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Looks like the Wētā deal with Unity is off, as Unity lays off 265 roles and will shut down 14 offices as part of a ‘reset.’
In today’s VP Land
📱 Round-up of new apps for VP and filmmaking
🔮 Pika Labs’ new AI demo reel and their crazy 8 month origin story
🫨 Doritos (yes, the chip company) gets into the audio-mixing game
Let’s jump into it!
STUDIO A
New Apps for VP and Filmmaking
Couple of new tools and apps on our radar to help with VP, pre-pro, and editing.
Here’s the roundup:
ROE LED Calculator
ROE released a big update to their free calculator app for setting up LED screens
Ballast Calculation: Simplifies calculating the precise amount of necessary ballast for LED screen setups.
Pixel and Resolution Calculation: Determine the resolution of your screen and calculate the required processing power and cabling setup.
Power Requirement Analysis: Provides accurate estimates of power consumption
PugetBench
Puget Systems is known for its computer benchmark testing. Now they released their own free app to run testing on your own system: PugetBench.
Benchmark Your Professional Workloads: Use it to benchmark your work in video editing, photography, VFX, and motion graphics applications.
Real-world Performance Insights: It runs on your actual applications to give you realistic performance results, instead of relying on artificial or synthetic workloads.
Application Testing: Currently supports testing on Adobe Photoshop & Premiere Pro. After Effects, Lightroom Classic, and DaVinci Resolve testing coming soon.
See How Your System Stacks Up: You can browse over 100,000 results to compare different configurations and see how your system stacks up.
Free for personal use. A license is needed for commercial use and unlocks advanced features, like CLI support and local result logging.
FinderKit: Viewfinder
The developers of CameraKit and LensKit have released a new app: FinderKit.
Preview Camera and Lens Selection: Includes over 100 cameras and 1000 lenses from various manufacturers.
Accessories and Overlays: Offers a range of accessories such as speed boosters and extenders, along with overlays like aspect ratios, grids, and crosshairs.
Project Organization: Capture photos and videos and save to different projects
PDF Export: Provides the ability to create customizable PDF shotlists, including image size, metadata details, and page orientation.
Newsshooter has more info and screenshots. $4.99 a month or $24.99 for lifetime access. View in the app store.
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SECOND UNIT
Pika Labs: From Film Festival Rejection to Adobe Competitor
Pika Labs, another generative AI video startup, released a demo reel for their new 1.0 model and it’s been blowing up X.
Some of what was demoed in the video":
A variety of text-to-video outputs in different styles, from 3D animation to slow-mo food shots to realistic looking animals
Also demos image-to-video, with an open text box for controlling the camera movement (“dolly out”)
In a cinematic history deep cut, they also demo video-to-video by transforming Eadweard Muybridge’s Horse in Motion into different styles
For existing videos, there was a quick demo of a video version of generative fill to expand the image size
Potentially most practical use demoed: being able to highlight an area of a video and use a text prompt to change it, such as changing a woman’s top or adding glasses to an animal.
It’s a fast-paced, quick-cut video obviously showing off the best outputs, but still impressive.
Forbes has a good write-up about the origin of the Pika.
CEO and co-founder Demi Guo tried to enter an AI filmmaking contest but was frustrated with the existing tools. Her and her team didn’t place in the competition.
So she did the obvious thing: launched her own AI video generator company.
She was already a Stanford computer science Ph.D. student, so this wasn’t that far-fetched. But she dropped out in April this year with fellow student Chenlin Meng to launch Pika.
Now they’ve raised $55 million from rounds led by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Lightspeed Venture Partners, valuing Pika Labs between $200 million and $300 million.
Unlike other video AI tools, the film industry is not their target market and they’re not looking to replace film production.
We’re not trying to build a product for film production. What we’re trying to do is something more for everyday consumers.
VIDEO VILLAGE
ICYMI: Watch our interview with Final Pixel about their virtual production work, educational programs, and behind the scenes breakdown of their Red Bull F1 spot.
AKS
🌐 Around the Web
🖥️ DIY virtual production screen mesh maker
🔲 Prolights partners with Brompton Technology for VP and XR LED processing
📤 Upload large files and folders fast with MASV*
🌌 Leica launches their own short-throw projector: the Leica Cine 1 100-inch projector
🥔 Doritos develops new AI software that 'mutes' chip crunching sounds on video calls
🤖 More GPTs for video work, from DaVinci Resolve to Adobe GPTs
* Sponsored Link
CALL SHEET
📆 Upcoming Events
November 29
Virtual Production Showcase - Expressway Cinema Rentals
Mantua Township, New Jersey
Showcasing emerging and advanced filmmaking solutions available to the Greater Philadelphia community.
December 4 to 6
stYpe Virtual Production Academy
Shanghai, China
Elevate your virtual production skills in the heart of Shanghai.
December 6
Join Cuebric & disguise for a Big Reveal
Remote
Join the livestream for the showcase event.
December 12
Live Session: AI Video for Pre and Post-Production
Remote
From storyboards to visual effects, learn how to incorporate Runway's production and enterprise-ready tools into your creative workflows.
January 8 to 12
Virtual Production Essentials - Final Pixel Academy/Media Cymru
Atrium, University of South Wales
Carefully curated bespoke Virtual Production intensive week developed specifically for advertising, film and video agencies, and production companies based in Wales.
Istituto Marangoni Visual Design Courses
Visual Design
Multimedia design for integrated communication
Milano - Sept 2023 to Jul 2024
London - Oct 2023 to Jun 2024
Digital Design for Immersive Experiences
Bridging physical and digital worlds and leveraging the power of immersive installations
Milano - Sep 2023 to Dec 2024
Have a film-related event to share? Just reply back to this email and let us know the details.
ABBY SINGER
The guys running behind 3PO are a rear screen projection.
For anyone that cares about this shit.— #Will McCrabb (#@mccrabb_will)
7:35 PM • Nov 23, 2023
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