wide range of animals, as well as a 140-hectare bush location to shoot them in, featuring a two kilometre river, old barns, cottages, dams, a main house, and green pastures.

This is good news for the film industry, who have relied on Luke for more than twenty years to supply animals for their productions, whether its ostriches in parachutes, helmet-wearing deer or baboons for a modelling shoot. Luke services an average of 170 jobs per year.

“Due to the expansion of the business, I sold my three acre smallholding in Hout Bay, where I kept zebra, ostrich, springbok and fallow deer (and quite often lion and cheetah), to purchase this farm one hour from Cape Town. This will enable me to keep my animals in natural conditions and to enlarge my stock,” says Luke.

The studio will be up and running by June and already has bookings for October and November 2010.

The studio has a 30 x 15 metre floor space, with back doors that enable the team to run animals past the back wall for light-controlled running shots.

There are large drains so that the floor can be washed with fire hoses. It’s also perfect for water tank shots that can be drained on set.

Luke says by next season there will be a production office, wardrobe / make up, and kitchen area.

“Attached to the studio are the ablutions, two 4 x 5 m offices/ rooms and one 10 x 4 m space. The 10 x 4 and the ablutions can be reached by interleading doors from the studio area. Clients will be able to paint the psyche wall any colour of their choosing, as long as they return it to white on completion." "We’re just waiting for Eskom to install 150 amps per phase power, which means we won’t have to rely on generator light anymore,” says Luke.

It hasn’t been all plain sailing.  He explains, “We have had to upgrade the roads, cut a platform and even built a dam so that there is a water feature to look at. I have spent almost R1.8 million to date.”

He will also be planting Acacia trees so that “you don’t have to travel to Lindbergh Lodge to have an African feeling for one shot.”

The project has been approved by the National Zoo Council and Luke is positive that he’ll receive his zoo licence from PAAZAB (African Association of Zoos and Aquaria), which will allow him to keep his own predators on the facility.

One of the most important factors for Luke is that the animals can be comfortable in their environment and not have to be moved so much.

He says, “Our animals are obviously more at home at ‘home,’ rather than when transported to a studio in Cape Town or Johannesburg. We recently transported our ostriches all the way to Joburg to film a Cadbury’s spot in an aircraft fuselage that was built in a studio. I took ten lions to a studio in Joburg three weeks ago for Tellus. Union Pictures was designed with animals in mind and will be a one-stop shop where you can shoot animals on location.”

Luke believes this will also save money for tighter budgets, as well offering a weather cover set.

In addition to being a trainer, Luke is also an assistant director on commercials, which helps immensely in simplifying the task at hand for both the director and the animals involved.

Union Pictures will house wild, exotic, and domestic animals. For more information, click here.
Sally Fink