NEW YORK CITY - NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (www.tisch.nyu.edu), in collaboration with Lux Machina and AbelCine, recently announced the
launch of The Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center at Industry City in Brooklyn, NY. The virtual production stage will serve as both a training platform for post-graduate NYU students, as well as a commercial studio for the film and advertising industry.
The center was made possible by a significant donation, announced in 2021, from the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundations by Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments, and filmmaker George Lucas. In addition, the gift funds the Martin Scorsese Institute of Global Cinematic Arts, Tisch’s Department of Cinema Studies and scholarships. It is the largest gift in the history of the Tisch School of the Arts.
“We are thrilled to be able to honor our dear friend Martin Scorsese," state Mellody Hobson and George Lucas. "Through this gift in his name, the Scorsese Institute of Global Cinematic Arts deservedly highlights his legacy as a quintessential American filmmaker and will inspire generations of diverse, talented students. Through time-honored scholarship and hands-on instruction on the state-of-the-art digital technology at the Institute, artistic vision will come to life where storytelling meets innovation."
The school offers a new, 36-credit Master of Professional Studies degree in Virtual Production, with a cutting-edge curriculum for filmmakers to learn how to use virtual production as a toolset in their storytelling process. The 45,586-square-foot facility lives on the top floor of Building 8 at Industry City, a 35-acre innovation campus on the Brooklyn waterfront. The Center features two double-height, column-free stages, two television studios, broadcast and control rooms, dressing/make-up rooms, a lounge and bistro, scene workshops, offices, post production labs, finishing suites and training space.
“The reason I really wanted to do this program is that I kept hearing from designers, directors, and cinematographers that there are not enough people with experience in virtual production that we can hire," explains Rosanne C. Limoncelli, senior director of filmmaking technologies at NYU Tisch. "We aim to help bridge that gap and introduce new talent into the industry.”
As the lead systems integrator, AbelCine led the entire facility's production and broadcast systems build, and worked with partner Lux Machina on the virtual production integration. AbelCine also outfitted the facility with Arri Alexa 35 cameras, Zeiss Supreme Prime
lenses, and an integrated lighting grid featuring Arri SkyPanels for the virtual production stage.
“At AbelCine, we pride ourselves on supporting the next generation of creatives, which is why we’re so excited to have NYU Tisch located within the vibrant Industry City campus,” notes Pete Abel, CEO & co-founder of AbelCine. “Not only will NYU students now have a leading-edge production facility in which to learn, but they will do so alongside the more than 90 media companies on the IC campus. This will spark immeasurable collaborative and creative opportunities for the students. We’re grateful to be involved in this project from the outset and to witness firsthand the kernel of an idea blossoming into the amazing and unique educational facility that has been unveiled.”
The virtual production stage is a 180 degree LED volume measuring 26-feet deep by 41-feet wide by 17-feet high on a 3,500-square-foot soundstage. As part of the technical specification, ROE Visual Black Pearl 2V2 panels were selected, utilizing the Megapixel Helios LED processing platform. Lux Machina’s custom-developed ARCA media servers power the stage. They are optimized for virtual production and can switch between multiple content rendering platforms, including pre-installed Pixera licenses. The NYU Center has also been outfitted with Vicon’s Shōgun entertainment market software and 40 Vicon cameras. The combination of the two creates a powerful motion-capture system that can be used for virtual production.
“In terms of the ‘why now?’ and ‘why universities?’, I would expand on Rosanne’s statement and note that while many of these aspects of virtual production have been around for quite some time, they're developing extremely quickly and we’re at the point where we have
outpaced the available resources on a very practical level," explains Lux Machina's Zach Alexander, who is a co-founder and executive vice president of operations and finance with the company. "We need to educate the next round of professionals in the industry-standard technologies and workflows that are used daily on film, television, and live productions worldwide.”