Written by Adrian Pennington on Apr 14, 2025. Posted in General Interest

Facilities Shifting the Focus of Entertainment

Entertainment is evolving. Audiences are stepping in closer and visuals are expanding into larger, increasingly ambitious spaces. VFX houses have taken note. Framestore, Cinesite and Dneg have expanded their inhouse expertise to deliver immersive experiences that blur disciplines, technologies and storytelling.

Technology has caught up with artist capability,” is how Josh Mandel, MD of DNEG IXP sums up the new wave of immersive experiences. “There is a natural belief that the same artists and technologists who work on VFX for features and high-end television can apply that capability in new and different areas. That’s been true for years but you had to work harder to do it. The reality is that with the power of game engines and the ability to use AI to bring ideas to life, technology has finally caught up with human aspiration.”

Analyst Bain & Company says we’ve entered the Immersive Era. Some estimates have the size of the global immersive entertainment market reaching USD426.77 billion by 2030, up from USD61 billion in 2020. Other predictions are even higher for a market that spans virtual, physical and mixed realities, location-based entertainment, outdoor brand activations, theme park rides, museums, galleries, stadia and hotel resorts.

“Consumers are much more sophisticated in their expectations of high quality visuals,” says Andy McNamara, head of CG, Cinesite. “Audiences have grown up with video games and linear media is evolving as the convergence between different industries occur.”

Technology has advanced too, he says, citing more efficient projection systems, higher fidelity displays and virtual production. “The cost of using this tech has also gone down. It means that things you couldn’t do five years ago are possible now.”

 

For over a century media entertainment has been characterised as two-dimensional, audio visual and passive – albeit often emotionally powerful – and generally presented within rectangular displays. Future engagement with content is increasingly 3D, interactive, multi-sensory and free of the conventional frame whether viewed within VR goggles or mixed with the physical environment.

“Film and television will continue but the market is being driven by a recognition that there are new ways to connect with an audience in positive emotional ways whether on-stage, in-game, at a theme park, as part of a location-based experience, or through headsets,” says Mandel.

The Festival de Cannes’ inaugural Immersive competition this year featured location-based VR and MR, projection mapping and holographic works to “showcase the cutting edge of this new era in storytelling.”

We needed to diversify our talent and our pipeline. When the strikes happened and work slowed down the need became more urgent.

The Sphere which launched in Las Vegas a year ago is the high water mark. It’s a music venue and a cinema but visitors pay to go there to experience the building itself. Not only does it boast one of the largest indoor and outdoor (spherical) screens in the world, it features haptics that can produce scent or wind or move the seats to enhance audio-visual impact. An entirely new camera and postproduction workflow has been designed just to create experiences for what the Sphere producers claim is a new entertainment medium.

“You become part of the show before you sit down,” says Matt Morgan, business development manager at technology vendor Ross Video. “AI triggers can change the outdoor signage and lighting as you walk through a resort. No longer do we just passively take information in. We are part of the experience.”

Location based experiences and theme parks are one end of the spectrum but brand activations are equally targeted by Cinesite and Dneg. “Disney and Universal are doubling down on the idea that physical space is important,” says Mandel. “Brands will catch up when the scale of these experiences are able to be brought down into more discrete zones like retail footprints. An ever-fragmenting media landscape makes it harder than ever for brands to reach their audiences in meaningful ways.”

 

VFX facility involvement in these sectors is not new. Glassworks set up a Special Projects division in Barcelona as far back as 2011, taking on projects that fall outside traditional postproduction and digital services. “Projection mapping, interactivity, holograms and stereography are words that we use on a daily basis,” says current division head Xavi Tribó.

But with Hollywood studio projects cut back and long term prospects uncertain, attention has to turn to other areas of revenue. The VFX business is volatile and its future under threat in an age of AI.

“When I joined Cinesite in 2021 VFX was a boom industry but I knew we needed to diversify our talent and our pipeline,” says Joce Capper, Cinesite London’s GM. “When the strikes happened and work slowed down the need became more urgent. We used the downtime to ask what can help the company move forward with projects that didn’t involve Hollywood.”

Cinesite Immersive has partnered with London art exhibition Frameless, in which the VFX shop has used its expertise to animate, scale and project masterpieces from Rembrandt and Monet onto a giant canvas.

Immersive requires a different level of client care. It’s different client base from traditional studios.

Frameless CEO Richard Relton said the process “was about exploring how we can harness the film experience of Cinesite’s team to enhance our overall storytelling capabilities and … invest in the emotional connection our visitors can have with the work.”

The skillsets and pipelines are similar to producing VFX for movies but there are differences. “With VFX you have longer lead times than you have with immersive projects,” says McNamara. “Teams have had to adapt their perception of how we do this kind of work. You’ve got to be more agile and you have to add additional creatives into the mix. Not everything is as prescriptive as VFX and that allows our team to explore different techniques and ideas.”

Framestore’s immersive division has worked with the Science Museum to place visitors at the heart of an interactive science fiction story. Cinesite’s work includes a 20-minute theatrical stunt show at Universal Studios called The Bourne Stuntacular which took place live in front of a 130 feet long LED screen. For Ocean of Light – Dolphins VR Dneg converted footage originally designed for theatre projection for playback in a Meta Quest headset.

Capper adds, “We’re looking at how we get more out of our resources and talent. Immersive requires a different level of client care. It’s different client base from traditional studios.”

One area that seems primed for take off are virtual concerts pioneered by Abba Voyage. “You can see in music live events from Glastonbury to Tailor Swift’s Eras Tour that the desire among fans to have shared experiences is more profound than ever,” says Mandel. “Virtual concerts are a bit of Wild West right now. Voyage is an incredible experience for fans of that band, other estates are asking how a similar experience could work for them, but it may not work for every artist. All the questions are new. Can there be interaction with an audience? How much should the ‘avatars’ dance as opposed to stand and sing? How much is photoreal versus something more animation driven?”

AI can be used to help generate voices even of artists that have passed away. “Certainly, the gap between what we can imagine and what we can actually show people is getting smaller and smaller as the technology accelerates.”

McNamara says, “We’ve yet to scrape the surface on interactive narratives and how we create nonlinear pathways. A lot of what we’re doing now will look quite crude when we look back in twenty years’ time.”

 

This article was first published in the FOCUS 2024 issue of makers.

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