Like every other event since the pandemic hit, the annual BEYOND conference is now online – a forum for current and future innovators dedicated to Research and Development across the Creative Industries.
For 2020, BEYOND is transformed from a live event, previously in London and Edinburgh, into a fully virtual programme from the 30th November – 3rd December. Under headline themes of Divergence, Convergence, Emergence and Collaboration, the BEYOND community will explore the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Creative Industries and how the sector has responded.
On day three of the conference, as part of the Emergence theme, the Deep Dive: FRAMERATE session, presented by Matthew Shaw, co-founder of ScanLAB Projects and Andrew Chitty, Challenge Director for the Audience of the Future and Creative Industries Clusters Challenge (UK Research and Innovation), will take an in-depth look at some of ScanLAB’s recent mind-blowing projects. Created from thousands of daily 3D scans and hundreds of billions of precisely measured points, the work observes change on a spatial and temporal scale impossible to see with the human eye or the lens of traditional cameras.
Leading production solutions specialist White Light, will be hosting the ScanLAB session via their SmartStage xR Studio located at the Science Museum in London. With 50 years of expertise in the provision of full-service technical production to the diverse entertainment sector, White Light has been at the forefront of integrating technologies and driving innovation.
SmartStage is a multi-award-winning solution which has earned White Light global recognition as the leaders in deploying xR and virtual production studios to clients in a broad range of markets. Its first conception, ‘The Cube’, was seen back in 2018 when this immersive, mixed-reality studio was utilised by Discovery Eurosport for international coverage of the PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games. Informed with the learnings from ‘The Cube’, SmartStage was pioneered and later that year launched as the world’s first xR immersive production solution.
Within the education sector, it has since helped revolutionise remote learning and collaboration for leading academic institutions around the world; including the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the University of Portsmouth, which is investing in SmartStage for its training platform of the future – the Centre of Creative and Immersive eXtended Reality (CCIXR), opening in October 2021. Despite the challenges of 2020, the technology has enabled many markets including corporate, worship and live music, to safely deliver game-changing events to their audiences, within an immersive virtual world.
Today, SmartStage has evolved into the most advanced xR environment in the world. Utilising the resource of a dedicated in-house Innovations team, White Light has conducted three years of intense R+D to streamline and enhance this ground-breaking technology. As an immersive tool, it is extremely user friendly and enables creatives to ‘get inside’ and experience their content from the inside out, while making modifications in real time. This has re-defined the project development process and made it possible for different markets to harness the power of xR to present their content in exciting and previously unimaginable new ways. It also provides a way of reimagining presentations, with the focus on the content rather than the camera, in turn making presentations naturally more engaging. The digital environment surrounding a presenter can be manipulated and remote participants can also be brought in to cohabit the space and interact authentically, with natural eyelines.
SmartStage is infinitely flexible, offering a compact solution, scalable to a location of any nature or size – the Studio at the Science Museum occupies just 5m x 5m. It also allows for seamless integration with a broad range of technologies, enabling content from popular rendering engines, including Unreal, Unity and Notch; to be brought into the environment, simultaneously if required. These capabilities yield opportunities for enhanced education and engagement across multiple audiences. Furthermore, it brings new concepts and environments to life through the creation of immersive walkthroughs, inviting architects, designers and stakeholders to get inside their projects for invaluable perspective and insight.
On seeing the FRAMERATE content on the SmartStage for the first time, Matthew Shaw comments: “The FRAMERATE project is all about giving people a privileged visual perspective on subjects that are otherwise impossible to view via traditional media channels. SmartStage is the perfect platform for presenting this work at the Beyond Conference, as it has enabled the content to come to life in ways we could not have imagined. It has been a pleasure to work with the team at White Light, who are super professional and helpful in every respect.”
On 3rd December at 1.15pm, White Light will be delivering a session exclusively for BEYOND delegates. The Inside SmartStage session takes attendees on a journey within one of the world’s most advanced xR environments. To join White Light’s expert team for the session, book your BEYOND ticket here.