Integrated Learnings with Integrated Virtual Production Technologies

Abstract

The Void studio at Flinders University began as a multipurpose immersive digital space, and the success of the creative technologies in this studio for education, research, creativity, and industry were documented in Beyond Virtual Production: Integrating Production Technologies. Since the publication of Beyond Virtual Production, some of the authors – staff at Flinders University – have continued to expand their pedagogical practice alongside significant changes not only in VP technologies like Unreal Engine, but with a rise in demand for creative uses of the immersive space outside of standard filmmaking methods. Recent changes and upgrades in The Void’s volume drew on three years of academic, creative, and professional use of the space not only for Visual Effects and Entertainment Design (VEED) but for other types of filmmaking, theatrical productions, and even archaeology. To understand many of these affordances, two graduate students have undertaken a major project to learn and improve many of the components and systems of The Void. In the process they discovered that the unique requirements in a university enterprise ecology for a multidisciplinary and flexible space for VP are vastly different from the way a commercial VP studio with access to their own proprietary technologies, pipelines and budgets would approach a similar build. Their work understanding these technical improvements enhances the unique, boundary-pushing utility of The Void across disciplines requiring a continued relearning and re-teaching of the space which shapes how the university students of today will utilise similar immersive virtual spaces in their careers.