Researching production workflows that combine physical stages, real-time rendering, LED volumes, and adaptive creative pipelines.
This area focuses on how virtual production, real-time engines, camera tracking, visualization tools, and production operations can work together in practical creative environments. It gives ETC a place to examine both the technical systems and the human workflows behind modern production.
Films
2025Pathways is a hybrid AI and live-action film produced by the ETC at USC. It acts as a technological experiment designed by the entertainment industry to study how AI and tethered iPhone rigs can assist low-budget storytelling.
2025Directed by Tiffany Lin, the experimental project serves as both a cinematic fable about deep-sea adaptation and a technological benchmark for the future of AI-assisted studio workflows.
2024Goals included establishing deep metadata/ontology workflows, exploring new technologies and cross-functional teamwork with Sony, testing remote collaboration worldwide, streamlining the virtual art department and environment development workflow, optimizing anamorphic lens distortion and camera/lens metadata usage on an LED volume, expanding IBL techniques, leveraging AI for environment development and enhanced post-production.
2023ChikaBOOM! is an animated short film written and directed by c. Craig Patterson. It was incubated at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at the University of Southern California (USC). The 10-minute film features a star-studded cast including Yara Shahidi (as an aspiring magician), Natasha Lyonne (as a magical creature), and Daveed Diggs. The project is notable for exploring generative AI workflows within the animation pipeline.
2022Fathead is an NAACP-nominated short film created in partnership with Amazon, ETC, and Narwhal Studios. Produced using cutting-edge virtual production techniques, the film was shot on an LED volume utilizing Epic Games' Unreal Engine to deliver all visual effects in-camera, creating an immersive and cinematic experience without relying on traditional post-production VFX workflows. Recognized for its innovation and storytelling, Fathead was selected as an Emerging Filmmaker project at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
2020This project tested the limits of virtual production and remote-collaboration technologies. Directed by Hannah Bang, the project evaluated in-camera VFX, real-time game engines, and cloud workflows to keep production safe and crew sizes small.
2017This groundbreaking endeavor aimed to bridge storytelling through film, alternate reality, virtual reality, and innovative technology platforms for creatives, including the Cinema Content Creation Cloud (C4), an open source framework for content creation using remote resources.
2016"The Suitcase" is a 20-minute short film produced by the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at the University of Southern California (USC). It is widely recognized in the entertainment industry as a pioneering case study used to test and refine early cloud-based production workflows and High Dynamic Range (HDR) technologies.