It’s hardly unusual to transport fashion models to an exotic locale for a runway show or photo shoot. Bringing an extraordinary environment to them is harder to pull off — but that’s precisely what Pier59 Studios has in mind with its latest innovation, a digital MegaWall designed for virtual advertising production and events.
The studio will take the wraps off the technology on Wednesday night during its party at Pier59’s Chelsea Piers location, as New York Fashion Week gets underway.
While the tech will be the featured attraction, it’s not the only thing the company will be celebrating. The party itself represents a return to festive form for the studio, which was known for holding bashes every five years or so. COVID-19 derailed the last one, forcing it to skip over its own 25th anniversary. But at least now it can revel in its longevity and innovation at once.
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“We have been in business now for 27 years, very successfully…and we are combining it with virtual production,” Federico Pignatelli, founder and president of Pier59 Studios, told WWD. “Virtual production has been used in the past few years, more and more in the feature film industry. In the advertising industry, it’s just starting to happen.
“We built the largest LED wall in the world for advertising.”
The MegaWall is capable of digital environments depicting everything from a remote mountain village to the surface of the moon. In that way, it’s spiritual kin to virtual reality, although it differs in a few notable ways. As a large, physical LED wall, there are no goggles necessary. The field of view is also distinct. VR boasts a 360-degree virtual view, while the MegaWall comes in at just under 180 degrees. But at 65 feet in circumference, 67 feet in diameter and a height of 20 feet, it is still impressively immersive.
Much of that comes down to the tech behind the scenes, according to Steve Baum, project lead consultant for virtual production.
“Along with the screen is a set of technologies that allow us to track the camera in virtual space. The whole idea is to capture what we call in ‘camera-visual effects,’ [which] is really what is happening here,” he said, explaining that this scenario replaces, even improves on, green screen technology.
Instead of actors reacting to imaginary settings or items, and special effects being dropped in after the shoot during postproduction, Pier59 can set up a virtual production that displays those elements in real time.
“We use the virtual production technology and computational ability of our stage to render all of that information, both the live action and the virtual elements together, to combine them in the camera live,” said Baum. “Basically supporting all of this is a set of computers that are capable of delivering over 2 trillion calculations per second to manage all of this geometric and visual data. It’s an incredibly powerful system of computational tools and software that makes it all work.”
Baum considers it the closest thing to a real-life “Star Trek” holodeck.
Brands will be able to hold a “magic hour” shoot all day long, or go from a winter tundra to a desert vista. The use cases are varied as well. MegaWall was built for production, but it can also serve up an extraordinary setting for live events, like runway shows.
In terms of “technological transition, we went from the film, traditional film photography, to digital photography, to then digital motion and now to virtual,” continued Pignatelli. “The virtual world is what we are going to live in, in our future. But the future starts now, and that is exactly what we are bringing to Pier59 Studios.”
His guests will be the first to experience his version of it. The roster of attendees confirmed for the event ranges from Mayor Eric Adams to models Candice Swanepoel, Lais Ribeiro, Taylor Hill, Josephine Skriver, Amy Lefévre and Johannes Huebl, as well as fashionista, drag queen and New York’s ambassador of glam CT Hedden, with others from the fashion and business world expected. Pignatelli originally estimated 600 to 700 attendees, but upward of 1,200 people have requested invitations, hoping to check out the studio’s magic wall.
The list befits a business that once counted Santo Versace (brother of Gianni), Italian publishing giant Mondadori and fashion photographer Marco Glaviano as Pignatelli’s partners. After 9/11, the former finance executive bought them out and became sole owner.
Taking stock of his 27 years running a photo and video studio, he reflected on the changes he has seen in the fashion sector. Naturally, that spans shifts in tastes and trends. But also technology.
“Fashion is embracing, quite rapidly, all these innovations. We can see it in the fashion shows — they want to be not only creative, but to break the rules,” Pignatelli said. “Technology is definitely something that the fashion business wants to embrace, and has to embrace. Fashion is a multitrillion-dollar business worldwide, and the economics are huge, so they have to make sure that they can reach the public and be competitive.
“Because today, the public is connected to the digital world, and it’s going to be connected to the virtual world more and more.”