How to handle emerging media? In the EMEX spring course, the possibilities of virtual production will be explored.

// Course period: 18.03.2020 – 22.04.2020
// Registration until: 09.03.2020

 

As new forms of media and technology are introduced to the market and international collaborations between creators become more and more frequent, we believe it is crucial to give our students the opportunity to experience an international development process for emerging media. The set of skills required for a project like this might just be essential for your future professional lives in an ever-changing workspace.

You will join international students from the UK, Finland and Germany with different academic backgrounds in transnational teams to develop innovative ideas for content and applications in the area of virtual film production and virtual reality. A likewise interdisciplinary and international team of instructors will facilitate the course throughout.

In the 5 week online course, you work in a team of  4–5 members with the task to come up with 2–5 ideas that you will discuss with professionals at the end of the course. Each group will have a tutor to give individual guidance throughout the ideation process. 

The teamwork will be accompanied by screencasts, hands-on tutorials and introductions to different topics at the intersection between virtual reality and real-time film production technologies. For example, we will have a live Q&A session with the Babelsberg Volucap Studio*, Europe’s technically most advanced studio for volumetric video capture. 

At the end of the course, you will have a basic knowledge of the field of virtual production, a sense of what is still innovative in this field, and valuable skills in creative transnational online teamwork. And in case any of your ideas motivate you for a project, we offer a follow-up course dedicated to prototyping and testing applications and content in virtual production.

*In a volumetric studio, people and objects are captured in detail from all sides. The result is not a classic film recording, but a realistic, natural-looking, authentic 3D representation of the objects being recorded – a real-time 3D scan. Hologram-like representations of the real people and objects are ultimately generated, which can then be edited and animated like computer-generated models.

Continuous Support:

  • Online learning platform and forum for support
  • Four mandatory individual tutoring session for each team with one of the lecturers
  • Release of dedicated learning materials, contextualized by short blog articles
  • Ongoing support during the planning phase
  • Optional debrief session with the tutor to discuss the process, including problems experienced, insights gathered and potential further collaboration.

Tentative Competencies and Themes of the Course<:

  • Knowledge
    • Virtual production
    • Volumetric studios
    • Prototyping strategies for emerging media
  • Skills
    • developing innovative ideas for virtual production
    • methods of structured online ideation
    • exploration of the technology and practices
    • explore the creative potential of new media technologies
    • prototyping for Emerging Media
  • Social Competencies
    • working in an interdisciplinary team
    • creative processes and decision making
    • Self-reliance and empowerment
    • Self-organisation within teams

Tentative tasks of teams during the course

  • Team building – get conscious of the team’s competences, create a team identity
  • Gather and document domain knowledge
  • Find and about the needs and expectations in virtual production
  • Assign people according to skills and build up new skills not available in the team yet
  • Create as many as possible short ideas
  • Decide on 2-5 innovative ideas for virtual production
  • Create 2-5 visuals, explaining the ideas / one visualization per idea
  • Presentation of the final ideas

EMEX Onsite Course 2020

A follow-up course starting mid-September is planned. It will be an onsite workshop in Babelsberg/Germany where students will be given the chance to continue developing the ideas they worked on during the online course.

 

See detailed Informations: Course_Description_for_Students_2020