When Invercargill's new museum opens, some of what visitors see on its screens will have been shot with the help of local students.

Seven people from the Southern Institute of Technology's Bachelor of Screen Arts were on set for a week with a professional film and visual effects crew, making a multimedia installation for Te Unua Museum of Southland, SIT said on Monday. Five of them are still studying and the other two graduated recently.

The installation is being produced by Wellington company Gibson International. The details are being kept quiet for now, but SIT said it would be an immersive experience taking visitors through several eras of the region's past. The shoot was directed by Sam Tozer of LOT23, with crew drawn from Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown.

The arrangement was a trade. James Wilkinson, who manages the screen arts programme, gave the production the use of SIT's screen facilities, among them its studio and its virtual production volume, on the condition that students were brought into the work.

Wilkinson said the production would most likely have stayed in Wellington or Auckland had those facilities not been available in Invercargill, and that the result had gone beyond what the companies expected. They might bring more projects south next year, he said, and a couple of the students had already had possible opportunities come up.

Ella Burton, a third-year film student from Gore, worked as a camera assistant. Much of her job was slating and marking shots, but she also had a turn at pulling focus on a camera SIT does not own, and picked up green-screen tricks such as building a raised floor so that actors' feet look right once the background is replaced.

The week "really solidified" that film was the career for her, she said in SIT's account of the shoot, though she admitted to nerves at the start.

Savanna Conradie, in her third year of concept art, was a production assistant, among the first on set each morning to look after arriving actors and keep the crew supplied with water, seats, food and coffee. She told SIT the first day was overwhelming, and that the most useful lesson was learning how to get along with unfamiliar colleagues and put them at ease.

Gary Scott, Gibson International's head of content and media, said the students were well trained and knew the equipment. He said they had a strong work ethic and that folding them into the team had worked out well.

Second-year film student Charlotte Gilliam was also among those involved.

Te Unua is being built to replace the Southland Museum and Art Gallery, whose pyramid building in Queens Park closed in 2018 over earthquake concerns. As The Invercargill Herald has reported, the Invercargill City Council is aiming to open the new museum in 2027, and its expected running costs have climbed to almost $6 million a year.

The project is another sign of screen work reaching Southland through SIT. Wilkinson is also half of Second Beer, the duo with Nick McGrath that made the video for Bones, the Rhythmonyx track named song of the year at last month's Southland Music Awards, with SIT film students helping on that shoot too.

SIT said the museum project had been good for both the institute and the wider Southland film community.