“Avatar,” the highest-grossing film of all time, took viewers to a new world, Pandora, and it advanced filmmaking to its own new world: developing the field of virtual production. 

Leveraging a wide range of technologies such as performance capture, LED virtual environments, and advanced 3D imaging technologies, virtual production is changing the landscape of modern cinema. While millions of people have seen “Avatar,” only a fraction of that number understand the magic behind the scenes. Exposing filmmaking students to this magic is what MIT Media Lab alumnus Daniel Pillis SM ’24 is all about.

“Motion capture, like that in 'Avatar,' bridges real human movement with digital technology,” says Pillis. “In this digital age, and as artificial intelligence becomes more involved in film studios, technology that enables the authenticity of human expression and performance is becoming increasingly important.” 

That is what Pillis, now an assistant professor at Emerson College, teaches his students in his filmmaking courses. To bring the lesson to life, each semester the class travels across the river to MIT, where Emerson undergraduate and graduate students use the capabilities of the MIT.nano Immersion Lab to create their own virtual productions.

Donning full-body motion-capture suits that pair to the 28-camera OptiTrack system in the Immersion Lab, the students become their own avatars — generating virtual characters that dance, fight, or play the guitar like The Beatles. They see their animation data immediately on a computer screen and can change or add to their character’s movements in real time. Later, they take their data back to Emerson to build into short films for their final projects.

“It has been truly gratifying to support this course and to see the curiosity and ingenuity students have brought to the stage,” says Talis Reks, who manages the MIT.nano Immersion Lab. “This class highlights the range of what our lab can offer, extending well beyond research and into art and the performing arts."

The MIT.nano Immersion Lab — there’s really nothing else like it

Pillis first learned about the MIT.nano Immersion Lab during his time as a graduate student in Professor Hiroshi Ishii’s Tangible Media group at the MIT Media Lab. Working with colleague Georine Pierre SM ’24, the two collaborated on a Haitian folklore dance project, creating a motion capture-driven simulation of Haitian folkloric dance traditions, specifically the sacred Yanvalou dance. They built a living archive using the capabilities of the Immersion Lab that let participants dance with an interactive AI-driven ancestral avatar animation.

When he became faculty at Emerson, Pillis knew the Immersion Lab was a perfect fit to elevate his students’ experiences. “The level of high-end film production that the Immersion Lab supports is out of reach for so many students who would benefit from this technology in their practice,” explains Pillis. “The facility is unique, well-equipped, and even accessible to those outside of MIT — there really is nothing else like it in the Boston area.”

With the type of mechanical character animation the Immersion Lab technology allows, the final projects end up light-years beyond what these students thought they could achieve, continues Pillis. And they’re having fun. “They really get into it,” says Reks. “These students are not necessarily trained as actors, but the moment they see themselves as virtual characters, the realistic, granular movement enabled by motion capture, they get fully into performing.”

Rewarding professionalism

In the past two years, over 60 Emerson College students have used the Immersion Lab for Pillis’ class. Emerson undergraduate student Nick Forsch received an EVVY Award nomination for his project. The Emerson version of an Emmy, EVVYs are awarded to students whose projects are judged and selected by a panel of industry experts looking for creativity, quality, and professionalism.

“Being able to use the MIT.nano Immersion Lab really elevated my project,” says Forsch who created “Enter,” a short film about a human transported into a digital world to meet an artificial intelligence. “I was excited to submit it for an EVVY, knowing the technology behind my work was on a professional level.”

Another undergraduate student, Evan Costa, recently created a virtual recreation of The Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” capturing a version of each musician’s performance and reconstructing a simulation of 1950s television. Costa will be joining the MIT Learning Engineering and Practice Group, led by principal research scientist John Liu in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, this summer to continue exploring virtual production as an intern.

“Having the opportunity to gather motion-capture data within the Immersion Lab gave me more than advanced technology for my project; it provided insight into an often-unseen world of creativity,” says Costa. “Modern storytelling exists across a wide range of mediums, from film to video games, and witnessing the inner workings of this process has deepened my passion for virtual production.”

In the coming academic year, Pillis and Reks plan to leverage advanced Immersion Lab technologies to teach facial animation, hand and finger tracking, multi-modal data capture, and further advances in interactive generative motion capture as they gear up for the next set of productions.

“I came to MIT Sloan intent on joining a vibrant ecosystem for entrepreneurship and leadership development,” says Alecia Asiamigbe, an MIT Sloan Fellow and MBA student in the MIT Sloan School of Management who is graduating this week.

Before coming to MIT Sloan, Asiamigbe worked as an energy and infrastructure professional with over 20 years of leadership experience, delivering complex energy infrastructure solutions.

It was MIT Sloan’s work to embed sustainability in new ventures that attracted Asiamigbe. Additionally, the MIT Sloan Fellows program gave her the opportunity to earn an MBA in one year. “I was anchored to my choice by the Disciplined Entrepreneurship framework and the potential to focus on climate and energy entrepreneurship.”

Currently, Asiamigbe is working to build out a sustainability-focused venture, Resilient Grid, a renewable energy company that aims to convert organic waste into sustainable natural gas able to produce reliable, dispatchable renewable power in fuel import-dependent markets. Its modular systems reduce reliance on imported fuels, lower energy costs, and stabilize grids where solar and wind alone are insufficient. By capturing methane, diverting waste from landfills, and producing useful byproducts, it delivers measurable impact across energy security, emissions reduction, and circular economic development.

“My work in sustainability is deeply rooted in my need to give back to the community and to be an agent for systems-level change. We must solve the dual challenge of providing access to opportunities to innovate and build for those not currently in the loop, while also stopping the damage currently being done to the planet. Knowing that we want better for our grandchildren, what will we do differently?”

The following photo gallery provides a snapshot of what a typical day for Asiamigbe has been like at MIT.

In a theater, the first thing the audience sees, and looks at the longest, is the stage. Even so, set design is something most of us know little about. Why does a set have its form and elements? How does it suit the performance? 

Consider a set that designer and MIT Associate Professor Sara Brown created in 2015, when the Brooklyn of Academy of Music adapted the canonical Japanese Noh play “Hagoromo,” turning it into a chamber opera with dance. 

Noh plays have a traditional structure and a crucial final transformation. In “Hagomoro,” an angel loses her cloak; a fisherman only reluctantly returns it, after the angel performs a ritual dance; the angel then ascends to the heavens. To focus on the main characters, Brown’s design featured three high walls surrounding center stage, with musicians and a chorus elevated behind them. 

“That set was a framing device more than anything else,” says Brown, who is also associate head of MIT’s Music and Theater Arts program. “It lifted the musicians to a different plane, almost a heavenly place, so we have a heaven-and-Earth contrast. It allows the dancers to be seen against a plain backdrop. I didn’t want to lose their bodies in a sea of other bodies.”

For a formal play structure, then, Brown created a formal setting, with vertical layering suggestive of its contents. The trickiest part was lighting: Brown worked with the lighting designer Clifton Taylor to cut vents in the high walls for more light, while a rigging structure allowed them to spotlight dancers.

“Solving for those things is what makes the design,” Brown says. “There’s an artistic idea that underbeds everything, and there are practical considerations, which are as important, to make the piece work the way you want.”

Brown has designed sets at many major venues, tackling everything from “Carmen” to “Death of a Salesman” and debut productions. She ranges broadly across theatrical genres, while teaching classes that get MIT students thinking visually, intellectually, and creatively.

“Every play you’re working on should have something you grab onto as a creative challenge,” Brown says. That challenge is a collective one; it involves working with directors, performers, and design teams focused on lighting, sound, media, and costumes.

“In theater-making, you have to work in a community,” Brown emphasizes. “You might bump up against some rough edges, but you develop strategies to work with everybody with dignity, and that’s important.”

For her extensive work and teaching, Brown received tenure at MIT last year. 

Minnesota kind

Brown grew up in Minnesota, where her parents made sure the whole family grasped the value of humility. 

That experience, says Brown, has given her “a voice I carry with me that channels my family. The worst thing you could be where I grew up was too big for your britches. So it’s a voice that says, ‘What are you doing and what is the value of this?’ Because of my upbringing and my family, it’s a kind voice, but it is a self-reflection I try to carry with me.”

Brown received her BA from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, then earned an MFA from the University of Virginia. At MIT, she has successfully combined professional set design with classroom teaching.

When Brown agrees to design the set for a production, the first thing she does is read the work in question. Then she sits down with the director to talk about it.

“Usually I’ll talk to the director after my first read of the play,” Brown says, citing the influence of a prominent U.S. set designer, the late Skip Mercier. “He said the only thing he brings to the first meeting is a love of the play. That is a great approach. You come understanding the material, wanting to find something within it you love and are excited to work on. You’re not closed; you’re there to discover what you have in common.” 

Indeed, Brown emphasizes how much she appreciates the collaborative aspects of theater. Inevitably, directors, designers, and actors will not agree on everything, but from sorting through those varying viewpoints, a production emerges. 

“It’s about serving the whole instead of being your personal project,” Brown says. “There will always be tension, but the idea is that through that tension, something is going to result that will be better than anything you could do by yourself.”

Brown does have some creative tendencies that reappear across productions. She will often opt for simplicity and adaptability on stage. For a production of “Pride and Prejudice” in Hartford, Connecticut, Brown designed a circular space at the front of the stage, with a slightly elevated rear area containing a piano and columns, allowing the set to shift among the many social settings of the work. 

Remarkably, another set Brown designed was actually used for two different plays running at the same time: “Death of a Salesman” and “Skeleton Crew,” a 2008 play about a closing auto plant in Detroit.

“A throughline in my work is that I gravitate to things that appear to have a simplicity and integrity or formalism, and then reveal different aspects of themselves, so they change over time,” Brown says. “But there is something essential in them. I’m drawn to simplicity, something without a lot of noise.”

“Where the good stuff is”

Still, Brown is always open to new challenges. She once designed the set for the contemporary play “The Lily’s Revenge,” which has five acts and requires the audience to move around in the theater.

“You have to figure out how to reconfigure the space in many different ways with the available materials and it has to feel like a big transformation,” Brown says. “Sometimes you’re working on things and don’t understand the totality of it [the production] until you step back and see it all together.”

Much as Brown works on a variety of theater projects, she also works with a variety of MIT students, from any given course of study, in the classroom. 

“It’s everybody, which is great,” Brown says. “There are students who did high school theater and people who have never seen a play.”

While teaching classes in the Music and Theater Arts program — which include classes on set design, the foundations of design, and drawing for designers — Brown has also served as a faculty advisor for MIT Morningside Academy of Design, an interdisciplinary hub for design on campus. 

“There’s an underlying process of design that does unite disciplines,” Brown says. Consider set design and architecture, for instance:

“Sometimes in theater you’re trying to make spaces that actually express an inefficiency. You’re creating obstacles for people onstage,” Brown says. By contrast, architects might be trying to get people to flow efficiently through buildings. Still, she adds, “It’s the same process, with different results.” Besides, architects do try to design common spaces, whether atriums, lounges, or meeting rooms, where people stop and interact, mirroring set design to an extent.

In any case, Brown notes, when she is working with MIT students in design classes, she is often “reversing the idea that there’s something external you’re seeking that is the right answer, which I think they’re used to doing in other realms of education.”

Instead, in theater, whether it’s Brown’s own professional work, or a first-time design for a student, she says, “This is a process where you have to mine your interior life and think about what you want to bring out in this event that’s going to happen onstage. That can be scary, but that’s where the good stuff is.”