Aetna – Therapy Session

Summary

My oh my, was this a monster. Not a scary one—more like a big, cuddly one who wraps his arms around you and won’t let go for two months. Good vibes all around.

When (add)ventures called on us to bridge the gap between traditional and virtual production on a new broadcast project for Aetna, we were all in. What exactly did they need from us? Simple answer: everything. From traditional production elements like camera, lighting, personnel, casting, storyboarding and art, to all the components that come with virtual production, including building out the environment, sandboxing in Unreal Engine, and meticulously crafting our production design to feel like a real, lived in home.

We wanted to work with the best, so we took the team to Tennessee, shot one practical day on location at a house in East Nashville, and then headed over to Vu Nashville to work on their enormous 123’ x 20’ volume. It… was… majestic.

The plan was simple yet highly ambitious: shoot half the scenes on location and the other half on the Vu Stage, making the two indistinguishable. We aimed for a seamless, real-world look—handheld shooting with their Mo-Sys tracking system made it easy to forget we were even on a volume. And then we went full-tilt on pre-pro, meticulously crafting our scene builds in Unreal Engine. It was a true team effort, and the folks at Vu Nashville were incredible—just as obsessed with detail as we are. Because to make a virtual environment truly believable, it has to be beautiful, sure, but also a bit messy—just like real life. So it’s not an understatement when we say finally, we fixed it in pre.

In the end, after all the obsessive pre-pro had been done, all we had to do was what we do best, just shoot… and we ended up with a final product that’s not only beautiful but genuinely feels like the real deal.

** You can watch it HERE **