6 minute read
In Touch with Reality
New “XR stage” courses will turn MTSU students' skills into media jobs worldwide
story by Gina E. Fann and photography by Andy Heidt
When an industry can change in what feels like the flash of a pixel, preparing to work in it may seem an adventure into a strange new future.
MTSU’s Department of Media Arts is looking beyond graduation for its students by teaching them new ways to turn ideas into realities on the screen.
This fall, on the new extended reality (XR) stage in the University’s Bragg Media and Entertainment Building, classes began preparing students from the department’s Animation and Video and Film Production programs to reach new heights in virtual production for film, television, and animation.
The full XR-capable facility, a roughly $1 million investment, is the only one at a Tennessee university and among only a few such facilities at any university anywhere in the world.
The students are now able to produce work that looks like it was shot anywhere—real or imagined—just like the creators and crews of films such as Dune and TV shows like The Mandalorian that rely on XR technology to create vast worlds on a soundstage.
“Whenever a major new platform comes along, college students have an opportunity to become early experts on that platform. They also have an advantage of not being invested in older ways of doing things. XR and virtual production offer both of those things to our students,” said Media Arts Professor Billy Pittard, an MTSU alumnus and a pioneer of four decades’ worth of media design and production in Hollywood and beyond.
“XR and virtual production use high-resolution LED screens to place actors in virtual environments, but it’s also much more than that,” Pittard added. “Here at MTSU, we saw XR and virtual production as a natural fit for things we were already doing, including film and video production, animation, and LED technology. And advances in LED technology are a key development to make virtual production possible.”
Media Arts has been working with LED technology for eight years and possesses what is perhaps the most advanced LED program at the college level. XR was a natural next step for MTSU, Pittard says.
“This technique of virtual production is here to stay. It’s just so phenomenal what you can do with it; there are so many advantages,” said Pittard, who chaired Media Arts’ expanded programs from 2011 to 2022. “And this program is going to be a long-term payoff for our students. We are helping our students become the next generation of early experts.”
Their training will take place in the College of Media and Entertainment’s 2,800-square-foot Studio 1, which is filled with LED screens that move, adjust, and lock into any needed angle and position to create the look and feel the students want for their productions.
Ahead of the Game
XR technology is unique, Pittard said, because users can create digital environments that look and behave like real three-dimensional spaces. Cameras employed to shoot on the XR stage are equipped with motion-tracking devices, and as the camera moves, the video background on the LED walls changes accordingly.
MTSU’s XR stage uses Unreal Engine—the same software that allows users to navigate through 3D spaces in video games—to change the background image with the camera’s motion.
“Our students are all clamoring to get employment opportunities in the film industry,” said Mike Forbes, the department’s director for technical systems and an MTSU alumnus who toured in the music industry for years setting up customized video wall installations for concerts— a skill he now teaches at MTSU. “This is going to give our students a leg up on other recent graduates. They’re going to know this workflow; they’re going to know how to do things beyond what the camera captures, like being able to create environments and backgrounds and looks that other students from other universities are not going to have a background in. That’s because this technology is so new.
“We’re already years ahead of other universities, and that’s going to set our students apart from a lot of other programs.”
Other skills students will learn for the new XR stage include set design and building, but they won’t need pencils, paint, or hammers like in the olden days.
“If it were a traditional production with a real set, you would design the set and you would build it with real furniture and a real background in a real location and all that,” Pittard said. “With this [XR] approach, you have a digital background, and it can be something that’s made entirely synthetically through 3D computer graphics.”
Students also can choose a real-life site and optically scan it to make a 3D digital model of that space with the visual surfaces mapped onto it.
“You can load that into the system, and it will behave the same way as if you created a 3D model in a computer graphics program,” Pittard said. “Not only can you do that, you can also merge the two of those things. It’s a time where you have just all kinds of flexibility. . . . We’ll also be using a separate system for full-body motion capture that will allow amazing things, like a digital character interacting with a live actor on a virtual set. You’re limited only by your imagination.”
Media and Entertainment Dean Beverly Keel said the new XR stage enhances MTSU’s national reputation and takes the program to the next level.
“I am so excited to see our students learn this cutting-edge technology and apply it to their own creativity to see what happens,” said Keel, also an MTSU grad. “This broadens our students’ skill sets and will allow them to quickly emerge as leaders in the industry.”
Opening New Doors
That flexibility also extends into launching a new program for the Department of Media Arts that specializes in motion design, allowing students to earn a degree studying motion graphics, visual effects, and virtual production. That expansion will allow the department to continue its successful partnerships with businesses across the industry who have donated equipment, arranged internships, and helped prepare the people they’ll need to work for them.
“This is what we do as a university, adopting this technology and saying, ‘Yeah, we’re going to make this happen for our students, and we’re going to invest in this for them,’ ” Pittard said. “That’s really what I’m excited about, is to see the University say, ‘OK, this is working, this is a success. Let’s build on that, and let’s make it better.’ ” Or, said another way, create a new reality.
