ETC@USC has posted a tutorial that offers best practices for white balancing during production on a curved wall LED volume stage. Due to the growing number of LED volume and backing wall applications emerging worldwide, many critical color calibration issues have resulted. The informative tutorial — authored by cinematographer Tim Kang from Quasar Science with support from producer Erik Weaver from ETC — provides cinematographers and production teams with a simple graphical guide that breaks down the problems between the camera and its LED wall perception, while specifying different means to implement solutions. The Virtual Production White Balancing Tutorial is now available on the ETC site. Continue reading ETC Releases White Balancing Tutorial for Virtual Production

ETC@USC is hosting its 9th vETC virtual conference at this year’s IBC in Amsterdam, September 15-18. The event — which highlights significant presentations of emerging technologies and their impact on the M&E industry — will explore how generative AI, machine learning, and other compelling new tools help simplify building 3D worlds and tackle today’s computer vision challenges. The sessions will be recorded and posted on ETC’s YouTube channel. For those attending IBC who may be interested in attending the sessions (located in Hall 7 at Booth C28), visit the program guide, which includes a full schedule and speaker bios. Continue reading vETC Coming to IBC 2023: The Path of Sustainable Innovation

ETC@USC will host its 8th vETC virtual conference at SIGGRAPH 2023 in Los Angeles, August 8-10. The event – which highlights significant presentations of emerging technologies and their impact on the M&E industry – will explore how generative AI, machine learning, and other compelling new tools help simplify building 3D worlds and tackle today’s computer vision challenges. Three days of sessions will be recorded and posted on ETC’s YouTube channel. For those attending SIGGRAPH who may be interested in attending the sessions (located at Z by HP Booth 215), visit the program guide, which includes a full schedule and speaker bios. Continue reading ETC Will Host Sessions at SIGGRAPH Conference This Week

ETC@USC will host its 8th vETC virtual conference at SIGGRAPH 2023 in Los Angeles, August 8-10. The event – which highlights significant presentations of emerging technologies and their impact on the M&E industry – will explore how generative AI, machine learning, and other compelling new tools help simplify building 3D worlds and tackle today’s computer vision challenges. Three days of sessions will be recorded and posted on ETC’s YouTube channel. For those attending SIGGRAPH who may be interested in attending the sessions (located at Z by HP Booth 215), visit the program guide, which includes a full schedule and speaker bios. Continue reading ETC Will Host Sessions at SIGGRAPH Conference Next Week

The Entertainment Technology Center@USC has released the third installment of its case study, “Fathead: Virtual Production & Beyond.” Section 3 of the four-part white paper is “State of the Industry: Beyond Trends,” which discusses “where we’re at, and where we’re going” and features compelling interviews with thought leaders from companies including The Third Floor, Stargate Studios, Orbital Virtual Studios, Vū Technologies, Lux Machina, nDisplay, Epic Games and Unity Technologies. Click here to access Section 3 and we’ll post announcements when the final section — “Fathead: A Proof-of-Concept Short Film” — becomes available. Continue reading ETC Releases Section 3 of Its Virtual Production White Paper

The film “Fathead,” produced by the Entertainment Technology Center@USC, continues to garner recognition. Nominated earlier this year for a NAACP Image Award in the Outstanding Short Film (Live Action) category, the film was most recently included in The American Pavilion’s Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the 76th annual Cannes Film Festival. “Fathead” — directed by c. Craig Patterson and produced by Erik Weaver, ETC’s director of adaptive production — was featured among 38 short films in the Showcase at Cannes and was announced winner in the Student Short Film category. Continue reading ETC’s ‘Fathead’ Receives Honors at the Cannes Film Festival

The Entertainment Technology Center@USC will host its 7th vETC virtual conference at NAB Show 2023, April 16-18 in Las Vegas. Highlighting significant presentations of emerging technologies and their impact on the M&E industry, at the HP booth (N2826) with key partner FUSE Technical Group, vETC speakers will present concepts, workflows, business models, case studies and more. This year’s vETC looks to keep pace with the quickly emerging trends in virtual production. The presentations will be recorded and posted on our YouTube channel. The 3-day program with a full list of speakers is available on the ETC site. Continue reading vETC at NAB 2023: Democratizing Onset Virtual Productions

The Entertainment Technology Center@USC has released the second installment of its case study, “Fathead: Virtual Production & Beyond.” Section 2 of the four-part white paper is “Sound Mitigation: Performance Matters,” which features compelling interviews with “Fathead” co-producer Brandyn Johnson and former Sony Pictures executive Eric Rigney. The section also addresses “the challenges of recording clean dialogue on LED volumetric stages and in-camera visual effects (ICVFX) during production.” Click here to access Section 2 and the previously released Section 1, “Cloud Computing: Growth Without Bounds.” We’ll post announcements when the remaining two sections become available. Continue reading ETC Releases Next Section of Virtual Production White Paper

The Entertainment Technology Center@USC has begun releasing its case study entitled “Fathead: Virtual Production & Beyond.” Section 1 of the four-part white paper is “Cloud Computing: Growth Without Bounds.” “Everything on this production was done in the cloud, minus the shoot on set,” explains ETC@USC head of virtual & adaptive production Erik Weaver, executive producer of the 20-minute “Fathead” film. “We did some very innovative work, ingesting ARRI Alexa RAW to Amazon S3 buckets on the AWS cloud in real time, which had never been done before and I don’t think has been done since.” Continue reading ETC Releases First Section of Virtual Production White Paper

Virtual production in its current form has been around for about two years, but they’ve been light years. From novice to veteran, everyone is still learning the ins and outs, the difference between previs and techvis, 3D and 2.5D. The pandemic fast-forwarded “to about six months a development process that used to happen on a four-year cycle, so a lot of buzzwords and concepts went from zero to 100 percent very quickly,” Lux Machina president Zach Alexander shared at the first annual SVG Silicon Valley Video Summit (SVVS), which brought together more than 400 digital practitioners from numerous areas. Continue reading Panelists Evaluate Challenges, Benefits of Virtual Production

The short film “Fathead,” produced by the Entertainment Technology Center@USC and shot at the new Amazon Stage in Culver City as an experiment in virtual production and collaborative, cloud-based workflows, has been nominated for a 54th NAACP Image Award in the Outstanding Short Film (Live Action) category. The Image Awards celebrate outstanding achievements and performances in the arts from an African American point of view, and recognize those who promote social justice through their creative pursuits. This year’s awards will air live on February 25 at 8:00 p.m. on BET and various ViacomCBS networks. “Fathead” was directed by c. Craig Patterson and produced by Erik Weaver, ETC’s director of adaptive production. Continue reading ETC Short Film ‘Fathead’ Is Nominee for NAACP Image Award

As part of the upcoming Infinity Festival 2022 — “where Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” — production and tech experts will gather for a special one-day workshop covering numerous elements of on-set virtual production. The event, slated for 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM on November 5 at Goya Studios in Los Angeles, will showcase an LED volume for hands-on demos related to the virtual art department, on-set operations, and shooting and directing. The workshop is presented by Nvidia and Z by HP in association with ETC@USC. It is produced by Erik Weaver of ETC and co-hosted by Rick Champagne of Nvidia. Visit Infinity Festival for tickets and more info (use code Weaver25 for a 25 percent discount). Continue reading Industry Experts to Convene for Virtual Production Workshop

The Entertainment Technology Center@USC will host its 6th vETC virtual conference at SIGGRAPH 2022 in Vancouver, British Columbia, August 9-11. During this year’s vETC at the Amazon Web Services booth (1039), speakers will present concepts, workflows, business models and case studies as they apply to virtual production. Many of the companies that worked on ETC’s latest R&D film project, “Fathead” will discuss their discoveries in sessions that will be recorded and posted on ETC’s YouTube channel. The 3-day program with list of speakers and gear to be demonstrated is available on the ETC site. Continue reading vETC to Discuss Virtual Production During SIGGRAPH

Production in the cloud, virtual workflows and remote work solutions were hot topics at the 2022 NAB Show in Las Vegas last month. Erik Weaver, director of adaptive production at the Entertainment Technology Center@USC, discussed new tools and techniques implemented during the production of ETC’s “Fathead,” a short film that experimented with in-camera real-time VFX and LED stages. Weaver joined “Fathead” virtual production producer Tom Thudiyanplackal, the short’s post-production supervisor James Blevins, and the global lead for Film/TV production partners at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Jack Wenzinger for a compelling NAB panel discussion, “ICVFX and the Cloud.” Continue reading ‘Fathead’ Team Explores Virtual Production During NAB Panel

As the Renaissance was a reaction to the Dark Ages that preceded it, so too the entertainment industrial complex finds itself on the brink of a fruitful new era of technological and creative achievement triggered by COVID-19. The need for remote production has encouraged a cross pollination of new tools and techniques that will likely lead to significant change in the next era of media production. Roaring back to an in-person event in Rancho Mirage last week after hosting a virtual summit in 2021, the HPA Tech Retreat 2022 showcased the groundbreaking exchange between content-makers and tech providers. Continue reading HPA Tech Retreat: Bridge Between Creatives and Tech Firms