Apr 30, 2020
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Guinness World Records has declared live-action ATLA’s virtual production volume the biggest in the world!
If you haven’t seen me geeking out about it already, the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series is currently filming (and about 90% done Season 1!) on a brand-new, custom-made virtual production “volume”, the cutting-edge new type of stage that allows immersive, on-set locations, first popularized by the Disney+ series The Mandalorian and used on many more huge-budget prestige productions since then including the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series-- basically, the biggest of the biggest genre flagship fare.
ATLA’s stage, created by Pixomondo, was at first announced as “one of the largest in North America”, but now it’s official: Guinness World Records has confirmed that it’s actually the biggest LED stage in the world!
Like I said when it was first announced, this thing is absolutely colossal and will be a huge game-changer for bringing the Four Nations and the Spirit World to life. It’s also just more confirmation that they’re putting their money where their mouth is to make sure Avatar is as big as it deserves to be-- a couple months ago it was confirmed that Season 1 has one of the biggest TV budgets ever, and now we know that the cutting-edge stage it’s filming on is THE biggest ever.
ATLA’s world-record stage will be featured in the 2023 Guinness Book of World Records-- definitely one of the coolest awards Avatar has ever been part of.
Note that ATLA is filming on both the stage and on-location (check out the first set photos here!), for the best combination of what suits each scene/setting.
Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1 has been filming since November and is scheduled to wrap in a few weeks, in June!
The Four Nations come to The Volume
Avatar: The Last Airbender is filming in a new, custom-built facility featuring a 23,000-square-foot virtual production volume, the same next-generation technology used on Disney+'s The Mandalorian. This is a really big deal.
Virtual production “volumes” are a new style of filming invented and prototyped in the 2010s, which came into the forefront with the launch of Disney+ and its flagship series The Mandalorian in 2019. They feature immersive virtual environments that allow expansive visual effects and settings to be experienced on set and captured in-camera.
The ATLA volume is 84 feet across, 28 feet high, and has 23,000 feet of stage space.
We've known they're going to be doing virtual production since the very beginning, but the sheer scale they've been keeping under wraps is absolutely mind-boggling. And this is brand-new, custom-built for the show. This is EXPENSIVE.
For comparison, the Mandalorian volume is 75 feet across and 20 feet high.
The ATLA volume’s... volume is 644,000 cubic feet, or 18 million litres-- of the Water Tribes, Kyoshi Island, Omashu, Ba Sing Se, the Fire Nation, the Air Temples, the Spirit World... (in combination with traditional real-world sets/locations, sound stages, VFX!). An Olympic swimming pool is 2.5 million litres exactly, so this is at least SEVEN times that three-dimensional size.
If you’re wondering what the budget of the show is, that’s your answer. They built something bigger than what Disney built for the first Star Wars series in history at the peak of big-budget prestige streaming. I’m NOT saying ATLA has a bigger budget than Disney+ shows (it’s probably still smaller, but who even knows at this point, this is that crazy), I’m just saying that this is a really big deal, it’s not cheap, and the fact that it was created FOR this series tells you what they want ATLA to be.
Here’s the official announcement from Netflix:
“The series will film in a new, custom-built facility in Vancouver. Designed and operated by Pixomondo Virtual Production, the state-of-the-art stage is one of the biggest virtual production volumes in North America, with 23,000 sq ft of stage space and more than 3,000 LED Panels.
Using some of the same cutting-edge technology used for Netflix’s The Midnight Sky and 1899, and Disney’s The Mandalorian, the virtual stage allows for visual effects to be done in real time in camera, combining multiple environments for a new standard for immersive storytelling.”
Showrunner Albert Kim:
“We’re thrilled to start production on this incredible project and we’re especially excited to work with the technology-benders at PXO to create the wondrous world of ATLA using the most advanced techniques available to filmmakers anywhere in the world.”
Sony Pictures-owned vfx and virtual production company, Pixomondo, is to be “wound down” by Sony.
The VFX company Pixomondo is being shut down by Sony which bought it in 2022.
Pixomondo did a lot of great work for GoT and HotD.
Sony Pictures-owned vfx and virtual production company, Pixomondo, is to be “wound down” by Sony. PXO specialises in visualisation, virtual production and VFX for titles including Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and multiple seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones to the recent House of the Dragon, Amazon’s The Boys, and Lionsgate’s John Wick: Chapter 4. The company’s LED virtual production work includes House of the Dragon, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Reacher and Amazon’s critically acclaimed Cada Minuto Cuenta. PXO has seven creative studios and four LED volumes in the US, UK, Germany and Canada. SPE shared its intent with Televisual to eventually close the Pixomondo ‘umbrella,’ and integrate some of its capabilities into other areas of Sony.
If you start a successful company and want it to last, don't sell yourself to some much larger behemoth.
A couple of weeks ago VFX studio Pixomondo (PXO), released this video showcasing some of the work they did in House of the Dragon Season 2. Try to watch it on a screen larger than a phone.
Pixomondo Introduces Clara: A New Division Revolutionizing In-Camera VFX Solutions
Pixomondo, a global leader in visual effects and creative production, has announced the launch of Clara, a groundbreaking division dedicated to offering a comprehensive suite of services for the design, construction, and on-set operation of LED volumes for In-Camera VFX. Headquartered in Toronto with a global operational reach, Clara is poised to address the surging demand for LED volume…
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PIXOMONDO TO ASSUME OPERATION OF LED VIRTUAL PRODUCTION STAGE
Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) today announced that Pixomondo (PXO), its Academy Award, BAFTA and Emmy-winning virtual production and visual effects business acquired in 2022, will assume operation and management of SPE’s first state-of-the-art LED virtual production stage. Built by Sony Innovation Studios (SIS), SPE’s award-winning entertainment technology company, the LED volume is located…
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Pixomondo Virtual Production Workshop
Virtual Production By PIXOMONDO
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