MARS Volume is making premium virtual production facilities accessible to a wide range of productions and leading the way in supporting the future of virtual production filmmaking with the launch of its education offering, MARS Academy.
Launched in August 2021 by visual engineering pioneers Bild Studios, MARS Volume represents the best the UK has to offer by way of virtual production (VP) facilities and expertise. This team has been forged in the fire of live events and is now applying this deep experience to running a successful VP studio in Ruislip, West London.
Tell us about MARS Volume and how it came about?
Joanna Alpe, Commercial Director, Bild Studios: MARS Volume is one of the UK’s leading independent virtual production facilities.
We have 12,000 sq. ft. of studio space, housing an LED wall that is 5m tall by 25.5m along its curve. It was the culmination of months of R&D, procurement, and testing to arrive at the best-in-class technologies and expertise to create a premium serviced studio offering to the film and television industry.
Years before dreaming up MARS Volume, the founders of Bild Studios had been working heavily within the foundational technologies that would become integral to what we now know as virtual production: LED systems technologies, camera tracking and real-time game engine software. In 2016 Bild ran one of the world’s-first demonstrations in bringing these technologies together. It is this heritage that underpins MARS Volume and has supported it to achieve its leadership position in industry today.
When the pandemic hit, Bild Studios had time to focus, incubate and accelerate the innovation. We ran a pilot in May 2020 to prove the concept and market, and then set our sights on launching MARS Volume.
You opened the doors in August last year – what has the response been like?
JA: We built it and they came. We had our first client within days of opening and have been hitting our utilisation targets ever since. Our value proposition is ‘Hollywood-level expertise, made accessible’. We wanted to make the filmmaking techniques within virtual production available to the widest range of projects. So far, we have hosted scripted series productions for Disney, Netflix, feature films, a BBC documentary, luxury car brands, advertising TVCs, and more. For me, getting emails from clients praising our team and the experience, is confirming that we are getting something right.
As this is a technologically new area, highly experienced film and television people are encountering brand new workflows – with hardware they often have absolutely no comprehension of. We put a huge focus on supporting them personally on their journey of learning and upskilling into this area.
Why was education the next challenge for MARS Volume and what do you hope to achieve with MARS Academy?
JA: A lot of our team have come to us from a background in training and education, as well as being boots on the ground and delivering technology solutions. So, when we set up MARS Volume, education was always going to be at the heart of what we had to offer.
We’re launching our first round of courses this September for free thanks to funding from ScreenSkills, the BFI, and the National Lottery. ScreenSkills and Hillingdon Council were actively looking for innovative projects delivering future skills training, job creation and tackling sustainability objectives, and MARS Academy offered just that. Hands-on, volume-based training for film professionals and soon for school leavers and recent graduates too. We see this as our point of difference – allowing students to come and learn on a commercially working volume.
Through MARS Academy we hope to train 60 people in the first year and grow these graduate numbers year on year. This is the next string to our bow for MARS Volume to keep supporting our client projects and industry as we all build the future of virtual production in filmmaking together.
Hollywood level expertise, made accessible at marsvolume.com
–
This article is sponsored by Mars Volume
