LG Electronics USA has opened a new in-house, virtual production studio at its 360,000-square-foot North American headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. LG can now create content for its product portfolios while achieving substantial savings on production costs and timescales, in addition to reduced impacts on the environment and reliance on public spaces for production.
A collaboration between LG and its affiliate creative agency HSAD, the LG Virtual Production Studio integrates LG’s commercial LED display technology to create a 1.5-pixel-pitch display that spans two walls, allowing for immersive and flexible content creation while also leveraging innovative partner technologies including Megapixel’s HELIOS LED Processing Platform and the Mo-Sys Camera Tracking Solutions/Server.
LG recently acquired an interest in Mo-Sys, a developer of virtual production solutions and camera robotics. This collaboration seamlessly integrates LG’s LED displays and controllers with Mo-Sys’s XR (extended reality) products and systems to create a total solution for XR, as implemented in the LG Virtual Production Studio. In addition, the studio’s HELIOS Platform from Megapixel allows multiple users to control colorimetry, tone mapping, gamut adjustments, and camera integration features in real time without the need for additional software.
[The Evolution of Virtualized Production]
The LG virtual production studio enables rapid content production, reducing build times from days to hours. The technology, including parallax motion and real-time rendering, enhances believability and adaptability, and the studio’s launch aims to increase LG’s content output. Future plans include episodic content and potential partnerships with other brands, highlighting LG’s and HSAD’s innovative approach to content creation.
“The new LG Virtual Production Studio will allow our product and marketing teams to commission content with scalability, efficiency and volume,” said Chris Jung, president and CEO of LG Electronics North America, who oversees all company divisions using the new space. “The studio provides a vivid, real-world demonstration of how LG digital production technology can be used to enhance creativity, increase flexibility, and achieve unprecedented new levels of efficiency for us and for our customers.”
What’s more, because production is done virtually, the studio eliminates the need for wasteful physical set production and the utilization of public indoor or outdoor spaces, reducing the impact of production on the environment.
The LG Virtual Production Studio includes a 25-foot, two-wall display designed around two 1.5- pixel-pitch LG MAGNIT Studio Series LBAG015 direct-view Micro LED displays—13x8-foot and 8x4-foot displays—positioned at a 90-degree angle. The fine pixel pitch of the Studio Series allows for cost savings because creative backgrounds and special effects can be displayed closer to cameras in this modestly-sized (about 1,000-square-foot) fixed-location studio. By comparison, LED displays with wider pixel pitches require much larger studio spaces as cameras must be positioned further from the displays so that the pixels aren’t visible to maintain image detail.