News
David Long

RIT is partnering with Synapse Virtual Production on an in-person immersion in Los Angeles next month that will provide creatives, technologists, and classically trained filmmakers with the latest training in experiential elements for virtual production.

RIT’s MAGIC Center and MAGIC Spell Studios has formed a partnership with Foundry, a Rochester-based company whose mission is to empower institutional miners, staking customers, and blockchain entrepreneurs with the tools they need.

MAGIC Spell Studios, RIT’s world-class digital media research and production facility, is bringing the latest in virtual production (VP) technology to RIT students. VP blends filmmaking, 3D graphics, computational photography, and real-time game engine rendering to produce in-camera visual effects similar to those seen in the groundbreaking work on Disney’s The Mandalorian and Marvel’s Avenger films.

Joey Wittmann '19 (3D Digital Design), pipeline engineer/technical artist for Happy Mushroom, prominently contributed to the second season of the hit Disney+ series.

Students from RIT's Industrial Design (BFA and MFA) and Master of Architecture programs constructed a large-scale sculpture on the Woodstock music festival grounds for a Hello Wood event. 

RIT’s MAGIC Spell Studios is partnering with Pure Imagination Studios, an award-winning independent entertainment studio best known for combining proprietary technology with groundbreaking storytelling, to launch a satellite office and spatial computing studio in Rochester.

Selma Peña '22 MFA (Film and Animation), a screenwriter with an undergraduate psychology degree, is using her varied background to create compelling stories that are both meaningful and beautiful.

Simon Yahn '22 (Motion Picture Science) is spending the spring on co-op with MAGIC Spell Studios, chronicling RIT's leap into virtual production, an emerging filmmaking method only a few universities around the world are working with.

Gayle McAdams '21 is confident her experiences in the Motion Picture Science program — one of RIT's 12 New Economy Majors — have her ready to enter the job market.

Shaun Foster is leveraging $160,000 from an Epic Games MegaGrant to explore and develop dynamic virtual content that is opening the eyes of RIT faculty and students—and many others—to Unreal Engine’s myriad, multi­disciplinary possibilities.

Michelle Magee ’05 MS, senior associate director for Employment Engagement in the Office of Career Services and Cooperative Education; Hamad Ghazle ’88, director of the diagnostic medical sonography program; Kerry Hughes ’03 MS, project and events manager for the Office of the Provost; and David Long ’16 Ph.D., director of RIT MAGIC Center, and were honored with the Golden Brick Award for going above and beyond their duties to volunteer or serve in leadership roles at RIT.

Six recently graduated motion picture science students from RIT’s College of Art and Design wove together the captivating videos for a museum exhibit at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the nonprofit cultural center located at the National Register Historic Site of the Woodstock festival in Bethel, N.Y.