Customer Profile, Interview
Creator Series Ep1: Virtual Production with Sam Nicholson, ASC
The first episode of iodyne Creator Series features legendary cinematographer, VFX supervisor, and Stargate Studios Founder, Sam Nicholson, ASC. Sam talks about the evolution of virtual production, the exponentially growing data weight of modern production workflows, and how to manage them with a solid on-set pipeline.
iodyne is proud to introduce a short-format film series spotlighting exceptional talent among the iodyne community. We are partnering with Pro Data Creators and support their artistic process by making the technology piece of their workflow secure, fast, and reliable so that they can focus on their craft. These are their stories.
In our first episode, Sam Nicholson talks about the evolution of virtual production since the times of Hitchcock. As film stock gave way to digital footage, the data weight of modern film production has been growing exponentially. So today’s filmmakers have to adopt a fast and reliable data pipeline.
Watch on our YouTube channel, and subscribe for the next episode.
Each year, hundreds of terabytes, petabytes are becoming normal. So you really need an extremely fluid data pipeline to enable the creative process.
Solid state memory is coming off the camera that drop to an iodyne drive on set. So now you have a very dependable, fast data pipeline.
Sam Nicholson, ASC, is CEO and founder of Stargate Studios, an Emmy-winning international production company that specializes in visual effects and virtual production.
Sam has been involved in film and television production for over 40 years, beginning as an on-set visual effects supervisor for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the groundbreaking Max Headroom. From there, he founded Stargate Studios and has provided over 30 years of award-winning visual effects for countless projects including The Walking Dead, Grey’s Anatomy, Monk, 24, Heroes, Ugly Betty, ER, Hustlers, The Black Phone, The Resident, M3gan, Insidious: The Red Door, and Will Trent to name a few. On the virtual production front, Sam and Stargate pioneered the VP approach for HBO’s Our Flag Means Death, and have continued to excel with the latest LED technology on productions such as Your Honor, The Lincoln Lawyer, Bardo, Station 19, Fatal Attraction, White Noise, The Consultant, The Idol, and Bookie. See filmography on imdb.
As the 2023 recipient of the American Society of Cinematographers’ Technical Achievement Award, Sam combines years of experience with film cameras, cinematic lighting, optical printing, motion control, and film finishing with an extensive knowledge of digital camera systems. Sam is also a member of the DGA and The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He is a multiple award-winning member of the Visual Effects Society, and he serves on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Technical Awards committee. Sam is a graduate of the UCLA School of Fine Arts and lives in Pasadena with his wife, Diane, and their seven rescue dogs.
This episode of iodyne Creator Series was produced by Vertical Online.
