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www.postmagazine.com 7 POST MAY 2018 BITS & PIECES BROOKLYN, NY — Located just a short subway ride from New York City is Silver Spoon Animation Studio (www.silverspoonanimation.com), a 12,000-square-foot facility in Brooklyn, New York, that provides performance capture services for producers of high- end video games, television series, feature film and special VR promotion- al experiences and events. Post's Linda Romanello recently dropped by the studio to meet with the team — including Dan Pack, managing director/partner, and Peter Collazo, studio director — and to get a live, motion-capture demo as well as a facility tour. The studio's Stage A, which opened about a year ago, was designed specifically to bring motion-capture services to New York. "Definitely a need we want- ed to address," says Pack. "We wanted it to be a premiere, high- end mocap studio but we needed a large-enough space to be able to accommodate the various-size pro- ductions." The capture volume of Stage A, 65 feet x 55 feet with 16- foot to 20-foot high ceilings, fea- tures a 48-camera Vicon Vantage system running Vicon Shogun soft- ware, four 4K reference cameras from multiple angles, BlackMagic Design Multiview for multiple video monitoring, Ambient Lockit Timecode and Sync Generators and a 32-camera Optitrack system exclusively for VR. During Post's visit, we saw a live, VR demo from Stage A, with every- thing "running through Unreal Engine, so directors can visualize in realtime," explained Pack. Additional services the studio offers include facial capture and post processing. The team, profi- cient in Maya, Motion Builder, Unreal and 3DsMax, offers cleaning and retargeting services to help facilitate the post process for the many visual effects studios located in the area. "That's why we wanted to be in New York," adds Pack. "This is where some of the best visual effects studios and talent are and we're showing that we can lead the way in innova- tion as well." — By Linda Romanello SILVER SPOON BRINGS MOTION CAPTURE TO NYC Mocap in action. (L-R) Collazo, Romanello and Pack.