Pixomondo London has launched its first wave of pre-production creative services for feature film and high-end TV projects spearheaded by PXO’s UK head of studio Alex Webster and previs supervisor Matt Perrin.
The move follows the company’s strategic push into virtual production, which has seen PXO build a portfolio of state-of-the-art LED sound stages in Vancouver and Toronto with plans for a first stage in London.
Webster joined PXO last year and has put together a specialist visualization team creatively led by Perrin, who has supervised previs for such tent pole titles as Spiderman: Far From Home, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Aladdin.
Webster said that PXO is “combining pre-production, virtual art department (VAD), virtual production, and in-camera VFX (ICVFX) into one cohesive ecosystem. Along with our creative tools built in Unreal Engine, we can begin collaborating on a project at its inception and work with filmmakers to world build and visualize sequences that carry through to ICVFX shot on PXO’s own LED volumes.”
Perrin got his start on the James Bond film Skyfall and World War Z. His forthcoming titles include Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The School for Good and Evil, The Little Mermaid, and Wonka.
At PXO, Perrin is supported by a team of hand-picked visualization artists, creative technologists, and producers who work across all aspects of the pre-production process. Among them are lead VAD artist and layout supervisor Russell Tickner, VAD and virtual production producer Andy Jamison, virtual production supervisor Samat Algozhin, asset builder Laura Frasnelli and agile virtual production supervisor James Thompson.
“PXO is creating a pipeline and toolset from scratch, which merges the traditional with the new to provide interactivity in the early creative process,” said Perrin. “We’re using the latest real-time tech to improve the creative process and drive production values beyond anything we’ve seen before. Set this in the context of our work in virtual production and ICVFX, and we’ve got something quite special brewing.”
PXO’s virtual production work includes Star Trek: Discovery Season Four and the inaugural Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, debuting on May 5. PXO’s Vancouver stage–billed as the largest LED stage globally–is currently in production on Netflix’s upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender. The Canadian virtual production stages are built in conjunction with production equipment rental specialist William F. White International.
PXO London is taking previs bookings starting in May.
ESPN and other channels return to DirecTV with a new Disney deal after a nearly 2-week blackout
DirecTV announced Saturday it had reached a deal with Walt Disney Co. that will restore ESPN and ABC-owned stations to its service after a nearly 2-week dispute that blacked out those networks for millions of viewers across the U.S.
The end of the impasse came in time for sports fans to watch ESPN's slate of college football games on DirecTV. It also will ensure that ABC's telecast of the Emmy Awards on Sunday night will be available in more major markets where viewers subscribe to DirecTV's pay service.
ABC had been unavailable since Sept. 1 on DirecTV in several markets where the station is owned by Disney. Those were located in the San Francisco Bay Area; Fresno, California; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Houston; and Raleigh, North Carolina.
DirecTV's 11 million subscribers abruptly lost access to ESPN, the ABC-owned stations and other Disney-owned channels such as FX and National Geographic during the Labor Day weekend in a dispute over carriage fees and programming flexibility.
Some viewers were watching the fourth round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament when ESPN suddenly went dark and others were getting ready to watch a college football showdown between LSU and Southern California.
The impasse also kept the NFL's opening game of Monday Night Football off of DirecTV's service.
Financial details of Disney's new deal with DirecTV weren't disclosed as part of Saturday's announcement. DirecTV's payments to Disney will be based on "market-based" pricing, according to the announcement about the deal.
The agreement also will give DirecTV the ability to offer Disney's video streaming services a la carte as well as in its own bundled packages. DirecTV won the right to include ESPN's forthcoming direct-to-consumer... Read More