Commercial Integrator October 2021 - 24

COVER STORY
with clients coming to the company's
studios to shoot commercials with multiple
settings and some clients on the events side
requesting it for live events.
" At the same time, we're still in the very,
very early stages of this, and it's going to be
shifting, there's going to be more coming, "
Messina says. " it's important that you
pay attention to these changes as they're
happening. "
Ian Messina, director of virtual production
for Studio Lab, get to work to learn immersive
creation platform Unreal Engine - a must
in this line of work - and quickly learned
about the complexities of virtual production.
" In the early stages of it, a lot of things
were up in the air. Some people had it
figured out, some people didn't figure it
out, " he says.
Any new technology is exciting, but
disruptive technology that flips current production
techniques upside-down will take
time to evolve and become easier to use.
" There are a lot of late nights where you
get stuck on problems, and sometimes you
need that back and forth where somebody
goes in, works on it for an hour, gets stuck,
and someone else goes in and looks at it
from a different perspective, " Ian Messina
says. " But ultimately, you're making something
work that didn't work a year ago. "
The company gave a public tour of their
production space, which included loads
of AV, giant Planar screens and incredible
tracking technology that allowed the scene
on the LED walls to move with the camera.
The tour included a demonstration of
how the technology works and its advantages
over a green screen. In the studio was
a yellow Ferrari, and on the LED wall was a
scene of a garage.
If that were a green screen, green light
would be bouncing off the shiny car,
which would then have to be removed in
post-production. However, the only light
bouncing off the car in the studio was the
light generated by garage environment
on the video wall, which makes the scene
much more realistic.
The Demand
According to Tim Messina, the combined
company is able to disassemble the stage
and take it on the road for live events and
use the technology in innovative ways.
" As an event company, we can tear all
of this down in one day and relocate it
somewhere else in a completely different
configuration, " he said. " We have an event
in January where the video wall is torn into a
thousand different pieces and content is
mapped across the entire thing. "
Tim Messina went through several other
previous uses, including as part of an aerialist's
act, configured as a dome and motorized
panels that can move with the camera.
" The demand for all this is through the
roof, " he said.
One of the main reasons for the demand
is the technology's ability to transport
actors to anywhere in the world without
having to spend time and money traveling,
which can save productions a ton of money,
says A.J. Wedding, a director, producer,
visual effects expert and co-founder of Los
Angeles-based Orbital Virtual Studios.
Wedding's studio operated the virtual
studio in a smaller test facility which is
currently booked about 100% of the time,
Now, they're moving into a 36,000-squarefoot
facility with two stages and is currently
servicing its first TV series.
" I think COVID has a lot to do with it, "
Wedding says. " When you're doing a production
that has a lot of location shoot days,
those days are very expensive already. Then
you add COVID on top of it and there's a lot
of things you can't do now. "
With quarantine requirements after traveling,
locking down a location is a lot more
challenging, so the opportunity to shoot in
an environment as immersive as the actual
location can do wonders for the production's
budget and timeline, Wedding says.
This technology - since it's brand new -
can be expensive, but it should eventually
come down in price as it becomes more
mainstream and made less complicated.
However, that is currently one of the
challenges, Wedding says. In addition to
the price of the technology, it can also be
costly to find someone who can operate
these systems.
" It's very difficult to find enough people
who understand how to use it, " Wedding
says. " Those people are in high demand, so
you have to pay them more. "
It will also take time, Wedding says, as
Tim and Ian Messina give a demonstration
of the virtual production technology
during a tour of the company's New
Hampshire studio.
24
Commercial Integrator OCTOBER 2021
producers, live events operators and entertainment
technology professionals are just
now being exposed to virtual production
and extended reality.
" You have to have people that believe in
it, " Wedding says. CI
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Commercial Integrator October 2021

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