VMI Lighting Workshop Demonstrates Value of In-Person Events

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Seeing is believing, as they say, and now that we’re all back to business the chance, VMI’s new in-person workshops which allow visitors to get hands on with equipment and to talk about it in-person only underlines the value of what we’ve missed this last couple of years. 

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Case in point was the tremendous reception we have had to May’s Lighting Workshop held at West London College’s Studio in Ealing. 

The sold-out event was the first in a series that VMI is hosting to spread awareness of the creative and sustainability advantages of LED lighting technology and a central part of our award-winning role as an Ealing Business Pioneer. 

Attended by industry professionals at crew and production executive level, the workshop began with a short introduction to different lighting technologies, progressing from tungsten lamps to Fresnel and HMI, onto LED and finishing with the latest LED COB (chip-on-a-board) fixtures. 

While the first generation of LEDs only provided a binary choice of daylight or tungsten, and the second generation enabled switchable tungsten and daylight options, the latest advance of the technology – using RGBWW LED – enables lighting crafts to synthesise any colour without having to use gels.  

It’s all very well reading the specs or even seeing a review on YouTube but when it comes to lighting choice there really is nothing like seeing it and manipulating it yourself. 

That was what attendees could do with visitors encouraged to compare and contrast the performance of fixtures side by side.  

The results were as clear as daylight.

For example, some gels permit less than 1% of light through so you would traditionally need a fixture capable of generating a commensurate amount of brightness and power.  

But with RGBWW lighting you can create and control the same colour temps accurately at a fraction of the cost in power and heat from a fixture a fraction of the size – all with positive environmental impact. 

Another example: if you need to simulate the midday sun through a window you would typically reach for a powerful lamp fitted with a large Fresnel lens. At our workshop visitors could see for themselves a demo of an ARRI M18 1.8K HMI side by side with the output of a Nanlux EVOKE1200 LED fixture. 

The LED impressively stood up to the test and yet draws far less power from a smaller, lighter footprint – and it’s cheaper. There really is no downside. 

“The feedback for our first in-person lighting event was extraordinary and so positive,” said Barry Bassett, VMI’s managing director. “Everyone was able to compare the very latest LED technology alongside conventional illuminations. It sounds strange but after Covid, being able to see with our own eyes rather than via a screen is just so important.” 

The events are run by trainer Graham Reed, a highly experienced Lighting Director and Camera Operator, who worked at the BBC for 21 years before embarking on a long freelance career.  He has delivered courses on Camera and Lighting Techniques and Production at Ravensbourne College, Bedfordshire University and Oxford Brooks University, as well as to several corporates. 

Graham is passionate about maintaining standards in the TV production industry and helped to found the Institute of Training in TV Production for which he sits as chair. 

Bassett adds, “Best of all – they’re free of charge! Having won the grant as an Ealing Business Pioneer we wanted to follow through and help the industry to recognise just how far lighting tech has improved and that making the choice to use it not only cuts production costs it can help make a positive impact on the environment without compromising the craft. The best way by far of encouraging people to change attitudes and habits is to see it in person.”

The initiative has also caught the eye of commissioning powerhouses like Netflix which has made sustainability goals a strategic priority. 

Events like the VMI workshops will help producers, broadcasters and streamers in the UK’s film and TV industry to achieve their goal of using more efficient low carbon production techniques. 

The events will be running monthly for the next 18 months.

 

“Shining Girls:” Storytelling But With an Unreliable Narrator

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Murder mystery shows are a TV and streaming staple, so it takes something special to stand out.

Mare of Easttown, for example, wasn’t so much interested in whodunnit as an in-depth character study of depression and trauma. New Apple TV+ drama Shining Girls has a similar approach — a traumatized woman on the hunt for the man who assaulted her — but flips the switch by making her an unreliable narrator.

Showrunner Silka Luisa adapted the series from the novel by Lauren Beukes and changed its structure if not it themes or genre-mash-up.

“[The book] stood out to me because it was a blend of genres,” Luisa explains to Creative Screenwriting. “It had serial killer, cold case, science fiction and mystery elements to it which made it so unique.

“I changed the structure of the novel which was split between the perpetrator Harper (Jamie Bell) and multiple female victims’ points of view – Each chapter in the novel was told from a different woman’s point of view.” Instead, Luisa was captivated by the distinct character of Kirby Mazrachi, “who was a survivor, both vulnerable and scared, but also moving forward with her life,” so she focused on her subjective viewpoint for the TV series.

The sci-fi part, and where the unreliable narrator comes in, is that Kirby (played by Elisabeth Moss, who also exec produces) appears to shift her perception of reality. Her memory is unreliable. She writes basic facts down in a diary, a bit like Memento. What has happened to Kirby, in fact, not the mechanics of finding the serial killer (who the audience knows is Jamie Bell’s Harper in the first few minutes) is the mystery at the heart of this show.

It’s a bold choice but Luisa is confident enough in the performances and the mystery to withhold the answers much longer than you’d expect.

“For me, because you know who Harper is from the very beginning, that is not the mystery that you’re tracking. The mystery that you’re tracking is: Why is Kirby’s reality changing, and how is it connected to these murders?” she tells SlashFilm. “And a big part of writing the season was really understanding, ‘Okay, how much per each episode are we going to figure out? How long can you hold it where it’s exciting? Where does it become confusing?’ Navigating that clarity was definitely one of the challenges of the show.”

Some of this only became apparent in the edit where techniques like staying in a shot a little longer or cutting a couple of lines of dialogue can calibrate the suspense in such a fine-tuned way.

“How much are you going to know? It’s different for every audience member. There’s certain people who love to try and figure it out and anticipate. There’s others who just want to be along for the ride. I think we try to strike a balance where, for both kinds of viewers, it’s still going to be a fun show to watch.”

The show’s authenticity is aided by background research of what it was like to work at the Chicago Sun-Times (Kirby is a newspaper archivist who wears a Walkman while pulling out newspaper cuttings).

The ‘90s the nineties period itself (which is in vogue thanks to shows like Yellowjackets) “is recreated through crinkling papers, greasy diners, and rickety cars. Chicago’s red iron bridges, lakeside beaches,” says IndieWire.

 

 

Post Lab IO Solves Set-to-Post Workflows for Australian feature productions with LucidLink

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Post Lab IO is a high-end post production facility working with productions as early as development to design a tightly integrated and rock-solid on-set and off-set pipeline for both narratives and documentaries. Launched in Melbourne in 2015, the facility set out to define the model of how set to post editorial could be achieved. Before founding Post Lab IO, Darius Family was a freelance editor, motion graphics designer, visual effects artist, colorist, and online editor. This breadth of knowledge is a key contributing factor in how the company approaches post-production.

 

The complexity of data access 

Feature productions tend to engage Post Lab IO even before pre-production to discuss set to post requirements for their project. The facility’s team will devise a custom workflow that typically includes on-set data management, digital dailies processing and conversion, and management of original camera files for collaborative editorial.

Before Covid, the editors would work from their own home edit suites on many productions. When the pandemic hit, it forced everyone involved in editorial and set to post workflows to work remotely, often from home.

“Our battle has always been getting the material to the editor, the director, a VFX vendor, the sound mixer, and colorist quickly and securely,” says Darius Family, founder, and Managing Director. “When everyone is working in different places, the complexity of how people access the same copy of the media, how the files are kept in-sync and securely backed-up becomes significantly greater.”

Post Lab IO experimented with a variety of different tools to keep productions up and running. This included shipping hard drives to editors and using open source tools like Syncthings to keep data-sets in sync.

“We faced numerous issues including hassles of administering each system as well as reliability,” says Family. “We needed to have someone virtually working full time to manage and troubleshoot. The open source web links worked fine to send material, but it wasn’t an efficient process and clearly not a good long-term solution.”

LucidLink to the rescue

Post Lab IO is an Adobe Creative Suite specialist. Through conversation with Jon Barrie, the Strategic Development Manager CC for Video at Adobe in Australia, Darius and business partner Nicholas Hower learned of LucidLink.

“We’d never heard of it before, but we agreed to give it a go. I was quite skeptical initially, just wondering if LucidLink’s Cloud NAS was too good to be true. Nick set up a test watch folder, and I opened up Premiere on my laptop at home, and I was able to scrub back and forth, play around and make edits at the same performance as if it were locally attached.”

Fluent friction-free production

Post Lab IO has been using LucidLink’s Cloud NAS for its editors to work from home since 2021. It manages post-production on multiple productions running on LucidLink at once and has experienced high reliability.

“For each project, there would be the feature editor plus one to two assistant editors, along with the director and the dailies labs – which could be us but could be another vendor. Depending on the scale of the project, we assign our own team to assist the project in set to post workflow and editorial assembly. All of them will be working separately, remotely, in different places and sometimes in different countries, and all of them will be connected to the same media via LucidLink.”

One recent production hired multiple editors based in Victoria and another in Queensland (Australia), another in Israel, one in Brussels, and another in New Zealand. “The LucidLink workflow functioned flawlessly,” Darius says.

“The editors love it because they get super quick access to footage. From a management point of view, we loved it because we have granular user control and clients love it because all they see is a fluent friction-free production.”

“The other great thing about using LucidLink is that if a new assistant or editor joins a project, it’s very fast to set them up. They can have access to the entire editorial data-set and start working within a very short time frame”

One feature Darius particularly appreciates is LucidLink’s built-in snapshots. This is essentially a failsafe to recapture files should a director or editor accidentally delete something. 

Administratively too, the LucidLink system provides tremendous workflow efficiency. “It is really straightforward in the console to provision a new user, and what’s good is you can set that user to have access to certain folders. You might have top-level access for a director and editor to the whole film and subfolder workspace access to third-party vendors who might only need to work on VFX selects.”

“The whole folder structure on LucidLink is so simple that anyone with permission can jump in and start work. We no longer have to think about copying a drive and shipping it. Users can immediately log in after being granted access.”

Results

Post Lab IO is quickly establishing a reputation as one of Australia’s leading feature film post-production facilities. Its lean and agile model that relies on internet and cloud infrastructure not tied to a central machine room or office suites happens to be the direction in which all post is headed. Darius had the foresight to be ahead of the game.

“We’re creative, highly technical, and really good at identifying weaknesses in the process and coming up with solutions,” he says. “Most importantly, we’re not afraid to try something new. We’re always on the hunt for new workflows, tools, and technologies that will help us get better results and provide you with a better service.

 

GoDigital Unlimited supercharges growth with LucidLink

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GoDigital Unlimited is a video production company specializing in marketing communications. It is a full-service facility offering the gamut of production capability from concept to capture, editing, finishing, and publishing. With a background in both retail and filmmaking, co-founders James Wiley and David Levine are growing their company to meet the needs of businesses as communications shift rapidly to social media. Their motto is: Supercharging your company’s growth through consistent video production.

Distributed by design

From inception and by design, GoDigital operates as a distributed production facility. This cuts the overhead costs of maintaining permanent real estate and equipment and, just as significantly, enables the company to execute its core proposition to customers: Professional high-quality short-form video tailored and delivered to support up-to-the-minute marketing campaigns—within hours.

“Our team knows what it takes to make your marketing campaigns successful,” Wiley says. “We will create a content strategy and utilize the latest digital technology to make it happen. We know what it takes to support an ever-changing story for a growing company, which means fast. During the pandemic, the world shifted from the storefront to the mobile phone. Our team at GoDigital has the experience, desire, and energy to offer on-call video services and meet that demand.”

There are two critical tools that GoDigital has at its disposal. The first is its choice of RED GEMINI 5K camera and lens package for most shoots.

“In the spirit of efficiency, this camera allows us to capture horizontal video with enough resolution to crop in for vertical video,” says Wiley. “This is crucial to save time and take full advantage of Instagram/Facebook stories and consistent TikTok uploads. The 5K resolution allows us to pull images from videos captured, then upload those images to all accounts in between video posts to provide consistent upload content.”

The second technology is LucidLink, the cloud NAS with which GoDigital is able to upload and share high-resolution payloads of media for its roster of editors to collaborate worldwide.

The need for speed

While Wiley is based in the United States, GoDigital’s team of editors is all based in India. When setting up the company, Wiley and Levine were on the hunt for a solution that would enable them to get footage shot on location across the US to the editorial team instantly.

“We came across LucidLink through an online workshop about remote editing presented by Adobe,” Wiley explains. “LucidLink sounded intriguing, and we used it immediately.

It was perfect. We cut through any friction in the workflow and went straight to LucidLink with our first editor hire. 

GoDigital produces a range of bespoke videos, from testimonials and commercials to tutorials and all forms of branded content.

“For the past 15 years creating digital content, I have used all digital exchange platforms from Dropbox and WeTransfer to Google Drive. I knew that there would be no way to make it work at the level we required. They could not handle 500GB of footage uploaded in a day. LucidLink was literally our only option.

“I need to get the RED footage to our editors in the fastest way possible. Our turnaround times have to be so fast that shipping drives is not an option.

LucidLink has turned us into a 24/7 video production company. We can work around the clock. The turnaround times are lightning-fast. Being able to upload a project in the afternoon and by the morning, thanks to the brilliance of our editors and the sheer efficiency of LucidLink, it is good to go.

“It is why our clients keep coming back.”

A threefold increase in production – and counting

GoDigital clients range from medical and dental practitioners to dance troupes and automotive/sports brands. They all require extremely fast turnaround times in order to hit deadlines. Most of GoDigital’s clients work with them to produce multiple videos per month.

“As we’ve grown and added more clients to our roster, we still need to hit every single deadline. That means getting footage to our editors overseas instantly is even more of a necessity. With LucidLink, we’re not only able to do that, but we can easily and quickly

Before using LucidLink, GoDigital Unlimited could produce around 30 videos per month. With LucidLink, it has increased output more than three times to 100 videos a month.

“Through the power of LucidLink, all our clients are surpassing their goals,” says Wiley. “We attribute that to quickly getting new videos in front of their target audiences.

“We don’t plan to rest on our laurels. The goal would be to continue pushing to 200 videos a month and on from there. We have plans to grow the business nationwide and internationally to fit the needs of new clients. With LucidLink, I know the only way is up.”

 

Behind the Scenes: Stranger Things 4

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Caleb Heymann tells IBC365 about the visual direction for the Duffer Brothers’ epic horror fantasy 

The fourth series of supernatural drama Stranger Things goes deeper into the horrors of the Upside Down as its young adult characters grow out of childhood. 

“The nature of the script is more psychological and each of the episodes builds toward a horrific climax,” says Caleb Heymann, the director of photography who shot all but two of the nine episodes. “We were not afraid to get a little over the top.” 

In contrast to season 3 which was largely set in the colourful and neon lit Starcourt Mall the tone of the latest run is sombre to fit the story arc of the kids maturing. 

“Visually, we are leaning into the nostalgia of the 1980s horror movies that we grew up with. Nightmare on Elm Street with a little bit of Exorcist and Hellraiser thrown in. For example, using shafts of unmotivated light through windows. If it looks cool, it looks cool.” 

Matt and Ross Duffer, the twins who created the show and direct most of it as The Duffer Brothers, were born in 1984, too early to have experienced life as a teenager in 1986 when ST4 is set yet clearly enamoured of its pop culture. 

The films of Steven Spielberg and his production studio Amblin (E.T, The Goonies) were a major touchstone on the design of their show to date. The soundtrack of Stranger Things 4 is laden with pop hits of the era (Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill) and nods to movies either overt (Jaws and Tom Cruise posters) or more subtle (the basketball scenes recall Hoosiers from 1986).  

“There are some references to Fast Times at Ridgemont High (the 1982 comedy was also key to S3’s depiction of the Starcourt mall), WarGames (1983) and Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater’s coming of age drama from 1993) but we seldom need to underline it by also doing the same thing with lighting or colour palette,” Heymann says. “I feel there are subtle nods to ‘80s films more with the horror scenes. We go a little Evil Dead with our Sam Raimi references which is pushing the show further in that direction than ever before.” 

For the sequence at the end of ep 1 (in which local cheerleader Chrissy hallucinates) there’s an explicit recall of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (released in 1987) down to the banquet of rotten food.  

Heymann has form in translating period looks and horror film references to the screen. He shot the Fear Street trilogy (set in 1666, 1978 and 1994), the slasher film series for Netflix directed by Leigh Janiak – who happens to be the wife of Ross Duffer. The DP also shot second unit on two episodes of Stranger Things 3 where he got to know the brothers. When invited to take charge of ST4 with fellow DP Lachlan Milne ACS their task was to maintain visual continuity while reflecting the show’s darker themes. 

“The visual language is part of the DNA of the show and fundamental to the way shots are framed,” he says. “It has a lot to do with camera movement and the Duffer Brothers’ hunger for big push ins and scenes that begin with some movement like a whip pan or a whoosh that can develop into a moving master. The close ups tend to be shot on wider focal lengths so you feel a lot of the background as well as the proximity to the actor.” 

Nonetheless, they opted to switch from RED, the series’ established camera, to ARRI Alexa while retaining the large format sensor. “Each season has been on a different flavour of RED sensor, so in that sense a change to the colour science isn’t new but ultimately it came down to the fact that myself and Lachlan were more used to shooting on Alexa. We shot tests and found the Alexa just had that little slight edge when it came to highlight retentions and I just liked what it was doing to skin tones.” 

He shot scenes typically with one Alexa Mini and a pair of Alexa LF or two Alexa LF and a Mini using Camtec Falcon Full Frame primes. 

“On S3, Tim Ives ASC used the RED Monstro and took the show into full frame for the first time which was a great decision. It meant we could shoot more on a 28mm or 35mm and expand the field of view to shoot close up and yet see a lot of the world at same time.” 

That’s important since much of the reported $30m an episode budget for ST4 is spent on detailed sets built at studios in New Mexico and Atlanta as well as location work in Lithuania (doubling for Russia and Alaska). 

“The bigger sensor is also a way of resolving detail in the shadows and the Alexa gave us what we wanted in separating colour tones.” 

Continuity of look was maintained with Company 3 colourist Skip Kimball who has been with the show since its start. “Skip was able to recreate that feeling of richness and almost amber skin tones that he created on previous seasons,” Heymann says.  

“There are so many new locations it was really an opportunity to broaden the palette. Scenes set in California have its own palette to show more direct sunlight whereas scenes in Russia are at the other end of the spectrum. For the prison scenes (featuring Hopper/ David Harbour) we worked with older sodium fixtures flickering with green fluorescence but with the overall base being blue. There is so much going on in Hawkins (the fictional town in Indiana) that we run the gamut of colour temp although there is the signature cold palette underlying each location.” 

Fans will be well aware that shooting on the show, and its subsequent release, was delayed due to Covid. Photography began early 2020, halted in March and resumed in September with Heymann working the next 11 months solid shooting supersized episodes some which are feature length (the final two eps dropping in July clock in at 1hr 25 and two and half hours). 

“Even the shorter scripts were 74 pages so from the get go it was clear that this was TV on another level,” Heymann says. “The final eps were 115 pages with 300 scenes all with some element of complexity to it which is like shooting a big movie but with a TV schedule.” 

The shooting delay meant Lachman having to leave for other commitments and Heymann took over an additional three eps. That meant keeping track of a complicated schedule that could see scenes shot for any or all of six episodes in a single week. 

“We had to be ready to tackle any of these 800 pages of script. The Duffer Brothers have this uncanny ability to know every line they wrote so they had a very clear intent of what was going for every scene but I needed a different method to manage the sheer quantity of production.”  

He used spreadsheets annotated for each line of script detailing camera movement, use of any special equipment, blocking of actors and colour decoded for different storylines. 

“It can be hard to orientate yourself when you’re moving between so many different storylines so this method allowed me to go back and remember where in the story we were. To back this up we had photo galleries of every single setup organised by story order. It had thousands of still images in thumbnail so anyone could go through an episode and pull up colour palette and see precisely where it gets dark or what a location looks like or the quality of the sun when we previously shot. That was a big help when the second unit came on towards the end so they could get up to speed.” 

He stresses, “No one has got time to watch rushes on a show like this. It’s coming at you so fast, I didn’t even see dailies. You are always looking forward.” 

A potential solution for efficiency might have been to shoot more on a virtual production volume something the filmmakers did explore at the Netflix stage in LA prior to shooting. In order to do so, however, all the digital assets would have to be ready and signed off, which wasn’t possible in the time.  

The production did use LED backed stages for some elements including scenes in moving vehicles and the water-based sensory deprivation chamber into which Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is forced.  

“We couldn’t fit a camera in the sealed chamber of the set yet we needed realistic reflection of monitors overhead,” Heymann explains. “So, we created the effect by hanging a LED panel above the set onto which we projected light from the monitors that would reflect on the water. That gave us the space we needed to deploy a Technocrane.” 

Using practical effects like this rather than VFX is another important part of the show’s aesthetic and carried through to the creation of Vecna, the Dungeons & Dragons’ character terrorising all and sundry in S4. 

“Jamie Campbell Bower (the actor playing Vecna) was incredibly dedicated to having SFX makeup (by effects designer Barrie Gower) applied for up to eight hours every time but it was so well worth it. Shooting in camera took us 90 per cent of the way there. We were able to light an actual monster in the flesh and make sure the shadows hit the right places and we caught the sheen of its skin. In S3, with the Mind Flayer we were using tennis balls on stands to shoot a giant imaginary creature and you’ve no real idea how it looks. In this case it was amazing. It was easier to block and the actors could play off of Jamie too. When Vecna’s hanging from his vines he really is hanging there albeit that VFX augmented and animated the vines in post. The red light is real too so the scenes are always tethered to something physical. 

“That said, when it comes to the twisting limbs and pretzel bodies we shot a reference of what an arm would look like for post to then mangle it!” 

 

Global M&E Revenues Return to 2019 Highs

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The global theatrical, home and mobile entertainment market is swiftly recovering around the world, according to a new report from the Motion Picture Association’s 2021 Theme Report. Globally revenues have surpassed pre-pandemic 2019 values to reach $99.7 billion (a stellar growth of 24% since 2020).

Factor in pay-TV, and the combined global theatrical and home entertainment market grew 6% from 2020 to $328.2 billion, matching 2019’s record high.

In 2021, the combined theatrical and home/mobile entertainment market — not including pay television — reached $99.7 billion globally, a 24% increase compared to 2020.

That’s in stark contrast to the doomsday scenarios of mid-2020 when there was no apparent way out of the pandemic, and particularly good news for the theatrical and exhibition business, which, if not at pre-pandemic levels, is not in danger of imminent demise.

It’s with reason then that Charles Rivkin Chairman, CEO of the Motion Picture Association, signals “a renewed sense of optimism” on the occasion of the MPA’s 100th anniversary.

“In short, 2021 marked the onset of our industry’s rapid rebound,” he declares. “The resounding success of Spider-Man: No Way Home and, more recently, The Batman, unmistakably show the value of big theatrical openings even during a pandemic.”

When pay television subscription is added to the total combined global theatrical and home/mobile entertainment market, the value increases to $328.2 billion, a 6% increase compared to 2020, matching 2019’s record high.

In its 2021 Theatrical and Home Entertainment Market Environment (THEME) Report, the MPA calculates that digital content streaming marketplace in 2021 accounted for 72% of the combined theatrical and home/mobile entertainment market, up from 46% in 2019.

In the US, the combined theatrical and home/mobile entertainment market in 2021 was $36.8 billion, a 14% increase compared to 2020, but notably overtaking the 2019 figure of $36.1 billion.

Streaming also continued to boom globally, with subscriptions in 2020 surpassing the one billion mark, and growing 14% in 2021 to reach 1.3 billion.

The global box office market was $21.3 billion in 2021, up 81% compared to 2020, due to theater re-openings following the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. However, this remains well below pre-pandemic levels.

Similarly, the US/Canada box office market was $4.5 billion in 2021, up 105% from 2020, although still down substantially compared to 2019.

Last year alone, more than 940 films entered production (more than double the 2020 figure), almost 560 original scripted series were released to US audiences (up 13% from 2020), and over 1,800 total original series were released, including children’s programming, daytime dramas, and unscripted shows.

“This kind of pace of creativity is testament to how successful our industry’s health and safety protocols have been during the COVID-19 era,” Rivkin added. “We have navigated a century’s worth of challenges, and yet we continue to re-emerge as vibrant and creative as ever.”

The How (and Why) of Fortnite Brand Activations

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Brands looking to experiment in the metaverse tend to make the online game platforms Fortnite and Roblox their steps — creating a burgeoning economy of development studios in the process.

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Fortnite Creative, the in-house studio of Fortnite publisher Epic Games, has formalized partnerships with a number of third-party agencies and independent creators to keep up with demand for brand activations on the site. Digiday’s Aron Garst calls it a “cottage industry.”

It’s a workshop mode in which players can design their own experiences, similar to Roblox or Minecraft, Garst explains. The program is accessible to anyone, which gives brands the ability to create activations without working directly with Epic Games.

The most prominent brand activations in Fortnite take place inside the game’s popular “battle royale” mode. But there is only so much space, time, and manpower for brand activations of that type.

“Fortnite Creative creators are like small game studios. We have to pick up all our specialties — marketing, making trailers, graphic design — as well as contributing to level design,” says R-leeo Maoate, the co-founder of Fortnite Creative’s agency, Zen Creative. “There are not a lot of professional teams, but there are a lot of clients.”

Zen Creative and other agencies, including Alliance and Team PWR, have teams working full-time to design Fortnite brand activations for dozens of brands, including Crystal Dynamics, NVIDIA and TSM.

These activations ranged from the small (inserting imagery onto pre-existing maps that already have an active player base) to the big (building out a multiple-map campaign over the course of four months). Studios will charge tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the project’s scope and complexity.

Since brand marketers have little knowledge about how these experiences are built, questions regarding how to keep activations live or how to avoid turning off gamers are often left to agencies who have the expertise.

“There’s definitely a ton of demand,” said Team PWR’s Boomer Gurney. “We haven’t actually had to approach a brand with a pitch — but once brands reach out to us, they know we are the experts.”

Alliance has built experiences like the Nike “deathrun” maps that reward players with a new in-game skin. A charity activation for Susan G. Komen. And even a delivery driver experience for Grubhub in which players embodied delivery drivers and competed to reach customers while completing missions efficiently.

“Fortnite is immediately recognizable by a huge number of people, and many times since its release, it has been the center of the cultural zeitgeist,” says Michael Ruffolo. Ruffolo is a consultant with The Huxley Group who worked with Grubhub and the marketing agency Outloud Group to create the Grubhub Delivery Run. “Layer on the fact that it’s a rich toolset [with which] you can create just about anything. It really allows you to do some wild things no other game allows for.”

It’s working too. Otherwise, brands wouldn’t be investing. If planned well, a campaign in Fortnite (or Roblox) is not just to create a virtual place for a company to be represented in the metaverse, but about creating a unique experience for players to enjoy so that a company’s brand can spread with an organic message.

“When measuring success of sponsored streams or branded integrations on Twitch, most metrics brands consider include viewership, quality of the audience, share of voice, and more,” Gillette global VP Jaweria Ali said. The brand worked with Team Unite, gaming talent management agency Loaded, and PR firm Ketchum to create the Gillette Bed Battles map. This map saw 200,000 unique players jump on within the first two days of launch.