The Entertainment Technology Center@USC has released the fourth and final installment of its case study, “Fathead: Virtual Production & Beyond.” Chapter 4 of the four-part white paper is titled “Key Contributors: Process Pipelines,” which summarizes key findings of the production and recommended best practices moving forward. “Fathead” — directed by c. Craig Patterson and produced by Erik Weaver, ETC’s director of adaptive production — was shot at Amazon Stage 15 in Culver City as an experiment in virtual production, in-camera VFX and collaborative, cloud-based workflows. Continue reading ETC Releases Final Section of Virtual Production White Paper

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 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

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

Content creators who relied on remote workflows through the height of COVID-19 now realize those protocols are here to stay. Centralized cloud-based data repositories are a convenient hub from which to manage the processing of sound and image throughout production. The HPA NET lunch event, “Color Grading in the Cloud: A Case Study” analyzed that critical step from the perspective of the short film “Fathead,” produced by the Entertainment Technology Center@USC. “Fathead” was shot on a volume stage and uploaded from the camera to the cloud, where the entire workflow took place. Continue reading ‘Fathead’ Case Study: HPA Analyzes Color Grading in Cloud

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

“A world without synthetic humans is not an option anymore,” the audience at the 2022 HPA Tech Retreat in Rancho Mirage were advised by “Fathead” virtual production producer Tom Thudiyanplackal. Equally unimaginable is a world without synthetic sets, as was obvious at Tuesday’s daylong HPA Super Session, themed “Immerse Yourself in Virtual Production.” “Fathead,” the fifth short from the USC Entertainment Technology Center’s Annual ETC Innovation and Technology Grant, was all about in-camera VFX, captured in real-time on a stage lined and lidded with LEDs — 280-degrees around and on the ceiling, too. Continue reading ETC Pushes Boundaries of Virtual Production with ‘Fathead’