VA Corp. to build Asia’s largest virtual studio with LG’s LED displays

VA Corp. (VAC), a South Korean visual effects production startup, is building Asia’s largest virtual studio complex equipped with super-large LED displays from LG Electronics Inc.

According to company officials on Friday, it plans to construct the complex with four studio buildings in Paju, Gyeonggi Province to meet growing demand from metaverse platform operators and over-the-top (OTT) streaming service providers.

VAC aims to open the complex across 95,000 square meters of land, the size of 13 soccer fields combined, in 2023.

“One of the studios will be as large as 3,300 square meters, enabling video producers and filmmakers to complete the entire content production process in one place,” said a VAC official.

The plan comes after the company opened a virtual production studio, VA Studio Hanam, across 15,000 square meters of land in Hanam, Gyeonggi Province last year.

The new facility will use LG’s LED displays specifically built for the studios and connected cameras to create virtual settings in real-time. This solution will save time and reduce image composition and on-location production costs while helping video producers and filmmakers view the camera on the live-action set from any direction, according to VAC.

The displays allow special visual effects from the filming stage. Officials said filmmakers do not need to use the chroma key technique by which an actor performs in front of a green screen and then computer graphics are applied separately.

It is possible to shoot with the virtual world floating on the LED screen instead of synthesizing the actors and the virtual world background separately, they said.

GROWING VR-BASED CONTENT MARKET

Korea’s major entertainment companies are aggressively building virtual studios to take advantage of the growing content market.

According to Korea’s culture ministry, Korea’s virtual reality-based content market is expected to grow to 11.7 trillion won ($9.3 billion) this year, up nearly fivefold from 2.8 trillion won two years ago.

Earlier this week, CN ENM Co., Korea’s media and entertainment giant, opened a virtual studio in Paju, using The Wall, one of Samsung Electronics Co.’s largest and latest displays.

Korea’s top mobile carrier SK Telecom Co. last month opened a virtual studio with various new technologies such as the metaverse and extended reality (XR) performances in Pangyo, southeast of Seoul.

Other visual effects (VFX) companies such as Dexter Studios Corp. and GIANTSTEP Inc. also opened their new virtual production studios last year.

VA Corp., established in 2021, has a proven track record of creating metaverse content based on three-dimensional virtual production using special effects, drawing equity investors such as LG, NHN Corp. and Come2uS Holdings Corp.

Last year, VAC and LG AI Research Institute signed an agreement to cooperate on artificial intelligence and metaverse service innovation.

“Together with VAC, we plan to offer our virtual production solutions to OTT companies and broadcasters across the globe,” said an LG Electronics official.

Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com
In-Soo Nam edited this article.