How Animatrik expanded virtual production during a global pandemic

By Brett Ineson, President and CTO at Animatrik

The past year has seen a steep rise in the number of creative studios implementing virtual production technologies across media and entertainment. Virtual concerts, mixed reality film sets, and real-time augmented graphics on television are just some of the examples that have become commonplace. The funny part is that with Animatrik, I’ve been in the virtual production business for 20 years. 

I was already on quite the roller coaster before the pandemic hit – we had a tough year in 2018 at Animatrik but we put our heads down to bring in our best year on record in 2019. Of course, come March 2020, everything turned off. 

Our pivot was the incubation of a startup at Animatrik called Shocap Entertainment. Animatrik’s core business is tracking actors and cameras to integrate with computer graphics. With a downturn in our production services business, we were able to apply our skills, software, and hardware to a new medium. Instead of real-time visualization for behind-the-scenes work, we started to do this work directly to the audience. 

The idea for Shocap Entertainment came out of a series of lunches I was having with my business partner, Athomas Goldberg. We both have a long history in computer graphics and real-time game production techniques. We collectively discovered that we both loved live entertainment and realized that we were actually already doing live entertainment for a select few clients at the time. We’re now putting our efforts into reaching an actual audience.

We produced a live-streamed XR show with Jazz singer Jill Barber in partnership with LiveNation and Tradable Bits. It was a great success and proved the effectiveness of mixed reality entertainment in a world requiring remote connectivity. We then went on to broadcast a similar show on the BBC for their Christmas special. This has greatly energized our primary goal: to develop a live XR circus in Montreal with, artist collective and performance arts company, The 7 Fingers.

Our live show with Jill Barber managed to get the attention of CBC’s The National, going out to all of Canada, and the UK’s BBC Click Christmas show was the world’s first broadcasted XR Jazz performance which was televised internationally to 400 million people.

I think one of my favourite things about expanding into this space is having so many great conversations with musicians – including some of the world’s most legendary talents. The music industry was the first to be disrupted massively by the digital interactivity of the world. My outside interpretation is that the disruption has created a new musician persona. One that has to take more into their own hands. One that must diversify. For me, it’s really fun to collaborate with such creative people.

We’ve also expanded our services at Animatrik too, installing a large LED Wall by Promosa – perfectly designed for virtual set extension and live CG graphics for performances. We’ve already hosted the popular singer and performer Lights in our studio for CBC’s NYE Countdown to 2021, and we’re expecting this side of our business to continue growing. 

Athomas Goldberg and Samuel Tétreault during the LiViCi workshop.

The most exciting part of this industry-wide expansion into virtual production is creativity. Studios now have an entirely new framework from which to operate. This isn’t about getting rid of what we had before, it’s about enhancing workflows and audience experiences – finding new and immersive ways to share ideas. 

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