Seth MacFarlane‘s Fuzzy Door production company developed software — running on standard iPhones, Macs and PCs — to let filmmakers see VFX elements on-screen while they were shooting “The Orville: New Horizons” and “Ted,” a prequel series to the two movies featuring MacFarlane’s obnoxious teddy bear.
Now Fuzzy Door Tech, the company’s technology division, is releasing the suite of tools — called ViewScreen — that it’s hoping to sell to other film and TV producers.
The suite comprises two products: ViewScreen Studio, which lets filmmakers visualize and animate an entire scene, including digital assets, in real time, across multiple cameras, and ViewScreen Scout, an iPhone app that lets production crew members record how digital assets appear in a scene on location or a soundstage before filming begins.
“ViewScreen takes the guesswork out of the directing process,” MacFarlane said in a statement. “Now you can see VFX elements, in real time, as you’re shooting. It’s a true advantage for every facet of filmmaking because it accelerates everything we do. It allows for faster decision-making, quicker visualizations and provides a clear framework for post-production to ensure the director’s vision is accurately achieved.”
Fuzzy Door used ViewScreen Scout for planning and blocking the space shuttle landings in Hulu’s “The Orville: New Horizons.” For the upcoming “Ted” event series, premiering Jan. 11 on Peacock, MacFarlane used ViewScreen Studio to direct and animate Ted’s face and body movements while the extended production team could see the resulting shots on-set in real time.
ViewScreen was created by Brandon Fayette, Fuzzy Door Tech’s chief product officer who was the VFX supervisor on “The Orville,” and software developer Gene Reddick, who serves as the division’s CTO.
Historically, shooting a scene that include VFX elements has been “like ‘trust me’ about where the invisible assets will be,” Fayette said. ViewScreen “enhances the creative process — it provides more efficiency, you know what you are shooting on the day and everyone can see it all.”
The ViewScreen products are built on top of Unity’s cross-platform game engine, which provides the real-time rendering capabilities. The software uses augmented reality to display VFX components in a live scene so directors, DPs, camera operators and extended crew can see the entire scene and react to what’s happening on set. ViewScreen runs on off-the-shelf iOS, MacOS and Windows consumer hardware. Originally, it was developed for Microsoft’s HoloLens mixed-reality headsets. “There was nothing else at the time that could do the tracking we needed,” Fayette explained. Today, “phones are so much more powerful.”
The ViewScreen VFX tools do not send any assets over the internet — only positional data is transmitted to allow collaboration with folks who are remote. According to Fayette, the ViewScreen tools have been vetted and approved for Disney and Universal’s content-security standards.
Fuzzy Door Tech coined the term “pro-vis,” or “production visualization,” to describe what its products do, said Faith Sedlin, who joined as president in May. ViewScreen can be used at any point in the production cycle, she said, and eliminates the need for expensive equipment like motion-capture systems. For production managers, “this will save a lot of money,” Sedlin said. Earlier in her career, she was chief marketing officer at Siri (the virtual assistant startup acquired by Apple), community marketplace Oodle (acquired by QVC) and Redbubble, an artist marketplace for print-on-demand products.
Viewscreen Studio can be used during filming to visualize virtual props, characters and environments, on set or on location in real time. That lets camera operators know where to position shots because they can see an entire scene, including digital assets, in their viewfinder while filming, synchronized by timecode across multiple cameras. In addition, actors can animate digital characters using just an iPhone.
ViewScreen Scout lets you pre-visualize scenes, virtually walk through sets, block movement, visualize lighting and more before filming begins. With ViewScreen Scout, the crew can collaborate through shared rooms. For example, while an AD is on location scouting, a lighting designer can join a shared room remotely and adjust the lighting. “I jokingly call it my holodeck in my pocket,” said Fayette.
Fuzzy Door Tech is selling the ViewScreen software for use on film and TV productions in the U.S. and Canada. Pricing varies based on the requirements and complexity of a production, Sedlin said.
ViewScreen Studio is compatible with the latest release of MacOS (Sonoma) and Windows 11 and can be
used with any cinema camera. ViewScreen Scout runs on iOS devices including any iPhone Pro or iPhone Pro Max and any iPad Pro M1 and higher.
Watch Fuzzy Door Tech’s sizzle reel for ViewScreen:
Pictured above: A shot from the set of the “Pink House” short film Fuzzy Door Tech created to demonstrate ViewScreen Studio
