Virtual Production: The State of the Art

From motion capture to LED volumes, virtual production and realtime technology is transforming the way that film, animation, games and television get made. From Netflix to Disney, Star Wars to Batman, productions are realising the huge efficiencies, benefits and creative possibilities that new processes can bring to content creation.

At this event we’ll be hearing from leading people disrupting this space and ask what it means for content creators and production companies in the North West.

This LJMU event is aimed at people working across film, broadcast, live events, games, music, content production and more. Co-organised By Mark Wright (Experimental Technologies Lab, Institute of Art and Technology) and Pete Woodbridge (Draw and Code/Immersive Liverpool) in conjunction with Liverpool Film Office, Liverpool Screen School, LJMU Faculty of Engineering & Computing and Liverpool City Council.

Speakers

Nancy XU, Virtual Production Producer, Epic Games
Nancy Xu is a virtual production producer at Epic Games London Innovation Lab, with a focus on empowering filmmakers to tell their stories using real time technology. Nancy also produced on shows such as The Lion King, Jungle Book and Alien Covenant.

Dr Declan Keeny, Director of the Ulster Screen Academy, Director of R&D at Studio Ulster
Dr Declan Keeney is Director of the Ulster Screen Academy in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Ulster University, His current research in the support of the screen industries represents £91.5m worth of live grant-based research and development investments. These include a £72m Virtual Production Studio complex that is part of the Belfast Region City Deal pillar innovation projects entitled ‘Studio Ulster’; a £13m AHRC funded creative cluster entitled Future Screens NI; a £2.9m EPSRC funded Network+ grant in Virtual Production; a £2.9m, ‘Levelling Up Fund’ grant for a hybrid virtual production studio and other funded projects.

Declan leads on the strategy and development of degrees in Games Design & Development, Animation, Interactive Media, Interaction Design, VFX, Virtual Production and Film and Television. He is an award-winning academic, filmmaker, screen technologist and digital media practitioner, who has worked in the creative industries for over 25 years, including the BBC for 13 years. He recently designed and introduced a £1.6m Virtual Production studio training facility at Ulster for skills development, teaching and research in Virtual Production. Declan is also currently co-delivering the ‘VP Futures’ training and development programme for eight companies around the UK, in partnership between Industrial Light and Magic, Epic Games, Futures Screens NI and Story Futures at the National Film and Television School.

Robin Cramp, XPLOR, Production Park
Robin Heads the Business Development at Production Park for XPLOR - the world's first research & innovation centre for entertainment technology and production, developing capacity for their Centre for Virtual Production - Yorkshire’s first Extended Reality facility and one of the best-equipped XR stages in the North of England. A campus for live events, film, TV and virtual production where a community of creatives, technologists and engineers work together to create ground-breaking entertainment experiences, with access to extensive facilities.

Rob Chandler, Morden Wolf
After a career in marketing for high-tech corporations Rob took an entrepreneurial leap to start his own Virtual Production Studio. Throughout his career with Microsoft, Salesforce and Epson, Rob recognised that engaging, entertaining and educational content was key to maintaining an audiences attention and achieving value for events, sponsors and viewers. With the recent convergence of camera tracking and gaming CGI to drastically improve workflow times and reduce budgets, he strongly felt that the time is right to disrupt the filmmaking, broadcast and events industries, and support their double digit growth by setting up Morden Wolf. Rob will be talking, and demoing, on the rise of the microstudio and low budget approaches to virtual production.