NEW YORK—Former executives from Vizrt and Disguise announced today the launch of Emergent, an AI- and data-driven technology and services company that will offer AI-enabled content creation solutions, interactive experiences, and immersive creative services to the media and entertainment industry. The company will make its public debut at IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam.

“Emergent was founded on the belief that the future of media lies in intelligent content—driven by AI, informed by context, and delivered at the right moment to the right audience,” Emergent CEO Grig Mindlin said. “Our tools and services solve the complexity behind today’s production environments, giving creators, producers, and technologists the power to move faster, think smarter, and tell unforgettable stories.”

The company offers two product/service offerings:

Emergent Solutions will deliver enterprise-grade AI-enhanced solutions for media production, sports and news events, and immersive environments. Solutions is designed to reduce production costs, accelerate workflows and turn fragmented data into clear, real-time intelligence, the company said, by automating tedious tasks or enhancing audience engagement through personalized content.

Emergent Studio is a team of designers, technologists, and storytellers that provides creative and integration services to bring AI-powered content workflows and visualization to life. The multidisciplinary team helps customers design, deploy and scale creative projects and AI solutions, from strategic consulting and concept design, to installation and managed services.

The founding team includes:

• Grig Mindlin, CEO, a media-tech founder with two successful exits and leadership stops at Vizrt, Acision, Polygon Labs (acquired by Disguise), and Disguise. He is known for driving innovation that scales—and teams that love the work.
• David Jorba, CBO, a media tech executive with extensive experience in business development, growing revenue, and scaling global SaaS and services businesses. His leadership roles brought commercial success to Vizrt, TVU Networks, as a partner at Polygon Labs, and Disguise—driving go-to-market strategy, and international expansion.
• Miguel Yabrudes, CCO, an Emmy Award–winning creative leader behind groundbreaking visualization and creative technology projects for the Olympics, World Cup, and major broadcasters. He has held executive roles at Disguise, Polygon Labs (co-founder), and Vizrt, blending storytelling and innovation to shape the future of live media.
• Wilson Li, CTO, a technology architect with over 15 years of experience designing cloud-native platforms, AI pipelines, and large-scale data simulation systems. Formerly Head of Engineering and partner at Polygon Labs, he previously led advanced R&D initiatives at Vizrt, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

“The market is demanding smarter, faster, and more efficient content solutions, and Emergent is built to meet that challenge head-on,” said David Jorba, Chief Business & Strategy Officer at Emergent. “Our team understands the challenges of modern production and that's why we’re focused on empowering media organizations with the tools, strategies, and services to build the creative power they need to compete and thrive.”

At IBC, Emergent execs will be in Stand 1.D29 with one of their partners, ROE Visual.

LAS VEGAS—Virtual production tech provider Disguise has announced that it will be working with Nikon and its subsidiary MRMC on a “Studio Extreme” demo that will showcase a turnkey virtual production studio.

Studio Extreme will take participants on a journey into virtual production, the companies said. As they step into the activation, participants will be transported to a location just outside Vegas, where they will be tasked to deliver a live news report. As a twist, the showcase will see if they are prepared for all the weather conditions that Vegas can offer.

Designed for brands looking to tell powerful stories through immersive content, the showcase or “activation” will leverage Studio Pro by Disguise, a preconfigured solution. Studio Pro combines the most advanced virtual production technology with best-in-class creative and technical services, including 24/7 support, training and installation, enabling brands to shoot commercials, social media content, internal training material or important keynote or investor presentations — all from one stage on the same day, Disguise said.

“We’ve helped deliver 400 virtual production studios in more than 100 countries, and know just how transformational they can be for brands,” Alexandra Coulson, vice president of marketing at Disguise, said. “Traditionally, however, LED technology required significant upfront training and investment, making it reserved for Hollywood studios. We are changing that. Together with Nikon and MRMC we are showcasing the possibilities at CES 2025. Attendees will experience firsthand how they can take their brand’s story to the next level, producing a versatile offering of content with our comprehensive powerhouse solution, Studio Pro.”

The technology behind the Studio Extreme activation will include:

• Studio Pro — a turnkey studio solution by Disguise
• Studio Bot LT — MRMC’s most compact robotic camera arm solution
• RED Komodo 6K camera
• Lighting by Kino Flo
• L-Acoustics spatial audio

Once they complete their weather report, visitors will receive a personalized video downloadable via a QR code.

"MRMC Broadcast is proud to be leading the development of robotic camera solutions alongside the ongoing growth of virtual production technologies,” MRMC Deputy Head of Marketing Amanda Dixon said. “The Studio Extreme activation at CES will be a fantastic demonstration of how broadcast studios can seamlessly integrate robotic solutions into their virtual and augmented reality workflows while providing precise and repeatable motion. We are excited to once again be working with Disguise to deliver this immersive experience."

The virtual production activation takes place at the Nikon booth 19504 in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

LONDON— Virtual production technology Disguise is partnering with AI platform Cuebric to make virtual environments faster, easier and more cost-effective to build. As part of the partnership, Cuebric has been integrated with the Disguise platform,which will allow creatives to use AI to create the shape and depth of 2.5D environments, then import them into Disguise. The result is a plug-and-play scene that can be executed on an LED stage in only two minutes, saving weeks of pre-production work, the companies said.

“Real-time environments look spectacular on-camera, yet often require many hours of artistic and technical build,” said Addy Ghani, VP of Virtual Production at Disguise. “Thanks to our partnership with Cuebric, there’s now another option. Using generative AI, artists can build 2.5D plates, helping them go from concept to camera in minutes so they can tell unique stories in a way that works for them.”

To create 2.5D scenes, users can either add purely generative content or import images from elsewhere into the Cuebric platform. Cuebric then leverages AI rotoscoping and inpainting to segment the images into layers, transforming them from 2D to 2.5D based on the depth of objects. 

Once the Cuebric 2.5D scenes are imported into Disguise’s Designer software, each individual layer is depth-mapped with an auto generated mesh. This means that the individual plates are not limited to flat planes, as 3D shapes can be built into each of the plates—resulting in a more realistic parallax effect that works no matter how you move the camera on set, Disguise said. 

Using Disguise and Cuebric, users can easily make changes and iterations in virtual environments during production, allowing for a more dynamic and creative process and avoiding costly reshoots. 

“Cuebric democratizes filmmaking, removing the cost barrier to creating gorgeous, immersive sets and backgrounds with its plug-and-play 3D effect solution. Leveraging AI to minimize the tedious and maximize the extraordinary in the creative process will breathe new life into the production industry,” said Cuebric co-founders, Pinar Seyhan Demirdag and Gary Lee Koepke. “Desire and demand for extraordinary content has never been greater, so there is no better time to be partnering with Disguise to put the full power of generative AI into the hands of the world’s greatest creators and filmmakers.”

With the launch of the new MSG Sphere dome in Las Vegas last month, the city is now home to perhaps the most technically  immersive live entertainment experience in the world.  The dome-shaped theater features a giant 360-degree wraparound video display that wraps up, over, and around the audience, creating a fully-immersive visual environment for audiences seated in the 17,600 seat theater. The dome itself measures 516 feet wide and stands 366 feet tall with 580,000 square feet total. The 160,000 square foot LED display, featuring 16Kx16K resolution, with the ability to display 256 colors on skyline, is billed as the highest resolution LED screen in the world. 

When MSG Entertainment, which built the $2 billion+ facility wanted to launch the Sphere with great fanfare, it turned to iconic band U2, which signed on to be the “house band” through the end of the year. 

Over the years, U2 has demonstrated its affinity for pushing the technology envelope and at the Sphere, that love for eye-popping video and immersive sound is in full view. 

One of the companies behind U2’s live concert visuals is disguise, a U.K.-based provider of the software that has powered the visual effects behind the Irish band as well as, more recently Taylor Swift and Ed Sheehan for nearly two decades now.

At the time disguise signed on to U2’s Vertigo tour in 2005, the company was more of a creative agency, according to Peter Kirkup, solutions and innovation director.

“We were creating visuals for the screen and then our software ended up being the software that drove these screens because it was kind of handwritten to drive the visuals for those things,” Kirkup said. “And over the last 20 years as U2 progressed their music career, our company has evolved from being a content agency to being a standalone media server business and a bit of a global powerhouse of the live entertainment industry.” 

U2 used disguise’s 3D vizualization software to not only display visuals but to also provide a preview, giving the tour’s designers a detailed view of how the visuals would look in a live venue. 

“Our software is all based around the 3d visualization of the project to where you have a 3D model of the stage and see what the visuals are gonna look like,” Kirkup said. “That piece of the software—the very first version of that was written for the Vertigo tour in 2003. And it's still central to the software.”

For U2’s show at the Sphere, disguise worked with  Stefan Desmidt, tecnical director and video director for the Fuse Technical Group, which has designed the visuals for U2 concerts for decades. 

“He's in charge of all the video systems and also live cutting the cameras during the shows and making the decision of which cameras go up onto the big screens and so on—and he's been doing that with U2 longer than we've been in business,” Kirkup said. 

The 360 degree video “canvas” that makes up the interior of the dome theater is unlike anything else in the world currently, so the challenge of how to fill and coordinate the video on those screens posed an immense challenge, according to Kirkup

“The Sphere is an incredible canvas,” Kirkup said. “It's 16k by 16k pixels to be dealt with, to put video out onto, but also when you're doing a U2 concert, you don't just want to hit play and run the video; you've actually got to be able to respond to the band. You've got to create images up on the screen from the cameras and you've got to be able to be you know those moments when the band decide that they want to bring Lady Gaga on stage, for example and do an extra song that they haven't planned for. The system has to be able to cope for that.”

Disguise designed the system for U2’s visuals in collaboration with U2’s tech team but a number of questions needed to be addressed initially, according to Kirkup. 

“How did our system need to look in order to facilitate one of those pixels but also meet all of the other tech requirements in the venue for redundancy, for networking and remote locations for servers and all that sort?” Kirkup mused. “It was layers and layers and coming back to the details.”

Twenty-three of Disguise’s gx3 flagship servers are fitted with 30TB of storage each, meaning a total of 690TB of drives are available to play the 60fps content at a moment’s notice, according to Kirkup, adding that the system uses Upstream 100G networking to connect storage and slicing servers to the production system.

“We play the videos produced by a content company, and we're also rendering in real time all of the real time visuals,” Kirkup said. “So that's taking the video feeds from cameras, feeding them through the Notch real time content engine, —which runs on our servers as well—and then feeding the final pixels out to the end processing system that's part of the house system within Sphere. So we're sort of interfacing with the house system but also all of the show production equipment like cameras and triggers from the band's backline and so on as well.”

disguise began working with Fuse in February and a 10 member team worked round the clock to meet the October deadline, which is among the company’s most challenging projects to date.

“There are certainly moments of the show where we push the system really to its edges,” Kirkup said. “We're doing not just a single layer of video playback, but we're also capturing video from cinematic cameras, and we're bringing that into the system. We're treating that in a real time content engine to be able to dynamically adjust the image that's coming from those cameras to either apply a lot to it or even to do more creative things. And then potentially we're also playing a layer of alpha video on top of that, so we were compositing and mixing media as well.”

Kirkup has seen the show several times and likens it to his first with virtual reality.

“It's a visually amazing experience, it really does sort of take you over,” he said. “It’s like the first time you try VR but this is something similar but different to that because it's a shared experience rather than an isolated experience. This is totally immersing all of your fields of view.” 

Over the last four years, AI has become a hot topic in just about every industry - and the broadcast industry is no exception. Already, broadcasters are taking advantage of the numerous ways AI can make their day-to-day lives easier. 

It’s far too early to know where AI will ultimately take us, but below are the main ways I believe news streams could soon be automated—letting AI search for, build, and even write stories complete with graphics. 

1. Writing Your Stories
AI presents a wealth of opportunities to tell compelling stories in broadcast. Take, for example, sports productions, which are now as much about entertainment as coverage of a game. Pre and post-game segments now provide entertaining analysis with augmented replays, graphics, and recreations.

News broadcasting could utilize AI for similar ends, taking footage and generating news stories that provide deeper analysis. Think of it as the ‘gamification’ of broadcasting. As video games start to look more real, coverage of real-world events becomes more visually akin to a game, with the same real-time technology powering things on both sides.

For reporters, this might seem like a bad thing. But it doesn’t have to be. Cost is one of the biggest challenges currently facing news broadcasters. News channels will find it more cost-effective to show commentary rather than in-depth reporting. That’s largely due to the cost of news gathering and outsourcing content. With AI, we could see those costs dramatically reduce, making it viable for big and small networks to do more news gathering and dive deeper into stories.

If AI can make news broadcasting an even more lucrative endeavor, then we’re bound to see more flexibility in the stories being reported. Combine this with new visual possibilities and news broadcasts could become as entertaining as most sports coverage is.

2. Creating Graphics and Videos
Finding the right imagery for a news broadcast can be difficult. For many, AI is already making it simpler by automatically generating metadata for videos and imagery from external content creators. Huge U.S. broadcasters like CNN and News Corp have entire centers to house their incoming content feeds. Now, AI tools can automatically assign data that makes the content easy for producers and journalists to find.

Of course, you don’t always already have what you need in-house. For many broadcasters, that means spending hours purchasing stock footage or tasking staff with creating what’s needed. With generative AI platforms, this time-wasting process could soon be a thing of the past. Instead of creating imagery and infographics from scratch, you could simply type a few prompts and allow the AI to create the art, virtual background, or infographic you need in seconds.

AI could even generate video footage for you, including animations. So say you need to explain a vaccination to viewers. AI can help you animate an explainer as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, so that your viewers can get all the information they need without needing to go to other sources.

3. Simplifying workflows
AI can also help reduce the need for manual tasks such as tagging ingested video. Most broadcasters have MAM (Media Asset Management) systems which ingest video from 50-200 sources daily. Today, this process requires for the most part manual tagging of the video with metadata. AI is now capable of tagging, creating that metadata automatically, identifying people and objects in the video and identifying copyright and trademarks in the video.

Once the video is ingested, a journalist needs to find what is relevant to the story, make a rough edit and add it to their newsroom system or send it to an edit bay for the editor to put together the package edit for that story using Adobe Premiere or Final Cut. All that can and is being automated by AI.

4. AI Could Help Fight Misinformation
Younger audiences aren’t watching TV. It’s a fact that the broadcast industry has come to terms with. Instead, they get all the news they need from social media platforms and video-sharing sites like TikTok and YouTube. 

That, however, could be dangerous. When your news comes from a variety of online sources, you are much more likely to be a victim of misinformation. Using AI could help to make this a thing of the past by helping more reliable broadcasters to attract younger audiences. 

We’re already starting to see broadcasters use AI to help ‘gamify’ output to try and capture this younger audience. For instance, AI is helping broadcasters automatically track on-set talent movements without any wearables. That helps to realistically place them in virtual worlds and paves the way for movement-triggered effects, letting talent point to a location to see a virtual player appear, for instance. With AI-driven graphics and effects, traditional news broadcasts could become even more interesting for a younger demographic.

In the future, I also hope that AI will help us reliably validate the sources of any story, and identify any copyright or trademarks involved. That will mean anyone can still do their own research, while also trusting AI to help them ensure all sources are legitimate.

New Capabilities Are Coming
AI is constantly evolving. With huge companies like Google and NVIDIA putting money behind AI, it’s hard not to see it as the next big commercial technology, and that means new developments will come thick and fast. The more competition there is between AI platforms, the more adoption there will be, which in turn leads to innovation. Of course, the buzz will also lead to imitation and a lot of companies will latch on to the AI bandwagon without creating any value for consumers. 

In news broadcasting, I believe AI’s true value will make costly or time-consuming processes easier. For instance, the holy grail of virtual production for news broadcasters is AI which can key out talent without the use of green screens. It may be five to ten years away, but a software-driven solution that tracks talent and cameras without encoders will revolutionize the production process.

Is AI a Threat?
Anyone in the broadcast industry that sees AI as an imminent threat to their livelihood should start seeing it as an opportunity to try something new. I believe AI will be the biggest shake-up in news broadcasting since the 24-hour news cycle became viable. It will completely reshape the industry. 

News organizations should be exploring how AI can help staff, optimize costs, reach new audiences and give them an edge over competitors. Organizations who start exploring the possibilities will soon be leagues ahead.

LONDON—Real-time production platform specialist disguise has partnered with NVIDIA on a collaboration to integrate the NVIDIA Omniverse platform with disguise’s platform for immersive experiences, the company said today.

Creatives will be able to connect their preferred digital content creation (DCC) tools in a unified production pipeline. This connectivity allows for easier and quicker changes, enhanced content production, the ability to work in full fidelity and a lower barrier of entry for accessing media and entertainment workflows, the company said.

With so many DCC tools for both 2D and 3D content creation existing separate from rendering tools and applications, more unified content management workflows and solutions are needed, it said.

disguise bridges the physical and the virtual, combining 3D visualization software, cloud solutions, platform, hardware and services to provide creatives and technical teams with the ability to realize any creative vision regardless of complexity, it said.

NVIDIA Omniverse is an extensible platform that enables fast building of custom 3D pipelines and simulation of large-scale virtual worlds. With Omniverse, 3D design teams can work across multiple software suites to collaborate in real time in a shared environment, it said.

The integration with NVIDIA builds on disguise’s existing RenderStream capabilities, a bi-directional protocol that transports rendering information between third-party render engines and disguise. RenderStream allows for greater synchronicity of content and tracking data across the production workflow as well as the seamless merging of the physical and virtual worlds.

The connection of NVIDIA to disguise’s cloud platform will enable remote teams and productions can easily collaborate. This suite of applications includes disguise Drive for unified upload and storage and Previz for importing, previsualizing and sharing 3D interactive scenes for any production.

A preview of the integration will be shown at NVIDIA GTC on March 23, 2023 at 1 p.m. GMT in the session titled “How to increase productivity in Media & Entertainment with NVIDIA-enabled end-to-end workflows.”

Register for the session online.

More information is available on the company’s website.

See disguise at NAB Show booth C6118.

LONDON—The virtual production and live experiences platform disguise has reengineered its learning program into a new offering named disguise Learn. 

The offering’s new in-classroom and online courses provide an improved experience offering dedicated learning pathways for virtual production, extended reality, broadcast graphics, location-based experiences and live events so users can pick a learning pathway most relevant to their chosen industry application, disguise reported. 

"Within the last three years, we've helped power more than 600 real-time productions in over 50 countries,” says disguise training manager for EMEA, Alex Lapthorne. “With disguise Learn, we want to share all we've learned with our 20 years of industry expertise and make it as easy as possible for anyone to become an expert in disguise workflows. With our new, industry-tailored learning pathways, learners can apply newfound knowledge to whichever projects they work in including xR and virtual production as well as location-based experiences and live shows.” 

The disguise Learn product offers a blended approach with both online and classroom learning for all levels of experience. The online offering comes free of charge and now includes more easily consumable learning content presented in different formats, the company said.  

Users of disguise Learn can also enjoy easier access to trainers in different regions, with disguise providing classroom learning in their key locations across EMEA, APAC and the Americas either through their own trainers or through certified disguise Training Partners. Users can now easily learn in their preferred medium, on their budget and on their schedule.

“While virtual productions, live events and location-based experiences are quickly adopting next-generation technology platforms, all these industries need people with the knowledge to put the technology to use,” said disguise training manager for the Americas, Vickie Claiborne. “With the launch of disguise Learn, we have expanded our existing catalog of courses so our users can easily learn new skills that will enable them to transition into new working environments and discover exciting opportunities.” 

The disguise Learn platform offers certification in the form of printed certificates and digital badges that get posted to the attendees' Linkedin network upon successful completion of each module. With this, attendees can showcase their skills, making it easier to land their next gig.

“We are proud to launch disguise Learn and offer an easier and better way for users to begin their learning journey with us. Now, both new and existing users can get the best out of our software and hardware solutions and feel fully supported within the disguise ecosystem,” said disguise chief experience Officer Alex Wills. “The pace of innovation within the media and entertainment space is increasing exponentially and we want as many people as possible harnessing the disguise platform to stay at the very forefront of these industries.”

More information is available here. 

LONDON—A new suite of cloud-ready applications for the media and entertainment industry has been launched by disguise. 

The disguise Cloud, which is available on a free starter plan, is built to enable end-to-end remote collaboration across any M&E production. 

“Our goal is to simplify the creative process and allow artists to tell inspiring stories,” explained Niall Thompson, head of cloud solutions at disguise. “After years of helping creatives leverage real-time concert visuals for artists like J Balvin and Guns N’ Roses, LED volumes for the biggest film and VFX studios and live broadcast graphics on Eurosport, MTV and ITV, we know that ambitious productions aren’t possible without remote teams who can work together.”

In the past, many remote teams have had to jump between cloud-based tools from different companies. The result is often duplicate files, multiple monthly subscriptions and a disjointed workflow, disguise said. 

With disguise Cloud, this process is greatly simplified by providing all the apps a team may need to store, preview and review high-resolution media, tag content and leave comments on projects in the cloud – all on one platform.

In addition to providing easy collaboration across time zones, disguise Cloud will soon also ensure media files can be shared more securely with support for built-in passphrase protection, multi-factor authentication, expiration links and watermarking. 

For creatives, that means less time worrying about potential IP data leaks and more time to focus on iterating creative ideas.

The Cloud platform will offer a unified disguise login, enabling one-click access to all of disguise’s cloud services as well as disguise Designer software, the ultimate software to visualize, design and sequence projects from concept to showtime, the company said.

Cloud Login offers multi-factor authentication as standard for added security and lets users access the disguise Cloud using their existing social login credentials, the company. 

Another major application available on release is disguise Drive – a web-based storage space which allows teams to upload and review all their project media securely. The disguise Drive solution supports images, video and 3D file formats including .fbx, glTF and .obj and has Smart Folders to organize files by type, recently added or any other custom parameter in just a few clicks, the company said. 

"I’m incredibly proud to open this new chapter in the evolution of disguise,” explained disguise CEO Fernando Küfer. “Seeing the integration of the next generation of tools enabling our community to work together from anywhere while also expanding the reach of disguise to new stakeholders, enables us to open up the future of collaboration for the M&E industry. The range of tools we're introducing in our Cloud strategy demonstrates the maturity of disguise as an integrated platform," 

The disguise Cloud is available starting from a free Starter plan, which includes up to three seats of disguise Drive, 10GB of storage and access to disguise Designer software.

The cloud subscription tiers include: 

• Starter - $0 per seat (1 drive, 10GB storage, 3 users max)
• Pro - $49 per seat/month (3 drives, 100GB storage/account, 10 users max)
• Studio - $99 per seat/month (10 Drives, 1TB storage/account, 25 users max)

More information is available here. 

LONDON—Visual storytelling technology platform provider disguise has unveiled its vx 4+, the company’s new media server that is purpose-built for the largest, most technically demanding productions, installations and shows.

The server ensures maximum content quality and playback performance, enabling productions to push boundaries and captivate audiences, the company said.

As the need for spectacular visual content in shows and productions grows, film studios and broadcasters are turning to extended reality and virtual production to improve the production process used to create compelling films and entertainment. 

At the same time, museums and theme parks are looking to wow patrons with larger, immersive and interactive attractions. Live events ranging from concerts to esports tourneys and theatrical productions also are seeking high-quality video playback and pioneering the use of real-time video in their productions, the company said.

What ties these enterprises together is a common need for rock-solid, high-performance video processing at scale with minimal latency, disguise said.

The new vx 4+ offers twice the amount of video layers compared to its predecessor, increases storage performance and improves video throughput with up to 100GbE in bandwidth to support higher resolution live video applications, it said.

“Production teams are perpetually seeking to push the boundaries of what is possible, with many experimenting with new technologies and workflows, using real-time content or using video content at unlimited scale and complexity. As these ambitions grow, playing back large-scale content reliably without latency remains a challenge,” said disguise Chief Product Officer Raed Al Tikriti. 

“Built on our team’s deep understanding of the needs of today’s productions, installations and large-scale shows, the vx4+ offers our customers cutting-edge technology, that works with the disguise modular ecosystem of solutions and offers the most reliable and effective solution for your production.”

Integral to the company’s modular ecosystem and working with disguise VFC cards, rx render nodes and preconfigured network switch fabric, the vx4+ is designed for projects requiring a robust and scalable solution, it said.

With two 100GbE network ports and 12G video capture as standard, the vx4+ can be used for 4K xR compositing alongside a cluster of rx render nodes. The integration of a new PCI-Express 4.0 motherboard, CPU, GPU and RAID storage, the vx4+ offers superior video playback and compositing performance, the company said.

Existing disguise vx 4 owners have the capability to upgrade their existing machine to the vx 4+ to future-proof their productions, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CANNES—The 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is for the very first time hosting a virtual production space, a development that marks a new milestone in the growing importance of virtual production in the European film and television industry.

For the effort, film and television group Film Soho, is partnering up with virtual production providers disguise and ROE Visual, film and TV production solutions provider CVP and content studio ZOAN to showcase a state-of-the-art virtual production stage in the garden of the Grand Hotel in Cannes. 

During the Festival, visitors can step into a virtual production volume, powered by disguise and will become fully immersed into rich environments such as expansive cityscapes and lush Icelandic country scenes - all designed in Unreal Engine and Notch. 

Visitors can also drop by the space during the festival to receive demonstrations of the technology.

Powered by disguise’s award-winning extended reality (xR) workflow for virtual production, the stage is made possible with the support of industry-leading LED technology from ROE Visual, camera tracking from Ncam and CVP’s Technical Team providing consultation during pre-build and on site in Cannes for camera solutions and tracking systems.

“disguise is so excited to support Film Soho in bringing the vast possibilities of virtual production to the Cannes Film Festival and truly connecting with the innovative and disruptive qualities that both the festival, the international filmmaking community and disguise represents. disguise xR, combined with powerful graphics supported by Unreal Engine, empowers filmmakers to let their creativity run wild and tell more compelling stories than ever before,” explains disguise CEO, Fernando Küfer. “We hope that, by seeing these technologies up-close at the stage we have set-up with Film Soho, filmmakers will get a taste of what the new era of film will look like,” 

disguise’s xR workflow has been used in over 600 productions in over 50 countries to date. 

Nick Hamson and Chris Greenhill, founders of Film Soho added that “Film Soho are excited to launch at the end of this year, the first ever virtual production stage in the heart of Soho. As a talent and production led company it made perfect sense for us to incorporate virtual production into our filmmaking offering. We are delighted to be able to showcase this incredible technology to the international filmmaking community in Cannes.”

LONDON—Visual storytelling platform and extended reality (xR) solutions developer disguise has acquired broadcast data and content visualization solutions platform company Polygon Labs. Terms of the deal were not available.

“We are very proud and delighted to welcome Polygon Labs to the disguise team,” said disguise CEO Fernando Kufer. “This is a key turning point for both our user communities, partners and customers, and a huge step in our direction towards cloud and new media production workflows. The future is cloud-based remote collaboration, and our work with Polygon Labs will unlock a whole new level of productivity and connectivity for all our users.”

Polygon Labs offers a cloud-native platform and turnkey services used by CNN, Univision, The Weather Channel and TV Globo. Polygon Labs dynamically controls and delivers high-end Unreal Engine graphics with real-time data visualization via its cloud or on-prem solutions.

By adding Polygon Labs, disguise will build integrations that enable xR studios to have access to a wider range of broadcast workflows that empower remote production and cloud-based collaboration. Users of both disguise and Polygon Labs solutions will benefit from easy-to-manage, data-driven graphics workflows running fully native Unreal Engine as well as extended design and production capability for graphics, the company said.

“Over the years, Polygon Labs has helped some of the biggest broadcasters turn data into engaging stories through powerful graphics and data visualization. Joining forces with disguise will take us into the next chapter of accelerating our journey towards graphics production workflows in the cloud. Our shared vision and passion for delivering the most engaging visual experiences will help us empower our users with a much more comprehensive solution to deliver the world’s most engaging storytelling graphics,” said Polygon Labs CEO Grigory Mindlin.

Together the companies will work to build out an integrated workflow that offers users value across both platforms. Unified cloud-based data aggregation and graphics control with easy broadcast workflow integration is on the near-term product development roadmap, the company said.

A new disguise office and xR stage in New York City is due to open in Q3 2022. The Polygon Labs team will join disguise’s East Coast team there, it said.

More information is available on the disguise website.

ATLANTA—When the 2021-22 NHL season opened in October from its new home on TNT, Turner Sports unveiled a new broadcast studio powered by the disguise live visual creative platform.

Four disguise vx 2 media servers and five rx II render nodes are driving the more than 270-degree wraparound visual content in the studio, which will be used exclusive over the next three years as home to league coverage, disguise said.

Built in under two months at the end of summer with the help of disguise Certified Solution Provider and Atlanta-based creative studio MEPTIK, the studio is leveraging disguise’s ability to seamlessly combine LED and projection to create the massive canvas. The disguise deployment combines nine projectors, two LED walls and multiple cameras into a single end-to-end workflow.

“This is a full broadcast studio completely driven by disguise,” said Gideon Ferber, disguise director of product for broadcast who oversaw the development of the studio. “Turner Sports opted for the full disguise solution for its ease of use and efficiency of delivery.”

Custom-built curved LED panels on either side of the oval and the projection screen filling the remaining canvas display video, images and data via the disguise solution.  A full height diagonal LED panel display and two large tracking monitors in the foreground of the studio further blend the LED and projection displays and offer additional flexibility for shots and presenter positions, the company said.

A pixel-accurate 3D project was created and played out before going live with the new studio. “It was absolutely crucial to be able to pre-visualize the studio because they didn’t have time to do rehearsals or block shots in advance during the build,” said Ferber. “The studio was actually up and running a week before the go-live date, so the ability to previs the whole setup and how the content would look, then build in animations and graphics, was imperative.”

The in-house production team of Turner Sports received training on the disguise workflow for broadcast from disguise and MEPTIK. Curricula for each key set of skills, from producers and creatives to engineers and operators, guided the training of a number of super users across each skill. Using disguise’s online training community, the aim was to have the team gain knowledge over time.

“We provided Turner Sports with a blank canvas for creatives to tell their best stories and engage the audience. We were so proud of being able to turn around this project in such a short timeframe and have it be such a success,” said Phil Ventre, vice president of broadcast at disguise.

More information about disguise is available online.  

LONDON—Extended Reality (xR) is now more easily available, as disguise has announced that it is releasing xR to the public as part of its r18 software launch. The technology made headlines with a Katy Perry performance during the finale of “American Idol” season 18.

Developed by disguise and backed by the Carlyle Group and Epic Games, xR integrates with LED, real-time content and camera tracking technologies to power immersive virtual environments. 

xR powers virtual production across live entertainment, episodic TV, TV and sports broadcasts, film and corporate events. With the public release of xR, disguise says it is reducing the barriers of entry to virtual production.

“The xR workflow is making complex things a lot easier. We can implement xR and AR into our disguise workflow and program complete shows including content and live inputs,” says Pim Elberse, Light & Video Programmer at i!-Studio and disguise xR insider. “We see a lot of future in xR—this will change our work in the future.”

In addition, the r18 software launch will include disguise’s cluster rendering feature, which was developed in partnership with Unreal Engine to deliver photorealistic scenes to large scale content displays. The r18 software also has full support for the ACES cinematic standard.

A new, free virtual production course is being made available on the disguise e-learning platform as well.

For more information, visit www.disguise.one.  

LONDON—XR Studios was tasked with managing the first example of a major awards show production during the COVID-19 pandemic with the MTV Video Music Awards. To handle this challenge, XR studio chose the disguise xR workflow to serve as the show’s central technology hub.

XR Studios created a virtual stage for the socially-distance telecast that was taking place in New York. This was showcased during the show with performances by Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas and more in Extended Reality environments. Notch VFX helped create the virtual sets using disguise’s RenderStream video-over-IP protocol.

The disguise gx 2c media server powered real-time generated graphics from Notch onto the LED video screens as well as the virtual set extension content outside the LEDs through its camera calibration workflow.

“This was the largest and most complex xR show that we have had to support so far,” said Jamie Sunter, disguise senior support specialist. “We had support and development teams working in L.A. and U.K. to ensure that we could get the most coverage with both timezones. We utilized the newly built xR stage in London HQ to then be able to verify fixes and reproduce issues that were being seen on the site.”

The disguise software also assisted with color balance and overall compositing of real-time content tools for the VMAs. 

For more information, visit www.disguise.one.  

LONDON — The Future Zone at IBC 2018 Sept. 13–18, in Amsterdam, will offer attendees a look at how an immersive production environment can be used for live broadcast at the Mixed Reality Tech Lab.

“The Future Zone presentation provides an opportunity for visitors to gain hands-on experience with some of the groundbreaking solutions we’ve already implemented and discuss how the boundaries of technology can continue to be pushed,” said Andy Hook, technical solutions director at White Light, the technical solutions specialist responsible for the demo.

[Read: Participate in Future’s 2018 IBC Best of Show Awards]

The demonstration will be powered by a platform from a collaborative visualization tool developer called disguise. The platform sits at the center of the workflow to be shown, allowing the set, displays, lighting and cameras to be visualized and tracked in 3D space. White Light’s research and development efforts leverage the platform to create workflows for small, flexible production spaces.

Using content from Malfmedia, the demo will feature live cameras equipped with Mo-Sys StarTracker technology, which feeds positional data to the disguise media server. Doing so allows content to be generated for display on LED walls that conforms to the cameras’ perspective.

The disguise media server will be running Notch, a real-time motion-graphics, VFX and VR software application. The demo will display how live generative content can be used as a video source to create scalable content in real-time that reacts to the environment and studio lighting.

Experts from White Light will be on hand to discuss how they have used the setup in complex broadcasts for Discovery Eurosport Cube and in the ITV Sports studios during the FIFA World Cup in Russia.

“At disguise our goal is to work closely with successful and visionary practitioners, such as White Light, to help develop the next generation of immersive experiences,” said company founder Ash Nehru.

See the Mixed Reality Tech Lab at IBC 2018 Stand 8.F40.

The IBC2018 show is Sept. 13–18, in Amsterdam. For more information or to register, visit www.ibc.org.

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