Brompton Technology has announced an extension of its collaboration with Garden Studios, powering a larger virtual production stage.
Aiming to support driving and simulated travel work, the new stage is powered by Brompton’s Tessera SX40 paired with Tessera XD 10G data distribution units. Centred on a 24m x 5m ground-stacked curved LED wall from ROE and a 10m by 5m high-resolution LED ceiling from Absen, the stage is mounted on a custom Cirrolite rig, enabling free movement of the volume and allowing it to double as a front wall for 360-degree shooting. The ceiling can travel up to 20 metres front-to-back, switching from fully enclosed to rain-ready in less than a minute, said the company.
Rich Phillips, CTO at Garden Studios, said, “Since opening our first volume in 2021, our LED wall has more than doubled in size, and we now have one of the highest-resolution LED ceilings in Europe, enabling crisp, in-focus windscreen reflections with no visible pixelation. One of the key challenges we identified was the limitation of large pixel-pitch LED ceilings when used for windscreen reflections. To address this, we invested in a new high-resolution ceiling solution from Absen, allowing us to capture in-focus reflections directly in camera.”
With four degrees of movement and the need for 10-bit, 50Hz, substantial bandwidth was necessary, along with flexibility and reliability. “SX40 processors paired with XD data distribution units over TAC fibre were the obvious choice, providing the flexibility, bandwidth and reliability needed for such a dynamic system,” said Phillips.
Colour accuracy and frame-rate flexibility remain central to the setup, said Garden Studios. Clients often shoot at 23.98fps, while commercial productions typically work at 25fps or 50fps. Brompton’s ShutterSync feature helps eliminate artefacts across shutter angles such as 172.8 degrees.
The panels are optimised for low-brightness operation without visible banding with Dark Magic and Extended Bit Depth. PureTone calibration aims to ensure colour accuracy. Full 3D LUT support, with a 17-cube LUT covering 4,913 colours, integrates directly with Pomfort Livegrade, enablingg DITs and DPs to grade the LED wall using familiar tools.
Garden Studios’ original S8 processors continue to benefit from Brompton’s latest features with free Tessera software updates.
