Xon Studios

Location: Seoul

Time: 2021

Pushing the boundaries of entertainment production, Xon Studios is one of South Korea’s leading virtual production and XR stage studios offering revolutionary creative solutions across film, broadcast, animation, VFX, motion design, and immersive entertainment.The cutting-edge facility originally made waves by becoming the first studio in Korea to incorporate mixed reality (MR) technology, with the studio’s creative ideas and execution becoming synonymous with the future of visual entertainment. In strong collaboration with Inster contents group, which is leading the production of Korean dramas,Xon Studios uses high-performing AOTO LED screens and Brompton Tessera processing for its giant LED volume as well as the latest UE, disguise, and Mo-Sys camera tracking to deliver its clients’ creative vision.

“Our AOTO panels’ refresh rate, scan rate and colour performance were some of the key factors that made the Xon Studios team choose our panels for their cutting-edge facility,” says Frank Ou, Sales Manager at AOTO Electronics. “We worked closely with the Xon team to address multiple questions and supported them with everything related to the screen, structure and installation. Our client also received great support from various Brompton team members who all helped configure the LED volume so that Xon Studios could make full use of Tessera features such as Dark Magic, Pure Tone, HFR+ and others.”

The final setup comprises a 100sqm LED volume made up of AOTO RM Series 2.3mm panels driven by four 4K Tessera SX40 LED processing with eight Tessera XD 10G data distribution units.

“When the new facility was opened, Xon Studios deployed a competitor LED processing solution. Shortly afterwards, and after seeing positive feedback from several award-winning VFX houses globally that all used Brompton processing for their creative VP and XR immersive projects, the team decided to switch to Tessera SX40, which is considered a gold standard in LED processing,” says Ou.

“Since then, the team hasn’t looked back, with AOTO and Tessera offering the perfect combination for Xon’s next generation digital stage and spearheading the company into the new era of immersive visual entertainment.”

The final installation of the screens and processing was completed in mid-May, with everything running smoothly and ‘zero failures’, according to Ou. The studio has already been used for high-profile projects with LG, Samsung, Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), Volkswagen Korea, and Netflix, with many more productions planned for this year and beyond.

“Compared to the previous LED system that was used for ten months at Xon Studios, the current LED setup with AOTO screens and Brompton Tessera LED processing offers a significant advantage in terms of image quality and over 50 percent increase in performance,” says Chan Hee Jung, Inster CEO / Xon CTO.

“Previously, while working with Netflix, we found it challenging to express colour for HDR footage with the old system. Now, colour reproduction and brightness are truly lifelike, with the colour reproduced on the LED screen closely matching the colour displayed on the actual monitor. With the help of Tessera processors, we were also able to address artifacts such as flickering and moiré, as well as take full advantage of many Tessera features such as HFR+ which makes high speed shooting possible. In short, we are very pleased with the system and will continue exploring the creative opportunities it offers to our clients.”