Level Up Your Production in 2024

Here are 24 Ways Cobalt Can Help

1. We’re Innovative.

Our credo is Production Reimagined. In a world of drafty, blank spaces, we strive to offer more— comprehensive tools, thoughtful amenities, and a supportive team. Our clients feel the difference, right away.

2. We’re Turnkey.

Why spend your precious time sourcing lights, rigging tools, and folding chairs? At Cobalt you don’t need to. We save you time and money by offering all your production essentials onsite.

3. We’re Virtual Set Virtuosos.

We set up the East Coast’s first Virtual Backlot to help you save money, reduce waste, minimize the cost of crew hours, and place your story in any location you can imagine. A huge win for productions and the planet!

4. We’re Woman Owned.

Cobalt is a woman-owned soundstage. We strongly believe in working toward gender equality in the Industry.

5. We’re a Green Facility.

We’re committed to considering the impact of our actions on people and the environment. We also do our part by donating leftover food, investing in sustainable Virtual Sets, and making our own non-toxic, chemical free cleaning products and Kara Care skincare swag (more to come soon).

6. We’re Magic Makers.

Arthur Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”… We have the tech to make the magic, and Cobalt’s tech wizard, Alex, can help you make the most of it.

7. We Care About Peace ~ Quiet and Comfort.

Because of our Industry background, we understand how a thoughtfully curated soundstage can put clients at ease – and even help them relax – to elevate the quality of your work. Our well-appointed client spaces make it comfortable to hold a meeting or simply ‘peace out’ for a sec. And we’ve even expanded to the country with Cobalt Woodstock ✌️.

8. We’re By Producers, For Producers.

We leverage our Industry experience to make everything you need easily accessible, so you can focus on what matters– doing your best work. We’re committed to creating the most comfortable, convenient, cutting-edge, and cost effective experience.

9. We’re Production Advisors.

Helping producers problem-solve their projects is one of our specialties. We believe in taking the time to listen, and we’re quick to offer innovative and practical solutions to save your production time, money, and stress.

10. We’re MoCo Masters.

Our clients have convenient access to our comprehensive inventory of Motion Control equipment—the largest and most diverse on the East Coast. Our Gazelle Motion Control camera crane also goes on the road–anywhere your production does.

11. We’ve Got the Matrix Man.

Cobalt’s very own Alex Fernbach designed and invented the 1st array camera used in the legendary “Bullet Time” scene in “The Matrix.” These days, he brings his unparalleled knowledge and creativity to Cobalt to support YOUR productions.

12. We’re in the Heart of New York’s Artistic Enclave.

Cobalt Woodstock is centrally located smack in the middle of one of New York’s original centers of Art. Your production, talent, and crew will have access to stylish BnB’s, outstanding food, and a community of artisans, all while saving a bundle on parking, lodging, and meal cost.

13. We’ve Got ALL the Tax Breaks.

Because we’re in upstate New York, your production will get up to 40-45 percent of ABOVE AND BELOW the line on qualified expenses. No need to read between the lines here.

14. We’re Wired.

Superior connectivity makes it effortless to multitask and monitor your production. At Cobalt, a live HD feed broadcasts from our soundstage to the client room, conference room, commercial food prep kitchen, wardrobe, and makeup areas.

15. We’re Streaming Live.

Our Live Streaming capability allows decision-makers to keep a tab open on their computer, even remotely, with continuous HD quality footage delivered in real-time. Clients can tune in and weigh in, so the whole production isn’t waiting around to get the thumbs-up 😉

16. We Don’t Nickel and Dime You.

At some soundstages, your itemized bill can look like you went on a Whole Foods bender. At Cobalt, there’s no need to rent or carry in basic amenities—and we won’t bill you for them either.

17. We’re the Swiss Army Knife of Studios.

Cobalt’s inventory of in-house production tools is curated and updated by seasoned professionals. We offer lighting, rigging, high-end lenses, precision robotics, Virtual Set, and more!

18. We Do Tabletop.

We’re passionate about tabletop at Cobalt. It’s in our DNA. Our home ec kitchen is fully-equipped and easy-to-reconfigure for all types of food-centric projects. This, combined with a wide variety of miniature rigs, specialized optics, and in-house motion control, makes producing tabletop easy and efficient.

19. We’re on Your Team.

At Cobalt, we’re as passionate about production excellence as you are! We invite you to make us your secret weapon by leveraging our experience and resources—just like an extension of your team.

20. Get Creative.

No two productions are the same, so our spaces are built to be ultra-flexible. We’re hosting Virtual projects with clients making use of our live compositing, and Live-streaming with others! Some are even making use of our insert stage for still shoots all-the while.

21. Make Us Your Secret Weapon.

At Cobalt, we’re as passionate about production excellence as you are! We invite you to leverage our expertise and equipment, just like an extension of your team. We’d love to hear about your next production, and how we can help.

22. Use More, Pay Less.

We deliver the best value by offering generous free amenities and a comprehensive inventory of onsite production tools.

23. More Green (A Lot More).

Cobalt Woodstock is home to one of the largest green screens on the East Coast. This newly installed screen is 70 feet wide and 20 feet high, which means you can let your production’s imagination run wild.

24. Park to Your Heart’s Delight.

Want to drive a box truck into the soundstage? No big deal, we can handle it. Need easy and stress free parking for your whole crew? We’ve got that too. Cobalt Woodstock is all about making things easy so you can focus on the work at hand.

2024 has been a big year!!

Let’s talk.

Meeting George.

We go back with Do Diligence founder, George Billard. Way back.

Kara met George when he cast her in a film called “The Eulogy”. This was just the start of what would be a long and fruitful relationship. Not long after filming “The Eulogy”, they were working together again on “They Shall Not Perish: The Story of Near East Relief”, which premiered at the New York Times. This impactful film was a star-studded affair featuring: Victor Garber, Amanda Martin, Tony Shalhoub, Ron Rifkin, and our very own Kara Vedder taking on the role of Nellie Miller Mann.

Challenge.

George recently came to us with a new challenge. He needed to film a group of people (business men, families, construction workers) walking a tightrope across a gorge over a raging river. Yowzer! Try to do that practically LOL Shooting something like this would involve wildly expensive safety measures, stunt talent, and astronomical crew costs. However, we came up with a strategy, and consulted with George over the course of four phone calls.

Solution.

We pitched him on shooting the spot in our soundstage with our massive 70-foot green screen. George needed to go BIG, so to make his vision a reality, we expanded our already massive green screen with a 20 foot return. That’s right, we ended up shooting on a 30 foot deep, 90-foot green screen.

Team Cobalt provided George with gaffers and other technical crewing on the shoot day. He brought in a telescopic 40-foot crane to get the scope and angles he needed to bring his vision to life. No big deal! Cobalt Woodstock is “drive on”, and can accommodate cranes easily.

Check out the behind the scenes footage!

Impact.

When you work with Cobalt, you get more than a fantastic soundstage, decades of Industry experience, Virtual Production know-how, and stellar support: you get partners who stand by you for the long run. We cherish relationships like the one we have with George, and we go out of our way to make all of our clients’ visions realities. Whether strategizing intricate green screen shots, or finding the right plates and cups for a set, there’s no detail too small or too big for our team to tackle with you.

Lets talk.

Happy Holidays from Cobalt!

Dear Friends,

Thank you for sharing your abundant talents with us this year! United by a shared purpose and rising above every challenge, it’s been a joy and a privilege working with you. We’re deeply inspired by the community’s hard work and resilience, and we’re moved by the beauty and abundance being created.

We wish you all the peace, love, and light that this season brings.

Warmly,
Team Cobalt

3 Santas, an Elves’ workshop, and a 12-Hour Livestream

What Amazon did for shopping convenience, our clients were tasked to do for Mall Santas!

Challenge.

So… Cobalt client CinemaStreet came to us with a fun holiday live-streaming challenge. The production company’s whimsical concept involved staging 3 Santas and a workshop of singing elves while live-streaming with kids simultaneously for 12 hours. Our client wanted to know: Could we provide the tools, expertise, bandwidth, and breakout spaces to support this ambitious project and deliver Christmas for all these kids? Hell yeah!! Move over Jeff Bezos!

Solution.

You know us—Cobalt is MADE for solving complex technical challenges! To pull off this unique project, CinemaStreet flipped the script, using our wide-open main stage for production work. This strategy freed up our cozy support spaces to be transformed into magical realms where all the Santas and elves Livestreamed for delighted kiddos all over the country. With a dedicated technician to “direct traffic” on our server, our 850-MB/sec bandwidth successfully supported the 12-hour event. We have have two SSIDs and we’ve throttled WiFi to support the production team’s 45+ devices while segregating the hardwired Livestreams with unique passwords to restrict bandwidth and avoid any problems.

Impact.

The “12 Hours of Magic” virtual event was a smashing success with no major issues. Since we’re so much more than an empty-box soundstage, our networked conference room, production office, and client suite made it easy to shoot 4 simultaneous interactive performances while affording lots of rooms to spread out. Countless kids got to meet Santa, his elves, and Mrs. Claus in a creative new way that was surprisingly even more personal than the usual “Mall Santa” experience!

Lets talk. Ho Ho Ho

Wayyyyy more than Virtual…

As the first Virtual Soundstage on the East Coast, we talk about Virtual Production…a lot. We’re big fans of the technology – the creative flexibility and cost savings it affords our clients.

BUT (and this a big BUT), we’re still massive fans of doing things the traditional way. We’ve been a production company for over 25 years, but 10 years ago, we decided to open our doors to the production community to share our space and specialty equipment. Just because we’ve got a lot more fancy tech on set, now, doesn’t mean we’re not shooting practically, all the time 🙂

We love helping clients with every kind of traditional production. Whether we’re shooting practical effects for an a critical timing shot, shooting an epic feature, or using our motion control to get the absolutely perfect (and do we mean perfect) shot of guacamole for a national spot.

Here are just a few of the reasons we’re your “go-to soundstage” for all kinds of shoots!

COBALT IS A TURNKEY SOUNDSTAGE

What does that mean for you? It means you can relax and focus on the important parts of your production because the team at Cobalt has everything else under control. We’ve got all the rigging, space, camera, and sound equipment your shoot could ever need. And, since we’re focused on you and your production, if we don’t have something you that’s needed on site, we’ll get it there seamlessly before your shoot day.

PROPS, GEAR, AND MORE. WE’VE GOT IT ALL.

We’re in the stage business, and love to bring you lots of nuanced options. It’s more than just virtual… That means having all the basics too – chairs, cups, plates, tea kettles, and set dressing your production. THEN, and only then, let’s level it up with virtual, moco, and the like!

PRACTICAL TECH! WE’VE GOT THAT.

Need a repeatable zoom or dolly? Need a critically timed slo-mo shot? We can help! We’ve got motion control robotics and teams of experts to make it all happen.

DRIVE IN. DRIVE OUT.

For our friends in New York, we’ve got one word: PARKING. You heard us, PARKING. So much parking you can swing an Escalade into the lot, back it up, and then do a couple donuts. Then, do a three point turn, and you still have plenty of space! Load in and load out are so much easier in Woodstock because the soundstage is drive-on, too!

KITCHENS. WARDROBE. OFFICE SPACE. YEP.

If all that wasn’t enough… Yes, we’ve got all the goods you’d expect from a fully equipped soundstage: craft services, M/U & wardrobe space, kitchens, production offices, and conference rooms. Your crew will have everything they need to get the job done.

Ready to talk about your production?

Lets talk.

Virtual Production is Normal.

Productions like The Mandalorian are changing the game for how episodics are being created.

The Mandalorian’s interplanetary odyssey is shot on a soundstage using Virtual Set technology.

We can all see that digital transformation isn’t slowing down. To ensure that our Industry keeps pace, everyone needs to make friends with modern digital tools like Virtual Sets.

Digital Transformations for productions.

Think of the transition from film to video—we couldn’t imagine handy cams taking over, but here we are. We’re great believers in the tried-and-true, but there does come a time when NOT innovating becomes the bigger risk than sticking with what you know.

Science in the service of Art.

With location travel becoming more and more pricey, productions are seeing the silver lining: with our incredible virtual technology, your production can take place anywhere in the universe—past, present, or future. Virtual Sets practically eliminate set costs; they’re environmentally-friendly; and they’re been around since 1994. So, for early adopters like us, they’re already tried and true. Virtual Sets are already “normal” for audiences… From “Black Panther” to “The Mandalorian”, anywhere you’re seeing imaginative, incredible backgrounds, you’re seeing Virtual Sets in action. The fact that you haven’t “seen” them PROVES how seamless and photorealistic they are. Virtual Set is everywhere, and you don’t even realize it!

Experience practical, creative solutions.

If you haven’t yet, now is the time to scehdule a Demo of our Virtual Backlot, the 1st available to the public on the East Coast. While most experts in the field hold their technical expertise close to the vest, we share it openly. Let us show you what’s possible, and answer all your questions. Invest an hour of your time, get up to speed, and walk away with a whole new production toolkit in your repertoire.

Let’s talk.

Happy Thanksgiving <3

We’ve never been more grateful.

We’re overwhelmed with gratitude for our brilliant clients and friends… Thank you for trusting us and our partners with your amazing projects as we make it all happen, together. Thanks to you, we’re challenged, inspired, and supported all year long.

Thank you for filling this year with
unforgettable moments!

Warmly,

Tabletop is in our DNA.

Macro image-making at Cobalt.

Let’s talk tabletop.

Our first stage was born in 1995 as a tabletop / VFX studio, and if there were a sign above our door it would read “Science in the Service of Art”. Throughout the years, we’ve invested in the right tools for tabletop work, which has often meant inventing, engineering and constructing those tools ourselves, in-house. That’s how tabletop works.

Stella Artois

Mini tools for max impact.

Tabletop is an extremely unique genre, because off-the-shelf equipment typically doesn’t scale to the subject. In fact, equipment tends to completely dwarf the subject.That’s where our specially-modified lighting and our extensive inventory of miniature grip and rigging gears come into play. To maximize the visual opportunity, you need to miniaturize your tools. We’ve done this here at Cobalt with our one-of-a-kind bellows-focusing Epic Dragon, made expressly for macro work.

Nespresso

Get cooking at Cobalt.

Cobalt’s dedicated Home Ec Kitchen is always fully-equipped and ready to roll. Our custom-built bake-up allows you to see and experience the magic of baking—in real time or in time lapse—via our motion-controlled camera. Add in our high-volume gas mains and a purpose-built exhaust system for fire effects, you’ve got the ideal setup for whatever creative ideas you’re cooking up.

Lets talk.

Our partnerships with Mo-Sys and Unreal Engine have been netting us some really great results on recent projects! Today, we wanted to take you on a quick tour of our Virtual Production capability, combining the power of Unreal Engine with the amazing Mo-Sys Star Tracker, and share why our clients love it, we love it, and we’re sure you’re gonna love it, too.

So, what is this Virtual thing?

Virtual Production means no travel costs, no location fees, no set construction costs or waste—just unrestricted camera movement, amazing production value, and complete creative freedom. Virtual Production at Cobalt, driven by Mo-Sys, is ONE state of the art system that works for BOTH green-screen AND LED applications. The laws of physics are a thing of the past when you work with us.

Love it, but what’s a Mo-Sys?

Good question. There’s Mo-Sys the company, and Mo-Sys the tech. Let’s talk about the company first, and why we’ve worked with them for so long.

Mo-Sys is the global leader in creating original and highly sophisticated camera technology products for film and broadcast, empowering high-quality AR, VR and Virtual Production. Mo-Sys tech has been used in films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, Life of Pi, The Shape of Water and Aquaman. Serial television credits include Stranger Things, House of Cards, Sherlock, Orange is the New Black, and many more.

Now, let’s geek out on the tech.

Mo-Sys VP Pro is the software that powers our system. Mo-Sys’ Startracker Studio, combined with our Ultimatte 12 is a real-time synchroniser, keyer, compositor, and recorder that uses real-time camera and lens tracking data to drive all CG assets.

VP Pro has a clever set of tools that simplifies and enhances virtual production workflows, making it simpler to achieve the vision you’re after.

StarTracker is the solid solution for unrestricted, real-time camera tracking. StarTracker offers unlimited freedom of movement and gives accurate position, rotation and lens data in real-time. You can rotate the studio camera 360 degrees, and move it to any position in the studio, regardless of whether the camera is on a dolly, a crane or even handheld.

Sounds very cool, what does it look like?

Here we are, live composited, from one of our recent tech demo streams.

Yep, that’s us on set in a fully virtual environment.

What does all this mean for you and your production?

Three words. Savings, savings, savings, and flexibility. Ok, that was four.

Virtual Production means the days of flying across the globe to different sets for many locations, and using crazy resources (and a large roster of talent) are over. With Virtual Set tech, we’re able to immerse talent in previously impossible environments or environments that would have been very expensive to build. Now, we can achieve this in a highly seamless fashion, in a very cost-effective way. Plus you get ALL the flexibility.

And, no more chasing that golden hour… You can harness the golden hour all day long if you like. And “weather days” are truly a thing of the past.

Lets talk soon about bringing your production to life at Cobalt with Mo-Sys 💥

Kara Vedder, Owner and President

As Cobalt’s leader, Kara has been the ‘business’ architect behind Cobalt’s by-producers, for-producers ethos along with our holistic approach to hosting productions. With a career spent working in television, film, photography, and commercial production as producer and actor, Kara now strives to make a positive difference in the production community through Cobalt. A “happy rebel” in the Industry, Kara weaves together superior support, warm hospitality, and innovative technology to create an elevated soundstage experience. Kara’s degree in Health Sciences, as well as her passion for clean, holistic living, has been a driving force behind making Cobalt a green facility with our commitment to providing sustainable production solutions. With Cobalt’s alternative push, Cobalt’s Virtual Backlot offers viable eco-friendly and tech progressive solutions to wasteful, practical ones. The vision and energy she brings to Cobalt has placed the company as a cutting-edge industry front runner with what we call “Production Reimagined”.

Alex Fernbach, Owner and EFX Supervisor

Alex is an acclaimed Director and Cinematographer who’s worked on TV commercials and interactive experiences for the world’s most iconic brands, as well as feature films, documentaries, shorts, and trailers. His work has been featured in at least 15 Super Bowl ads, and he’s often invited to speak at universities, film festivals and Industry events. Alex’s major contribution to cinematic history was his invention of the first Array Camera in the US. He sold this revolutionary technology to “The Matrix,” to create the film’s legendary ‘bullet time’ effect. Alex pours his encyclopedic knowledge, unparalleled creativity, and passion for problem-solving into his role as a dedicated advisor and hands-on helper for our clients.

A Powerful Partnership

Kara and Alex’s complementary skills and interests add up to a uniquely compelling blend of creativity and productivity, yin and yang. In 2016, they were the 1st to bring Virtual Production to the East Coast and share it with the NYC film community. Now, in addition to sharing their soundstages, they share their Virtual Backlots while producing, co-directing or helping other productions hit the home run! Leverage Cobalt’s cutting-edge technological expertise, in-depth Industry knowledge, and unparalleled comfort and convenience on your next production. We’re not just a soundstage… We’re full-on Production Reimagined.

Lets talk.