The CW Benefits From NASCAR's New XR and Volumetric Studio at North Carolina Production Facility Disguise tech, ARRI cameras enable talent to be deployed onsite or remotely By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Tuesday, May 6, 2025 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The 2025 NASCAR season ushered in a new era for rightsholders, and one of the big beneficiaries has been the CW Network, which is broadcasting all 33 Xfinity races this season. Prior to April 5, the CW/NASCAR production crew cut the races remotely from the NASCAR Production Facility in Concord, NC, and announce and studio teams were onsite at the track. That all changed on April 5, though: NASCAR's XR and volumetric studio opened for business, giving the CW talent team the flexibility to be either onsite or remote.
The role of extended reality and volumetric capture within a studio environment continues to accelerate, and the new NASCAR XR studio deploys Disguise technology and ARRI cameras as well as Famous Group templates, which have helped the team get on-air much more quickly.
The XR and volumetric studio at NASCAR Production facility in Concord, NC
We're one of the few facilities on the East Coast with volume walls of this size, says Mike Zylak, senior director, engineering, NASCAR Productions. The Famous Group templates have given us something to start with, and we've hired staff to learn how to use the system and incorporate our graphics and XR. We have already utilized Studio 43 for things like car unveils.
The hardest part of making the move to XR is that the preproduction planning has to be more buttoned-up. You need to look at every camera angle, he notes, and there are more steps to the facsimile process. With the ARRI Alexa camera being used, we need to color-match to all the other studio cameras. The video operators are able to shade the iris and set the blacks, but they can't adjust the camera color after calibration because it has to match the wall.
All 33 Xfinity races on the CW Network are cut at NASCAR Production Facility
The CW production philosophy is adjusted to each track's location, timing, and other factors. For example, the studio producers and announce teams were recently in Talladega. Before the studios were ready, that's how they did the other races as well, Zylak explains, but now it just depends on what the CW wants to do. In May, they will be [in the studio], but, in June, they will be back on the road.
Whether the show is on the road or in Concord, one thing remains the same: the crew. Everybody's the same, he points out. We can adapt pretty quickly as it's just routing changes and making sure the right personnel are in the right places. The only people who travel are the talent and the personnel who go alone with them, like the coordinators and producers that have to be at the infield.
Production Control Room 1 at NASCAR Production facility
The studios have two different types of LED panels from ROE Visual. Disguise's Meptik division was technical creator for the studio, and Raleigh, NC-based Provo Studios was primary vendor for design and integration. NASCAR handled integration for the ARRI camera systems for both studios. Studio 43 has three ARRI RED Alexa 35 cameras with Stype camera tracking tech, which is unusual in live sports production. NASCAR's team relies on ARRI for field shooting every week, and the new form factor enables a matching look on the studio side.
It's a beautiful camera, says Zylak. It's basically a fiber-backed camera that can work in the studio. We've been working with ARRI on tweaking some of the features as we have a camera department that has a bunch of ARRI products and know how to make the images look pretty. We can flip the cameras to 23.98 fps and do a 4K film and shoot without any issues.
Many professionals are only now beginning to implement XR and volumetric-capture systems, and Zylak says it's important to know what kind of content will be produced before figuring out how large and how tall the studio walls need to be. You can't really understand the concept until it's in front of you and you're in the studio. Lighting is another consideration and one of the hardest parts. We had Eastern Lighting Design come in and do the lighting for Studio 43, and they did a phenomenal job.
Studio 3 under construction at NASCAR Production facility
He also recommends making everything user-friendly so that flipping the XR wall (as well as lighting) from one set to the next can be done as quickly and simply as possible. Both Disguise and Eastern Lighting did a great job of giving us the ability to hit a button and be versatile, he adds. They allowed us to run things on the fly rather than have to worry about relighting everything and recalibrating everything.
There is also adjustment required by the talent, who need to understand how to look into a large 75-in. monitor in front of them so that they can reference a virtual element that may pop up next to them out of the virtual floor. They were wowed by it at first, Zylak notes. Now it's more fun than anything. They've enjoyed being able to stand next to a giant virtual leaderboard. We spend a lot of time in rehearsal, which is really helpful.
NASCAR's OTT platform handles small, local events.
The new studio is the latest in a string of technology and production developments at the NASCAR Production facility. Later this year, Zylak says, NASCAR will open a new control room that has about 50% of the firepower of the larger control rooms but will be perfect for smaller-scale shows. That control room will have two areas: the main room with the front bench and production switcher and a flex room for things like EVS and graphics.
We're getting a lot of small, local
