United Kingdom 2023 meetings

March meeting

SMPTE UK Exclusive Screening - Disney’s 'Avatar: The Way of Water'

On 9 March, 60 SMPTE members and friends, including several students from Solent University, gathered at the famous Dolby Screening Rooms in London's Soho Square to experience James Cameron’s epic second visit to Pandora in immersive audio and high frame rate, high dynamic range 3D.

This very special meeting of SMPTE UK enabled a lucky few to see this incredible movie as the Director intended in one of the UK’s most advanced screening rooms.

Carly Brown, Disney’s Director of Motion Picture Operations, and Rich Welsh, Deluxe’s SVP of Innovation introduced the screening with an overview of some of the mind boggling statistics about how this incredible movie was released in an unprecedented multitude of formats to cinemas worldwide. Avatar: The Way of Water reached #4 of all time highest grossing box office after only 6 weeks, giving James Cameron 3 of the top 4 films of all time.

This screening was kindly supported by Disney and Dolby UK, and we're grateful for the ample refreshments, provided courtesy of our hosts Dolby UK.

February meeting

SMPTE UK showcases... Virtual Production

On Weds 22 Feb at Garden Studios in London we showcased a mix of theatrical cinematic performances, driven by a menagerie of creative technologies within a large custom built Virtual Production LED stage.

Re-watch this amazing event here.

In the venue we had an audience of 200 SMPTE members and friends, and we were joined by an online audience of nearly 1000. Open to professionals, technicians, production and below the line crew alike, this showcase in honour of the SMPTE ‘on-set virtual production initiative’ demonstrated the latest technological features within virtual production in an immersive production setting.

Our greatest showman walked the audience through a series of environments and supporting acts performed by students of the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Arts, that highlighted useful applications and effects to enhance your production and how to capture realism on-set. Throughout the showcase we touched on motion capture, on-set actor performance, lighting effects, camera tracking, colour calibration, extended bit depth, and Unreal Engine 5.

After the showcase, attendees had an opportunity to discuss these key insights in more detail with our participating partners:

Anna Valley | Brompton | Creature Bionics | Cooke Optics | disguise | Epic Games | ETC | Final Pixel | Framestore | Garden Studios | London Academy of Music & Dramatic Arts | Mo-Sys | Procam Take 2 | Rigger | Solent University | Target3D | Televisual

We’re thrilled to have hosted the showcase in a studio setting, celebrating the union of technical and creative talents! We're extremely grateful to all the participating partners for the enormous effort it took to put on this spectacular event.

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