This story originally appeared on fortworthreport.org
While the realization of a Texas A&M Fort Worth campus is years away, the university’s virtual production studio space is closer to reality. A movie screen, LED walls and more than 20 motion capture cameras will create what college officials call “an immersive movie set” — all in the center of downtown Fort Worth.
“You have these LED panels that can form a wall, can form a volume that wraps around you, can form a ceiling as well — all like monitors. You’re putting up an entire environment on this wall,” said David Parrish, the director of the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts at Texas A&M Fort Worth.
Parrish was standing inside a room at Winfield Place, a building in downtown that was originally designed as a parking garage. Texas A&M Fort Worth is renting space in this building, where the room will be transformed into a virtual production studio with a black curtain and a screen about 30 feet long and 11 feet tall. The Texas A&M studios, at Winfield Place and another larger stage at Red Productions in the Near Southside, are expected to be complete by January 2025.
Computer-generated images and scenes will be projected onto the screen and live action can happen in front of the screen. Instead of adding a background in post-production, the scene is set as it’s being filmed.
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