October 14th, 2024

This past month, I have had the honor to photograph a Virtual Production Masterclass through RIT at LA Center Studios.

This event lasted the weekend, and it was a masterclass in the Virtual Production Workflow. It was housed through RIT and Synapse in Los Angeles.

Synapse studios has boasted tons of commercial and Industry work. Some more notable projects include Emimen’s Houdidi and Lana Del Rey’s Candy Necklace, music videos. Some of it’s team members are RIT alumni, Aaron Gordan and Emily Haldemen.

I did get the chance to learn from Emily, and her expertise on the virtual production workflow, which was pretty neat to experience. (Emily: Virtual Production Supervisor, shown above)

In the photo, she was using a concert display engine instead of unreal, to project on the LED volume.

I certainty learned a lot just from observing and asking questions. This is such a cool part of filmmaking, and I am excited about what people have made, and choose to create using this technology. I learned more about the workflow, and how one lights the scene using both traditional set lights, and software encoded lights, like the ones used in 3D animation layout.

There is just so much one can do with this technology, and it brings all sorts of crafts together. Wether you are a cinematographer, storyteller, writer, producer, photographer, gaffer, 3D animator, technology expert and so forth, I highly recommend checking out Virtual Production if you can.

A good way to start is to look up and learn unreal engine and blender, because a lot of those softwares are used to create virtual environments on the walls. (truthfully, I still need to do that myself lol)

Here is a Gallery of shots that I took!

It was such a lovely time, and thank you to the instructors and organizers of this event!

Mark Reisch (RIT)

David Long (RIT)

Flip Philips (RIT)

Tom Connor (RIT)

Emily Haldemen (Synapse)

Danielle Lee (Synapse)

Everyone else involved in creating this experience! (also thanks to Tom and Danielle for asking me to take the photos!)

📸 Flip Philips

©Ocque 2024