Latin America. ARRI announced the establishment of the ARRI Solutions Group. With this new organizational unit, it expands its offer of global solutions for the global film and television industry. The ARRI Solutions Group focuses on the design and engineering of custom production infrastructures including innovative mixed reality environments, state-of-the-art television studios and other ultra-modern solutions.
Customers will be able to take advantage of the benefits of an international team of experienced engineers and project managers in combination with ARRI products, well known for their high quality and ease of use, as well as a worldwide network. This is because ARRI works with specialized industrial partners, depending on the region, the project and the scope of the services required.
"Arri has long since ceased to be just a hardware manufacturer. Whether in consulting, configuration or out-of-the-box installations, the experts at the ARRI Solutions Group design, with total precision, the solutions that our film and broadcast customers need. Therefore, coordination and good cooperation with companies offering other products and services are also very important to us," explains Stephan Schenk, Managing Director of Global Sales and Solutions at ARRI.
ARRI Mixed Reality Solutions
One of the ARRI Solutions Group's first mixed reality reference projects is the dark bay virtual production studio recently launched in Babelsberg, near Berlin. In one of Europe's largest permanent LED studios for virtual film productions, the ARRI Solutions Group was responsible for the overall technical planning as well as coordinating the installation of all components.
To achieve the highest production quality, the customer and partner, in close collaboration, combined state-of-the-art hardware with engineering performance to create an innovative overall system. For this flagship project, ARRI's three commercial units – camera, lighting and rental systems – worked together intensively under the management and coordination of the ARRI Solutions Group project.
Currently filming in DARK BAY is being shot for the Netflix production "1899", the new series by Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar, the creators of "Dark". The actors are filmed in front of an LED wall 55 meters long and seven meters high, curved at an angle of 270°, with the ARRI ALEXA Mini LF camera and ARRI Rental lenses, created exclusively for "1899". The LED wall is complemented by 70 ARRI SkyPanels that combine to illuminate the volume interactively.
Camera and lighting systems as well as ARRI fixtures have already been used in a wide range of professional mixed reality film productions including Walt Disney's "The Mandalorian."
ARRI Solutions for Broadcast
With the establishment of the ARRI Solutions Group took place an organizational realignment of the Berlin-based ARRI Systems Group, which previously specialized in broadcast and lighting solutions. This department, with extended responsibility, falls under the new general name of ARRI Solutions Group and now also offers its solutions, experience and knowledge, including consulting, planning, visualization, design, implementation and training for the film market. In the future it will also encompass camera systems such as AMIRA Live, in addition to lighting systems such as SkyPanel and Orbiter.
More recently, among other projects, the Group equipped two state-of-the-art television studios for WeltN24 in the new Axel Springer building in Berlin. WeLT's two news studios are the first broadcast studios to be equipped exclusively with Ethernet/IP-based lighting technology, even down to the spotlights. In combination with other luminaires, 100 ARRI SkyPanels provide a highly flexible lighting design.
ARRI Remote Solutions
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic ARRI developed another global approach that now continues under the umbrella of the ARRI Solutions Group: ARRI Remote Solutions for safe film productions of the highest level. With a system of cameras, lights, remote heads and ARRI accessories controlled in a network and remotely, ARRI Remote Solutions allow workflows with a safe distance between the actors and the work team and between the team members themselves, without compromising operational and creative control.
"In all of these applications, customers have requirements that are region-specific; even local partner companies are often different. At ARRI, with our Solutions Group, we strive to find the best individual solutions in the interest of our customers," sums up Stephan Schenk.
