An Emmy winning, full service and cutting edge creative studio, Light Sail VR says that creating immersive video was a tradeoff with every camera until now. The URSA Cine Immersive changed everything!

Based in Los Angeles, Light Sail VR  studio is helmed by Co-founder and Creative Director Matthew Celia, as well as Co-founder and Executive Producer Robert Watts, and recently won an Emmy at the 2025 awards for Outstanding Emerging Media Program for “SNL 50th The Anniversary Special: Immersive Experience.” Now Matthew Celia details, in a document shared by Blackmagic design, the immersive industry’s evolution and the technical requirements for today’s workflows.

Celia begins by explaining Light Sail VR’s inception in 2015: “Robert and I were very interested in the immersive video space, but most of the content at that time seemed to be lacking great narrative storytelling, so I felt there was a tremendous opportunity to add value to the medium by focusing on projects that told great stories and felt perfect for immersive video.”

With 10 years in the medium, Celia has charted immersive’s growth: “There was an initial bubble where a lot of content was being made but was limited by the technology at the time, and that turned people off the format. However, a few of us stayed with it, and we are passionate about exploring storytelling in this new medium. With the launch of Apple Vision Pro, we’re seeing a renewed interest, and the tech across the pipeline has gotten better. These aren’t the immersive videos of a decade ago. The storytelling is better, the capture and delivery are better with tools like URSA Cine Immersive and DaVinci Resolve Studio, and audiences are really starting to connect.”

Immersive Capture to Post

Before adding Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive digital film camera to Light Sail VR’s arsenal, Celia captured immersive films on just about every other camera system over the last decade. “Previously, every camera was a tradeoff: we didn’t have the dynamic range we wanted, the resolution we wanted, the support for 3D that we wanted, the image quality that we wanted due to compression, etc.,” he explained. “The tools often didn’t understand modern movie sets and workflows, or they were custom built, which is cool but also difficult to get several cameras together for a multicamera capture, like we do at our concerts.

“A good experience must start with a good image. We’re doing so much manipulation to it, that each transform slightly degrades the quality, and those pixels are getting blown up to look huge in front of our audience. So, our needs are very precise. We want huge resolution, so we have a healthy pixels per degree. We want large dynamic range and great color science. We want traditional cinema standards, so the equipment can plug into preexisting pipelines and close the knowledge deficit that’s already so high with immersive filmmaking. The URSA Cine Immersive checks all these boxes: it’s a purpose built immersive camera, it’s an actual cinema camera, and there’s the seamless camera to post workflow with DaVinci Resolve Studio.”

Testing, One, Two, Three

Light Sail VR has been testing URSA Cine Immersive in a variety of scenarios to better understand how to create the best looking immersive content with it. “I’m pleased to say that it has surprised us time and time again,” said Celia. “Low light historically has been a problem, and one that we knew would be especially challenging given that this camera captures at 90fps. We shot some fire dancers, and while the footage inevitably has some noise, it cleans up with denoising quite well, and the HDR capabilities of Apple Vision Pro make the fire pop. It’s incredible to see,” he added.

Close proximity was another test important to Light Sail VR.

“Once you explain that the idea of being close to characters to deliver an unparalleled feeling of connection is what makes immersive filmmaking so powerful, the next question is, ‘How close can I get?’ The camera’s design is a critical factor here because there are certain physical limitations working in 3D,” Celia explained. “We put the camera in the back seat of a car and drove around, and it delivered comfortable stereoscopic images at very close range. The camera’s dynamic range was also tested here, as outside the car was very bright compared to inside. I was amazed at the camera’s ability to hold detail in the shadows and the highlights with a beautiful falloff. It delivers a very cinematic looking image, especially when graded in HDR for Apple Vision Pro.”

“Another test involved capturing footage on an outdoor trail. The camera’s built in ND filters are fantastic for controlling exposure. Here, we wanted to test how the compression handles fine detail like trees and tall grass. The image is quite sharp, even without any of the post processing I would normally do,” he continued.

Celia underlined that throughout the process, the overall immersive workflow has been greatly simplified with URSA Cine Immersive. “Working in lens space means we can get to editorial quicker and remove the previous step of having to ‘develop’ our immersive films,” he said.

The one tricky part? Using previous workflows and tools, except when it comes to DaVinci Resolve Studio.

“Working in lens space is very new, so our traditional plugins and tools for titles, VFX, stabilization, and denoising pipelines need a bit of updating. Having a studio that’s deeply versed in DaVinci Resolve Studio has made it so much easier, however,” he noted.

Immersive Post

“We switched over to DaVinci Resolve Studio many years ago because we needed something with a rock solid foundation playing back high resolution, high frame rate media. We needed support for 3D. We needed the best color science, so our work could have that cinematic feel we knew audiences were craving. It was astonishing to me that we found all that in a single tool: DaVinci Resolve Studio,” explained Celia. “For the last few years, we’ve used the powerful integration with Fusion to roll out a lot of our own immersive tools, but now with native support for URSA Cine Immersive, those tools are getting native integrations, and that’s very good for the industry. It will be easier than ever to create extremely high quality work.”

As the main glue for Light Sail VR’s post production workflow, DaVinci Resolve Studio has long been used for editorial, VFX and color grading. “The collaboration features have been huge time savers for our pipelines, which are often really complicated and time consuming due to the high resolution and high frame rate content. Having multiple artists working together on the same project feels very modern,” commented Celia.

“We also now have a live preview in headset when capturing,” he added. “We can review footage in headset while we’re editing, not having to wait a few hours for an export. We post cuts and use our tool Screening Room to give feedback right inside the headset. Additionally, platforms can now stream 90fps content at 4K per eye with almost no lag time. These are incredible technological and workflow improvements that help keep us focused on the creative flow, rather than the engineering.”

The Best Is Yet to Come

When it comes to creating immersive content, Celia shared his top considerations:

1. Make sure your concept works for immersive storytelling. I often see creative people bring ideas that would be better executed as a 2D cinematic project. The best immersive projects are the ones that deliver on the promise of making you feel like you are present in the story. They are fueled by authentic characters and environments. They deliver an intimacy that only this medium can.
2. Plan, plan and plan some more. Preproduction is critical.
3. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. This medium is a sensory overload, so you will be more successful with well executed, simple concepts that won’t overwhelm audiences. The technology is so powerful that if you have a great story, you don’t need a lot of fancy camera moves to immerse your audience.
4. Understand that everyone on your team is likely working with a knowledge deficit, and there are many unknowns with this newer medium. Don’t assume anything and ask a lot of questions.
5. Hire people who know what they are doing and listen to them. Those who have been at it for a while likely have run into your problem before, and everyone wants to help each other create better content. Stand on the experts’ shoulders instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every single time.

According to Celia, we are on the edge of the next huge chapter of immersive storytelling, and the best is yet to come.

“While immersion is a physical thing, it’s the emotional connection that’s really powerful in this medium. That small agency of being able to take in a scene without the prescription of another person’s set frame delivers a strong connection to the material,” concluded Celia. “If we’ve done our job right as storytellers and delivered on that promise of presence and intimacy, then that emotional connection will be solid and memorable.”