LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Stargate Studios, an award winning production company that specializes in virtual production and visual effects, has announced plans to open Stargate Germany in February 2012. Stargate Germany will establish the most advanced virtual reality stages there to produce daily dramas, primetime television shows, feature films and commercials planned for local and international distribution in 2012. The company’s first venture will be 240 episodes of Road to Happiness, a Grundy UFA daily drama that will premiere this April.
According to Stargate Founder and CEO Sam Nicholson, ASC, Stargate Germany will be located in Studio Babelsberg near Berlin and will bring the same cutting-edge technology to European television that the studio has utilized in, among others, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Episodes and Pan Am.
“This is truly a monumental move for us,” Nicholson said. “We will greatly expand the creative potential of European TV through the use of Stargate's proprietary Virtual Backlot Technology, which has been utilized in the United States by most of the major film and television studios, including Universal/NBC, Disney/ABC, Viacom/CBS, Paramount, Warner Brothers and HBO. We are building Stargate Germany to meet the increased creative demands and the technical needs of the European television, feature and commercial markets.”
Stargate’s Virtual Backlot is the best low cost alternative to shooting on location, offering fully immersive environments to shoot establishing shots, multiple angle coverage, walk & talks and driving. It provides directors the freedom to cover actors as if they were actually shooting on location, saving significant location expenses and production time.
Founded in 1989, Stargate has been nominated and won numerous awards over the years including Emmy Awards for their work on NBC's Heroes, TNT's Nightmares & Dreamscapes and the HISTORY Channel’s mini-series Gettysburg. Stargate currently has offices in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto and Malta. Stargate’s global network allows clients to access more than 200 visual effects artists and supervisors all over the world, as well as high-speed data transfer and simultaneous rendering.