Interactive Entertainment and Immersive Experiences

_{Kwertare (crown) image from the Indigemoji app. (Courtesy of Harold Thomas and WAM Clothing)} 

Our latest Virtual Production is political satire starring the legendary Harry Shearer, with releases timed to coincide with the USA's current presidential election season. The Many Moods of Donald Trump, comprising 13 tracks, hits the shelves 30 October, just three days before the US goes to the polls. 

We're excited that sci-fi mystery-thriller feature film, 2067 has had its US release! Back in late 2018 Mod director, Michela Ledwidge worked in pre-production with the film's On-Set VFX Supervisor, Mark van den Bergen to research Virtual Production techniques to assist filming. Two options - in-camera VFX and real-time point-cloud "hologram" capture were tested. Michela then joined the production on-set at Adelaide Film Studios to capture holograms for key dramatic shots. 

2020 has been a hell of a year and it's taken a toll on mental health for many of us.

The Mod team is excited by the live online event work that we’ve been doing in Mozilla Hubs. We’ve found Hubs to be a scalable, flexible and fun platform that allows a more natural human communication experience than video conferencing allows. 

Mod is looking for an experienced AWS Dev Ops Engineer. This is an initial 1 month full time contract (160 hours), with a view to extending. It is a remote working role.

We are very excited to announce that Mod has been awarded an Epic Games MegaGrant to support production of our investigative documentary, A Clever Label. Our VR doco allows audiences to explore how prominent figures in business and politics are linked to The Australian Christian Lobby, a conservative political advocacy group, revealing impacts on LGBTQ+ people and on democracy itself.  A Clever Label is created using our Rack&Pin pipeline for Virtual Production. This grant gets us a little bit closer to releasing it as an online video series pilot and as a touring VR experience.

Mod is currently working on a satirical deep fake project (watch this space) and firmly front of mind are issues canvassed at last years Vivid Ideas event, Love/Machine. 

Here are Michela's most exciting take-aways from her time in Hubs by Mozilla at IEEEVR 2020.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 was huge for Mod. We enjoyed demonstrating our latest work, strengthening industry connections and meeting peers. Our highlights in numbers:

We are pleased to confirm that the Birds of a Feather - Virtual Production event is locked in for SIGGRAPH Asia 2019.

Our documentary project A Clever Label, to be demoed at SIGGRAPH Asia next week, is produced using the technology behind our new Grapho app - a tool that lets non-technical users examine and manipulate graph data for presentations. Filling a gap in the market for easy-to-use VR data visualisation, Grapho makes data insights engaging and accessible. Mod has identified demand for a tool that allows secure visualisation of private  data without cloud sharing; Grapho aims to support both local and cloud data, making no assumptions about data location.

SIGGRAPH Asia is a conference like no other, where innovation is more than a buzzword - it’s actually tangible and forward thinking. This year, SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 will be held in Brisbane, the first time it has ever been in Australia! We're excited that Mod will have such a strong presence at the conference this year - as well as being a finalist in the prestigious Real-Time Live! competition, we're co-hosting the Birds Of a Feather session on Virtual Production and exhibiting in the Trade Show for the first time.

Raena Lea-Shannon, our friend and long time lawyer, passed away last month after a long fight with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.

The team at Mod was chuffed to collaborate with Yunyu on release of Pirates of the Silk Road, a new mod for Beat Saber, available on Beat Saver.

Michela Ledwidge will this month represent Mod at GDC in San Francisco, after our first trip in 2018 resulted in gigs with Epic Games and Sony Interactive Entertainment America.

In 2018 Mod continued its great relationship as an industry partner with UTS Animal Logic Academy and for the second year, Michela Ledwidge was invited to deliver a postgrad masterclass. Later in the year she was part of the industry panel that selected student projects for further development.

2019 farewells our ACO Virtual touring show. Initially envisioned as a two-year touring show, ACO Virtual proved so popular and robust the tour extended into a sixth year, with its final staging in Goulburn NSW.

Mod delivered two touchscreen interactives for the Infiniti Black S concept car stand at the prestigious Paris Motor Show.

Mod was retained by disability sector peak body, National Disability Services (NDS) to coach teams from several different disability services organisations, over 12 months, to pilot their ideas for using Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality.