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If the UK’s creative industries are to continue to add
hundreds of billions of pounds in value to the country’s economy then much will
rely on the success of a new network of tech labs exploring the future of
media.
“The UK’s creative lifeblood is creative IP,” says James
Bennett, director of CoSTAR National Lab. “How does that creative IP live on
different platforms and reach audiences beyond screens in hybrid spaces? We
need to see creative applications in 5G and 6G that work together with AI
neural networks to create a future of holographic imagery, innovative live
performance and enhanced mixed reality experiences.”
The CoSTAR Network is the evolution of the government funded
Creative Industries Clusters Programme that ran ended in 2023 and spent £56
million to drive innovation and growth across the UK’s creative industries.
Four of those clusters (led by Universities in Dundee, Edinburgh, Belfast and
York) are participants in CoSTAR which is awarded a £75.6 million grant over
six years by the UKRI Infrastructure Fund delivered by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council.
University R&D powering creative innovation
Each of the Labs is equipped with a private 5G network,
compute power for AI and the latest equipment for virtual and mixed reality
production though each has a different focus.
Just as importantly, the Labs are supported by a team of leading researchers
with expertise in the use of immersive and virtual technologies
“We're turning the traditional academic route of engaging
with industry on its head,” says Bennett. “Historically industry comes to
universities. At CoSTAR, we are embedding University researchers in the heart
of the industry.”
Bennett ran the StoryFutures Cluster project which saw the
creation of nearly 150 projects exploring novel storytelling formats and
audience experiences. “We've spent the last five years making sure that
university research is at the service of industry via the Creative Clusters
program,” he says. “We had proof of concept that if you put R&D from
universities in the service of creative industries, you get growth and
innovation and new products and services.”
Four Labs have launched with a fifth National Lab opening at
Pinewood next year. This is intended as a convergent media production hub and
will coordinate efforts to bring the network’s research and infrastructure to
bare on projects.
“It's been a really tough time for our creative sectors and
a long wait between the end of the first days of Creative Industries Clusters,”
says Bennett. “We know there is a huge appetite among our creative sector to
have opportunities to innovate and to be supported by world class research. In
really uncertain times, what CoSTAR provides for them is a safe space to make
serious attempts at innovation.”
Flexible funding to deliver value
SMEs and start-ups can apply to two Access Programmes for UK
companies and partners to access the infrastructure and expertise of the entire
CoSTAR network. Typically, applications will be either based around an existing
project where R&D might supercharge development, or where the lab acts as a
sandbox for pilots and prototypes.
“What we look for in each is essentially whether there is an
innovative idea that's got a clear route to growth that's underpinned by an
ethical, sustainable and inclusive approach to that growth that we can actually
support,” Bennett says.
The Access Program fund is worth £7 million over the three
and a half years but Bennett says the value to recipients is double that. “The
real value of the seven million cash is much more like fourteen million because
the infrastructure itself is being provided for free, including the staffing,
to support companies’ R&D. So, when a company gets a cash in grant from us,
that is then match funded with access to the infrastructure.
“We can only grow the UK’s creative industries if we have
innovative SMEs and startups that are experimenting in the space. CoSTAR will
offer opportunities for large organisations to work with SMEs, but the
lifeblood will be getting lots of SME innovation through the door, seeing
what's possible, accessing the kit and people.”
CoSTAR Screen Lab
In March, Ulster University unveiled the CoSTAR Screen Lab
virtual production facility at its Studio Ulster campus in Belfast Harbour
Studios.
“Northern Ireland has long punched above its weight in
screen production,” says Declan Keeney, Co-Founder & CEO of Studio Ulster
and Director of the CoSTAR Screen Lab. “We're seeing the creative industries
replacing the heavy industries here, clustered around the harbour. We have
about 1200 AAA crew here and a nascent but fast-growing creative technology
sector. These are well paid creative technology jobs. CoSTAR Screen Lab will
accelerate the development of breakthrough techniques that will redefine how content
is created.”
Studio Ulster itself is a wholly owned subsidiary of the
University and a large commercial facility with two LED Volume stages which
have hosted BBC Factual 4-part doc, Titanic Sinks Tonight.
The facility is wired to ST 2110 IP standard giving it the
power to run 32 channels of 8K compressed video at any one time. A third ICVFX
stage installed by Los Angeles-based NantStudios opens in April.
CoSTAR Screen Lab is designed into the core of the building.
It offers facilities for ICVFX, robotics and a 5G private network. There are 3D
and 4D volumetric scanners capable of ingesting multiple images a second from a
250-camera array (the fourth dimension to go with height, width and depth is
sequential).
Over and above these state-of-the-art toys the Lab offers
access to expertise particularly in AI, computer vision systems, cognitive
robotics and ambisonics audio. Last year Invest Northern Ireland and the NI
Department for the Economy invested £16.3 million in an Artificial Intelligence
Collaboration Centre (AICC) based at Ulster University in partnership with
Queen's University Belfast. Michaela Black, professor of AI and Daryl Charles,
Professor of AI and Computer Games are among the academics on site.
Also on campus is Professor Greg Maguire, former technical
animation supervisor at Walt Disney Feature Animation, Lucasfilm Animation and
at ILM where he worked on Avatar. Maguire is also founder and CEO at Belfast
animator Humain building technology to create digital humans.
This Lab has issued a funding call to support creative and
innovative use cases for 5G across the screen and performance sectors
facilitating multi-site collaboration.
“The CoSTAR Screen Lab is about getting local and national
companies to make proof of concepts and develop capabilities in their
companies,” says Keeney.
“The investment point is very high for this technology but
if you have access to a facility like the Lab and the world class expertise we
have in the building, all of a sudden you're empowered to take your idea to the
next stage.”
CoSTAR Live Lab – understanding the experience
The Live Lab based at West Yorkshire’s Production Park near
Wakefield will explore immersive, multisensory, and interactive technologies in
the live environment.
Production Park already boasts one of Europe's largest
campus’ of companies dedicated to innovation in live performance. It
hosts large stages where artists like Pink, Metallica, Beyonce and Foo Fighters
have come to set up their arena tours before taking the show on the road. Among
companies established on site are global staging, scenic, and automation
supplier for live events Tait, sound reinforcement specialist L-Acoustics and
LED display vendor ROE Visual. It’s facilities include marker less performance
capture in partnership with Vicon.
“The artists that come to Production Park are not just here
to rehearse, they ideate their entire tour here,” explains Live Lab Co-Director
Helena Daffern. “They turn up with the seed of an idea ‘I want to be catapulted
in on a giant giraffe’ or whatever their ambition is for their tour and it gets
developed and designed here.”
Daffern explains that the Live Lab’s foundational research
is not just around the live performance industry but the very “concept of
liveness” itself.
“That's where the network really comes into its own because
the way we engage with audience across all different types of media is
changing. We want to interact with our digital world in a different way. The
research we can do across the CoSTAR Network will let us explore the human
experience of how we interact with screen and gaming technologies That’s why
the network is so important because it allows us to share knowledge and
innovate in an efficient way rather than in silos.”
There are even lab spaces dedicated to user experience which
explore biometrics for heart rate and skin conductance. “We want to understand
what really drives the human experience and response to new technologies,” says
co-director Gavin Kearney. “By using visual tracking from a camera turned on an
audience can we infer from their facial features exactly what they're feeling
and emoting? It's these types of technologies that help drive the new
generation of immersive experiences.”
One stage at Production Park featuring a 28-channel
loudspeaker array installed by L-Acoustics will be offered for experimentation
in immersive audio.
“For example, we could take an audience within Live Lab and
run tests on 50 people or we could bring them in to experience one of the Arena
venues with a 10,000 capacity,” he says. “That's the wonderful thing about this
Lab - everything is scalable.”
Another avenue of exploration is connecting performers with
audiences over the internet. “We’re looking at the technologies that will
enable shared virtual environments to happen in a meaningful way,” says
Kearney. “Our dedicated spaces allow us to test new technologies under
controlled conditions so we can vary things like the codecs, bandwidth, latency
conditions and so on. We can think about each of the individual technologies in
turn and then converge them to create something unique.”
Wakefield Council recently poured £3.2m into expanding the
studios to include four additional production studios tailored for live music
and film, as well as new facilities for The Academy of Live Technology.
Live Lab is currently inviting applications for a 'New
Frontiers for Live Performance' pilots and prototypes programme.
Applicants can apply for cash funding of up to £13K to contribute to the
costs of their R&D project. In total, the support package on offer is
valued at over £100K per project.
Daffern adds, “If the network is successful it will have
succeeded in bringing together different strands of R&D, shared knowledge,
resource and facility.”
CoSTAR National Lab – into the metaverse?
The CoSTAR National Lab at Pinewood will offer virtual
production technology, a 236m2 sound stage and labs featuring spatial audio,
volumetric capture and multisensory devices as well as a private 5G/6G network.
“This is where convergent media experiences are going to
live,” says Bennett. “We will look around the corner to what is coming in
converged media landscapes where it's hybrid physical and virtual or real time
interactions across different devices. We’re also thinking about the built
environment as a canvas on which these creative experiences and creative IP can
live.”
BT is providing the telco network at the site, while
Disguise is providing its RenderStream technology which enables real-time
streaming of data between media servers and rendering engines. It is commonly
used in virtual production, live events and immersive experiences. CoSTAR also
has agreements with a number of unnamed “large organisations” to become
partners with news to be announced.
The focus is not just entertainment. Bennett says they are
doing work around “accessibility and wayfinding” that will provide new forms of
e-commerce.
“A lot of our future landscape gets imagined by Hollywood
and features holographic images and AI generated audio visuals coming at us
from all angles. One of the really interesting pieces we're putting together is
how do you actually create an environment where we may have huge amounts of
sensory experiences bombarding us yet be able to block things out and focus on
particular areas. How do we create experiences that enables people to enjoy the
next wave of the metaverse?”
CoSTAR Realtime Lab – connectivity and AR
With the main site located at Water's Edge in Dundee with
close links to the UK video games sector and a second facility at Edinburgh
College of Art, the RealTime lab run out of Abertay University will specialise
in virtual production, integrating CGI, motion capture and AR. It is equipped
with a Mo-Sys tracking system, ROE Carbon LED panels and a Brompton processors.
While Scotland’s screen sector can look to benefit from the Lab, Abertay’s
demonstration of real-time geographically dispersed production over 5G has
already caught the eye.
There are plans to evolve this experiment over 5G and
nascent 6G networks with Pinewood when that lab launches in 2026.
CoSTAR Foresight Lab – skills for the future
Led by Goldsmiths University in London the Foresight Lab is
a thinktank scanning the creative industries sector-wide with a focus on key
areas including decarbonization and advising on the regulatory framework to
support growth and innovation.
Board members include ILM, Dneg, BBC R&D, the RSC,
Framestore, USC School of Cinematic Arts and Microsoft.
“They've been leaning into the debate around AI and
Copyright which is being reviewed by the government, for example,” says
Bennett. “It has a 20,000 company business tracker to look at emerging trends
such as where is public and private money being spent globally on CoSTAR
technologies and where is market activity going, where are the skills gaps and
where is intervention needed most urgently. That provides a really good context
for what is happening in the sector.”
Among the other questions it is researching: How extensive
is the use of convergent technologies (including artificial intelligence) by
firms working in CoSTAR sectors? What are audience experiences and expectations
for products and services using CoSTAR technologies? And what essential data
structures and metadata elements should be collected for CoSTAR technology
productions?
“CoSTAR is the next obvious step for UK Creative Industry,”
says Bennett. “The Creative Industries generate six percent of UK GVA (worth
£124 billion in 2024), but only receive around one percent of R&D spend.
Now we are making cutting edge infrastructure available within academia where
industry can access it. Fundamentally we are putting put world-class research
at the service of creative industries to grow innovation in an ethical and
sustainable framework.”
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