LG Electronics USA has opened a new in-house, state-of-the-art Virtual Production Studio at its 360,000sqft North American headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Believed to be the consumer electronics industry’s first in-house virtual studio, the facility allows LG to create compelling content for its extensive product portfolios while achieving substantial savings on production costs and timescales, in addition to reduced impacts on the environment and reliance on public spaces for production.
A collaboration between LG and its affiliate creative agency HSAD, the LG Virtual Production Studio integrates LG’s commercial LED display technology to create a 1.5-pixel-pitch display that spans two walls, allowing for immersive, cost-effective, and flexible content creation while also leveraging innovative partner technologies including Megapixel’s HELIOS LED Processing Platform and the Mo-Sys Camera Tracking Solutions/Server.
LG recently acquired an interest in Mo-Sys, a market-leading developer of virtual production solutions and camera robotics. This collaboration integrates LG’s LED displays and controllers with Mo-Sys’s XR (extended reality) products and systems to create a total solution for XR, as implemented in the LG Virtual Production Studio.
In addition, the studio’s HELIOS Platform from Megapixel allows multiple users to control colorimetry, tone mapping, gamut adjustments, and camera integration features in real time without the need for additional software.
Unlike traditional studio setups, the LG virtual production studio enables rapid content production, reducing build times from days to hours. The technology, including parallax motion and real-time rendering, enhances believability and adaptability, and the studio’s launch aims to increase LG’s content output, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.
Future plans include episodic content and potential partnerships with other brands, highlighting LG’s and HSAD’s innovative approach to content creation.
Chris Jung, president and CEO of LG Electronics North America, who oversees all company divisions using the new space, commented: “The new LG Virtual Production Studio will allow our product and marketing teams to commission content with scalability, efficiency and volume. The studio provides a vivid, real-world demonstration of how LG digital production technology can be used to enhance creativity, increase flexibility, and achieve unprecedented new levels of efficiency for us and for our customers.”
Amplifying that point, HSAD USA president Scott Lee noted: “This breakthrough production studio, enabled by LG’s advanced commercial display technology, now allows LG to craft compelling content designed to evoke aspirational feelings around its entire product line, boosting both its appeal and marketability, all while keeping costs down. We can produce more compelling content faster, with greater flexibility and cost-efficiency than ever before. LG content production teams are better equipped to scale output, meet demand, and be first to market – without relying on costly external resources and physical locations.”
Meanwhile, he added, the studio eliminates the need for costly and wasteful physical set production and the utilisation of public indoor or outdoor spaces, reducing the impact of production on the environment.
The LG Virtual Production Studio includes a 25ft, two-wall display designed around two 1.5- pixel-pitch LG MAGNIT Studio Series LBAG015 direct-view Micro LED displays – 13-by-8ft and 8-by-4ft displays – positioned at a 90-degree angle.
The fine pixel pitch of the Studio Series allows for cost savings because creative backgrounds and special effects can be displayed closer to cameras in this modestly-sized (about 1,000sqft) fixed-location studio. By comparison, LED displays with wider pixel pitches require much larger studio spaces as cameras must be positioned further from the displays so that the pixels aren’t visible to maintain image detail.
Operating as an in-house agency for LG Electronics, HSAD is a global, full-service marketing and creative services agency with offices located in major cities around the world.
