Hula Post: Virtual Reality Post-Production Simplified

Hula Post VR controlA long time ago, in a galaxy far away, holograms of Jedi council meetings were fantastical to us, science fiction at its best. But here we are in 2017 — rumors are swirling of Apple’s investigation into AR and VR technology for future iOS devices, you can read augmented labels on your fresh produce in Milan’s “Supermarket of the Future,” and Google Tilt Brush has reimagined the definition of a masterpiece with its three-dimensional virtual studio. As demand for these immersive experiences grow, Hula Post Production and LaCie are working in tandem to deliver.

Hula Post, the one-stop provider of post-production equipment, creative workspaces, and tech support, recently developed an all-in-one virtual reality workstation. As you might guess, it provides everything a crew would need to successfully produce a VR or 360° video.

The workstation includes solutions for stitching, stabilization, editorial, visual effects, titling, color correction, finishing, and playback. Available for both short- and long-term leasing, it’s been used in the production of educational videos, Nickelodeon’s Sponge Bob Square Pants, and a recent McDonald’s VR commercial. Hula Post provided post-production services to the production company, Wonderworld VR, and McDonald’s for a 3D virtual reality experience introducing its new self-service kiosks (now in use at some restaurants in Florida, New York and Southern California). Hula managed editorial, color correction, titling and finishing for the 2-minute piece, titled Building a Better McDonald’s Just for You, which takes viewers on a 360-degree, 3D tour of a restaurant equipped with the new ordering system. It can be viewed on YouTube (below) or via a mobile phone app.

This technology creates hundreds of terabytes of data — and those trillions of bytes need to be managed by the creative professionals who turn the data into entertainment. In fact, Forbes released an article claiming that the internet pipes will burst when virtual reality takes off. Why? Because where in the world do you store that much data? (That’s a question Seagate engineers are always working to solve.)

Beyond that, there’s the issue of safely transporting these massive amounts of data between online production houses and the editorial/visual effects crews and wherever else it needs to go. Enter LaCie.

If a drive is going to fall off a desk or get used over and over for pulling data and final shots, Rugged portable drives will live up to their namesake. If you have 10TB of footage shuffling from one place to another, there’s the d2 Thunderbolt 3 desktop drive. The durability and high-capacity transportability of these drives is exactly why Hula Post relies on them. According to Michael Moncreiff, their senior vice president of business development, “They’re very fast and easy to use. Reliable in the field and incredibly cost efficient. We depend on flexibility and the ability to connect to various machines, and LaCie drives deliver that.”

While we can’t promise that your next staff meeting will be conducted in intergalactic hologram fashion, that’s the direction we’re most likely headed. And if, when we arrive, the internet finally bursts, Hula Post, and Seagate and LaCie, will be there to help you capture, edit, and deliver 360° footage of our world as it collectively loses its mind.

2017-12-06T17:29:48+00:00

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