ETC hosted its 6th vETC virtual conference at this year’s Siggraph 2022 in Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 9th, 10th and 11th. vETC highlights significant presentations of emerging technologies and their impact on the M&E industry.  This year, speakers will present concepts, workflows, business models, case studies, etc., as it applies to virtual production and the concept of “fix it in pre”.  Many of the companies that worked on ETC’s latest R&D film project, “Fathead” will discuss their discoveries in sessions that are recorded and posted on ETC’s Read More

“Preparing for the Multiverse” was the subject of ETC@USC’s latest virtual Digital Town Square half-day event (February 16th, 1:30pm – 4:45pm). As the culture, art and commerce spaces rebalance to incorporate blended physical and virtual options, it is clearly important that we understand early on how changes will impact our business and creative endeavors. Making up the list of speakers were Eric Holdener, Founder & CEO, and Rachel Joy Victor, Director of Strategic Insight & User Experience at Kinestry, an Innovation Studio; Edward Saatchi, Founder of Fable Studio and Organizer Read More

ETC@USC’s Archive Working Group, a committee within its Adaptive and Virtual Production project, is releasing its most recent white paper, “Practical Cloud Archive,” an ongoing exploration of digital asset preservation challenges, proposing “a number of avenues to introduce cloud storage and cloud technology as part of an overall archive solution, without compromising the basic tenets of preservation.” Led by co-chair, Denis Leconte, VP of technology at Iron Mountain Entertainment Services, the paper is the next step toward the continuing process to study “more precise experimental data on Read More

Moving back toward an onsite experience, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) hybrid format for CES 2022 opened to an anticipated reduced audience compared to previous years but continued its showcase of insightful and exciting product revelations and keynote addresses. With its own hybrid makeup, the ETC@USC team’s boots on the ground in Las Vegas and remote reporting in Los Angeles identified and covered four specific areas of activities — the multiverse, augmented reality, NFTs and artificial intelligence – as well as other CES tech trends, products, keynotes Read More

by Rob Scott / ETC@USC teamed with Charisma.ai, Digital Domain, Fable Studio and Write Brothers, Inc. to publish a white paper on an innovative character definition tool that enables casting audience members within a story. The goal is to help construct new immersive experiences across different narrative formats using a variety of authoring systems. The proposal features a Universal Character Model (UCM) that houses all motivations, goals and methods of any specific character in order to create consistent behavior within the fluid context of interactive and dynamic Read More

The Entertainment Technology Center@USC produced a live-action short, “Ripple Effect” to test new technologies and workflows, including the cloud, virtual production, and remote editing and visual effects. Supported by ETC member companies (Universal, Warner Bros., Microsoft, Technicolor, Equinix, Amazon Studios and Seagate), and other industry key partners, the project also introduced and evaluated a variety of tools and procedures that meet or exceed industry standards for a safe set during the COVID-19 pandemic. Executive producer Erik Weaver, virtual production executive director/producer, Kathryn Brillhart, virtual production supervisor, Greg Ciaccio, Read More