How PIER59 Studios is pioneering virtual production, pixel by pixel

Three decades ago, PIER59 Studios opened its doors on Manhattan’s west side as an analogue photography studio. Since then, the studio has evolved frame-by-frame and pixel-by-pixel into New York’s leading production hub.

And the evolution keeps accelerating. As brands demand faster and more ambitious content, PIER59 is expanding with them – pushing further into 2D and 2.5D environments, and running 3D production environments for some of the world’s biggest brands. Powered by Disguise technology, PIER59 is redefining what modern studios can offer.

We spoke to Lorenzo Ferrante, Head of Virtual Production and Creative, and Jim Rider, Virtual Production and Special Effects Supervisor, about how PIER59 is adapting to the shift, and how the team is driving its virtual production capabilities forwards.

A legacy studio, transformed by technology

Overlooking the Hudson River, PIER59 is a vast creative complex with 11 stages and the largest LED screens in NorthEast USA. Often dubbed “the Hollywood of Multimedia”, the studio has supported some of the world’s most ambitious advertising campaigns, live events, editorial shoots, and branded content of the past 30 years. 

Today, that legacy is supported by a full-service team that lives and breathes virtual production. The studio works with a strong base of returning clients, or as Rider puts it: "We’re not just a studio — we’re a full-service creative environment designed for exceptional production experiences. Our clients know they’ll be taken care of, and that we’re always pushing to bring in new technologies that support creativity.”

Precision in motion: 2D campaigns with Louis Vuitton 

Of course, not every project needs a fully-immersive 3D world – sometimes constraint drives smarter solutions. Case in point: a recent Louis Vuitton campaign that required a sweeping desert landscape in slow motion, yet needed to be filmed in a 2D environment.

Ferrante explains: “The client wanted it to be filmed in slow motion, which would have been harder in real-time 3D. This is why we mapped the entire 360-degree plane inside of a cylinder using Disguise. The stationary camera gave this feeling of drawing a huge arc around the talent.”

This innovative approach resulted in a dynamic campaign with crisp, high-resolution imagery achieved at a fraction of the cost of 3D.

Louis Vuitton campaign by PIER59 Studios 

Working in 2.5D: from immersive sets to large-scale campaigns 

PIER59 has been expanding its 2.5D capabilities for productions that need greater camera freedom without sacrificing photorealism,  sitting between traditional 2D playback and fully real-time 3D.

For Uniqlo’s collaboration with artist KAWS, the team was tasked with creating an immersive environment where the artwork would wrap the entire space across walls, floor and ceiling.

“The client initially wanted to build a physical set,” explains Rider, “but that would have introduced challenges with both scale and lighting. We realised this campaign was a natural fit for a 2.5D workflow.”

Instead, the team brought KAWS’ artwork into Disguise, building a fully realised 2.5D environment across the LED volume. “We presented a 2.5D environment on the LED wall, which gave the client the flexibility they were looking for,” he adds. The result was a flexible setup that allowed for handheld shooting and a more fluid, creative approach on set.

The studio applied a similar workflow on a larger scale for Ralph Lauren’s Team USA winter campaign. Filmed in summer, with no snow on set, the production required athletes to appear atop a vast mountain landscape.

“This setup gave a real sense of scale,” says Ferrante. “It felt like they were standing on top of a mountaintop, something that would have been difficult to achieve with a flat backdrop.”

Using multiple stages simultaneously, the team captured both motion and stills at once, enabling a large-scale campaign to be delivered within a tightly condensed timeframe.

Ralph Lauren Olympics campaign by PIER59 Studios 

Moving into real-time 3D with Fidelity 

Demand for fully-fledged 3D environments is increasing, and so are expectations. Rider explains: “You know virtual production has changed when a few years ago it was impressive to run a real-time 3D scene on an LED wall at 24 frames a second. Now clients want 48, 96, 120 frames per second as they want the slow motion capabilities.”

PIER59 has stayed ahead of the curve, pushing the bar with clients such as with Fidelity, who shot a recent campaign using 3D environments that were designed from the ground-up.

Rider says: “It would have been prohibitively expensive to build the sets for a two-day shoot, so virtual production was a clear-cut case of the best way to achieve the vision. Once the Director and Creatives were on set they forgot they were looking at a virtual space. And the technology allowed for real-time lighting changes and real-time set design changes just as if it were a real space.”

Running high-performance virtual production with Disguise

Running high frame rate 3D environments in a live production setting leaves little room for error.

PIER59 has been using Disguise in its workflows for the past three years, recently upgrading to add the latest RX III render nodes to their system to support more demanding productions. “The additional power means we can run more than twice the frame rate we ran even a year ago,” says Rider. “That means we can promise clients higher frame-rate shoots without worrying.”

As production timelines tighten and expectations continue to rise, that level of power has become an essential part of the studio’s virtual production pipeline, helping to propel them forwards as a standout studio rewriting the rules of virtual production within the industry. 

PIER59 Studios is located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, NY, and operates 11 stages including the largest LED volume in the Northeast US.