Dark Slope Turns Pixomondo's Old LED Volume Gear Into a New Vancouver Stage

Dark Slope is building a new virtual production stage at North Shore Studios in Vancouver, launching in December with LED screens, tracking cameras and hardware taken from Pixomondo's shuttered stages, as The Hollywood Reporter reports. Producers on the North Shore campus get an LED volume next to conventional soundstages, and the Toronto-based company adds a West Coast stage alongside a new consulting business that builds custom volumes on location.

• December launch inside an established campus. The LED stage sits within North Shore Studios, an eight-stage suburban Vancouver lot.
• Built from ex-Pixomondo hardware. LED screens, motion tracking cameras, computer hardware, rigging and trusses come from Pixomondo's disassembled PXO Clara stages in Vancouver.
• Toronto gear joins the build. Assets from the PXO Clara stage at Pinewood Toronto Studios, used for Star Trek series and The Handmaid's Tale, also go into the Vancouver volume.
• Custom volumes on location. Dark Slope is opening a consulting business to design, build and operate LED stages of any size or configuration at studios or production locations, in Canada and internationally.

North Shore Studios gets an LED volume built from Pixomondo's Vancouver and Toronto gear

Dark Slope acquired Sony's Pixomondo virtual production stage at Pinewood Toronto Studios, plus select assets from Pixomondo's Vancouver operation.

The purchase followed Sony's plans to shutter the VFX company and focus its VFX work at Sony Pictures Imageworks, headquartered in Vancouver.

According to Dark Slope's acquisition announcement, Pixomondo used that equipment to build LED stages for productions including Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The company says it will integrate the assets with its existing virtual production infrastructure and team.

For the Vancouver stage, Dark Slope is bringing over LED screens, motion tracking cameras and computer hardware, along with rigging and trusses, from the PXO Clara stages run by former owner Pixomondo, which were shut down and disassembled.

Motion tracking cameras are part of the transplanted kit; we previously covered a tracking-agnostic virtual projection stage at NAB.

"These are industry leading virtual production assets built to support productions at the highest level, and Dark Slope has the team and expertise to maximize what they can do," said Christopher Cox, Global Head Virtual Production and Head of PXO Clara at Pixomondo, in the announcement.

North Shore Studios president Amy Lang said Dark Slope's virtual production capabilities "are a natural complement to our existing infrastructure, giving producers access to advanced virtual technology alongside our soundstages and resources."

Dark Slope will also design, build and operate custom LED stages on location

In the acquisition announcement, Dark Slope president Dan Fill said, "We can now build a custom LED volume to virtually any scale and bring it to the production, rather than forcing the production to fit the stage."

Dark Slope is also opening a consulting business to support custom virtual production builds with its expertise and infrastructure at any location across Canada and globally.

The Toronto-based studio already runs a 75,000-square-foot production campus in Toronto. It has handled in-studio and on-location virtual production for Heated Rivalry, which filmed extensively at the Toronto facility, as well as Ginny & Georgia, The Boys, its spinoff Gen V and Disasters at Sea.

Dark Slope also says it is seeing growing demand from unscripted productions that want LED volumes for game and competition formats. Its virtual production team will also support an upcoming preschool puppet-hybrid production.