Presentation abstract: From Virtual Production Curricula to VP Stage Pedagogy: Framing a 2026 Implementation. Drawing on the systematic multivocal review of virtual production education, this presentation argues that current VP curricula remain structurally engine-centric, industry-aligned, and organized around production-style learning, often privileging pipeline fluency over story, sound, reflection, and critical experimentation. It then situates the VP Stage Pedagogy Framework as an ongoing research and design project, currently in development and scheduled for implementation in September 2026, proposing Lefebvre’s spatial triad as a basis for evaluating and redesigning VP stages as dual-purpose environments that align practice, curriculum/assessment, and student experience.
Virtual Production Education in Film Curricula
Virtual Production · Film Education · Pedagogy · Emerging Technologies · 2026
This research examines how Virtual Production (VP) is being integrated into higher-education film curricula and how institutions are adapting teaching to new real-time production workflows.
Based on a systematic multivocal review of 115 sources, including 55 curricula from 49 higher-education institutions, the study maps current teaching models, technologies, competencies and pedagogical approaches. It finds that VP education is strongly concentrated in well-resourced Anglophone institutions and tends to prioritise Unreal Engine, LED volumes, motion capture and production-oriented technical skills, while areas such as storytelling, sound, critical experimentation and AI literacy remain comparatively underdeveloped.
The article proposes understanding Virtual Production education as a sociotechnical system, where technology, institutional resources, industry collaboration and pedagogical models jointly shape access to knowledge and professional competencies. It also identifies the need for more interdisciplinary, critical and globally representative approaches to VP education.
Published in:Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies Authors: Rodolfo Anes Silveira, Henrique São Mamede & Arnaldo Santos 2026
A national community connecting creative, technical and research practices around Virtual Production, with a focus on shared workflows, practical knowledge exchange and the development of a sustainable VP ecosystem in Portugal.
Virtual Production Portugal
Community · Virtual Production · Real-Time Technologies · Knowledge Exchange
Virtual Production Portugal (VPPt) is a national community created to connect professionals, researchers, students and practitioners working with—or beginning to explore—Virtual Production in Portugal.
The project aims to strengthen the emerging Portuguese VP ecosystem by bringing together creative and technical disciplines including directing, cinematography, VFX, Unreal Engine, tracking, lighting, sound and post-production. Rather than treating Virtual Production as a single technology, VPPt approaches it as a shared production workflow and collaborative ecosystem.
Its activities focus on practical knowledge exchange through monthly online meetups, hybrid labs, technical discussions and community channels, encouraging the sharing of real workflows, production challenges, resources and professional opportunities. The broader objective is to help develop a more connected, skilled and sustainable Virtual Production culture in Portugal.
In this opinion article for Briefing, I examine the emergence of Virtual Production in Portugal and the conditions required for it to become a sustainable audiovisual sector.
The article argues that the main challenge is no longer technological access, but the development of market demand, specialised talent, new production workflows and stronger collaboration between industry, academia and research. It also considers the role of LED stages, real-time graphics, international production, advertising and professional training in shaping the future of Virtual Production in Portugal.
Developed as part of my Master’s in Information and Enterprise Systems, this research investigates how Enterprise Architecture can support the resilience and sustainability of rural accommodation businesses in depopulated areas of the Iberian Peninsula.
Using literature review, ArchiMate modelling and expert evaluation, the project proposes an enterprise architecture designed to connect remote work, tourism, digital transformation and local economic development. The model addresses areas including customer experience, omnichannel services, business strategy, human resources, marketing and sustainability management.
The work resulted in the peer-reviewed article “Strengthening the Resilience and Perseverance of Rural Accommodation Enterprises in the Iberian Depopulated Areas through Enterprise Architecture,” published in Sustainability in 2024.
Master’s dissertation:Smart Rural Accommodation: Empowering Resilience and Perseverance through an Enterprise Architecture (2023).
Hapticotopia — PhD in Media Arts
Hapticotopia is the artistic-research project developed during my PhD in Media Arts at the University of Beira Interior (UBI). The project investigates whether images can exist independently of vision, exploring haptic perception, sound, spatial experience and multisensory interaction.
Book
“In the present essay, Rodolfo Silveira meticulously analyzes the theoretical, speculative, but also symbolic drift around the luminous phenomena. He also gives us a historical overview of the sound and acoustic spectra, and of the relation between touch and skin – which is rarely addressed elsewhere – without overlooking a careful incursion into the physical, physiological, and somatic, perhaps synesthetic, aspects resulting from this perceptual, sensorial, and cognitive contamination.
As such, Hapticotopia is a book that naturally opens space to another diptych of great operative, critical, and even didactic value: the relationship between multisensoriality and intermediality is essential to the understanding of the diverse contemporary artistic practices, capable of stimulating practice-based research, particularly in universities and in institutions dedicated to the promotion, creation, conservation, study, and diffusion of art from the past, present, and future, as is the case of museums, whose performance is addressed in the second part of the book.
In this manner, using an extensive wealth of information from multiple sources and works as diverse as they are heterodox, Rodolfo Silveira essays, in the true sense proposed by Michel de Montaigne (1580), a reflective practice that, not being concerned with individual singularities, ends up being “a writing of the self” that refers back to the ancient dialectic between the particular and the universal and accepts tentativeness and mutability, in the face of a lucid awareness of the evanescence of the object that is reflected in the experience and that shapes the condition of the contemporary subject.”
Materialised as an immersive art installation, Hapticotopia deliberately reduces visual information and uses tactile, acoustic and spatial stimuli to examine how perception and aesthetic experience emerge through the body. The research combines phenomenology, media theory, artistic practice and technological experimentation, including non-contact haptic technologies and spatial sound. Project Website: Hapticotopia
Confronting the Hands time
A visual essay that wanders in an anachronistic “Hands” time. Motivated by Henri Focillon’s fabulous literary essay, this video essay is not meant to be a “compliment to the hand” but to establish the average knowledge of the main subject shared by the Internet. Thus, through a script planned by curiosity and images in public domain, the spectator and conducted through various information rooms, in order to make a brief approach to the incredible tool of creation: the Hand.
The Hand: a silent portrait from Christian Elsaerrer
What is called “Music” implies several conditions. One of them, and perhaps one of the most important, is the creator. We all create music in some way. The hand is the interface between what we feel and express and vice-versa. The hand makes the creator and the creator makes the hand. With the common denominator of this big-band, there is a secret dance in the beauty of the interpretation of the set of hands performed by reading the gesture of the maestro. This small film puts into dialogue all those small gestures inherent to a performance of the final composition.
Moments: 10 years being Ses Forquilles
A handful of moments precede all our actions. Acting for the essential function of survival is not only a necessity: knowing how to appreciate the delicacy of the moment, is perhaps the best meal of the soul. By bringing out all these emotions, the dish is filled with emotional food worthy of a rare taste that is already more unrecognizable and with aromas that fill the unknown side of the feeling. This little advertising film celebrates all those moments: 10 years of life of one of the best and most original restaurants and chefs in Menorca. Because life is all the moments that exist between food and food.
Sound Designer and Re-recording Mixer Dolby Surround
INFINITY HOTEL | Short Film | Matthias Zentner/HFF | 14 min 2026
WOHIN | Short Film | Matthias Zentner/HFF | 15 min 2025
WIND UP | Short Film | Matthias Zentner/HFF | 18 min 2024
AL MASHHAD BRANDING PROMO CAMPAIGN | Matthias Zentner/VELVET MEDIADESIGN | 2 min 2023
VERTAGT | Short Film | Christian Geßner, Nicolas Schwarz, Chris Kühn, Malte Pell, Tobias Sodeikat und Jonas Potthoff/HFF | 8 min 2023
SLEEP TIGHT | Animantion Film | Malte Pell, Tobias Sodeikat und Jonas Potthoff/HFF | 4 min 2022
17 SOULS | Animation film | Chris Kühn, Nicolas Schwarz and Christian Geßner/HFF | 2 min 2022
NETFLIX – DON´T GET DIVORCED | Spec Spot | Veronika Hafner/HFF | 4 min 2019
THE RAFT | Short film | Sylvain Cruiziat/HFF | 20 min 2019
OKTOPUS UND MURÄNE | Short Film | Sebastian Husak/HFF | 30 min 2019
YALLAH HABIBI | Short Film | Mahnas Sawari/HFF | 30 min 2019
BILLBOARDS TO CAIRO | Documentary Short Film | Rabelle Erian/HFF | 20 min 2019
EINGENER BEDARF | Short Film | Julius Grimm/HFF | 30 min 2019
KEIN DING | Short Film | Arthur Althen /HFF | 30 min 2019
MY FREE WILL | Documentary | Elisa Nadal/HFF | 90 min 2019
EIN TAG IM AUGUST | Short Film | Helena Herb/HFF | 30 min 2019
MIDNIGHT REGULATIONS | Short Film | Nils Keller/HFF | 30 min 2018
DIE TINTE TROCKEN NICHT | Documentary Short Film | Felix Hermann/HFF | 15 min 2018
MEIN BRUDER KANN TANZEN | Feature Film | Felicias Sonnvilla/HFF | 90 min 2018
SCHLAFF GUT, DU AUCH | Short Film | Christian Knie/HFF | 30 min 2018
OH MANN HANN | Short Film | Alex Negret/HFF | 30 min 2018
DIE GEHEIMNISSE DES SCHÖNEN LEO | Documentary | Lichtblick Film GmbH | 80 min 2018
VOM GRABEN | Feature Film | Dreifilm/HFF | 87 min 2018
PAMPARIOS | Feature Film | Dreifilm&Pronoia/HFF | 82 min 2017
SOMMERLOCH | Short Film | Berthold Wahjudi/HFF | 15 min 2017
WALDENDS | Short Film | Helena Herd/HFF | 15 min 2017
DER TAG NACH MORGEN | Short Film | Henning Pulss/HFF | 15 min 2017
DER WANDERER | Short Film | Anatol Schuster&Wirfilm/HFF | 07 min 2017
THE HARDEST JOB | Spec Spot | Max Traub/HFF | 02 min 2017
DAS JÜNGSTE GERICHT | Documentary Short Film | Moritz BinderHFF | 45 Min 2017
TWO LAST WEEKS | Documentary Short Film | Marc steck und Pronoia/HFF | 30 min 2017
SCHILDKRÖTE PANZA | Documentary Short Film | Kapanfilm/HFF | 30 min 2017
DIE HERBERGER | Trailer | KittelFilm/HFF | 02 min 2017
LIFE OF GRACE | Reportage | HFF | 30 min 2016
COUZ | Documentary Short Film | Max Bungarten/HFF | 30 min 2016
JENNY | Short Film | OkKosmosFilm/HFF | 30 min 2016
There is a rhythm inherent to life – to the physiological and preceptive organism that we are – that even in self-control regulates all emotions and feelings. What impels us in front of reality is the will to explore the avenging and tangible environment in the cognitive sphere rather than reality. The subjective interpretation goes far beyond duality. In the sea of feelings, in the river of life and in the social current that unceasingly pushes and unconsciously codifies our thinking, we seek a “pure perception” in an attempt to innocently apprehend reality.
Digital Collectors: Born to Folk
Since the beginning of time, stories have been told with images as a universal code to which we are all subject. Although we interpret and react unconsciously to this “language” which, in the most personal sphere, becomes miraculously perceptible. From there came this opportunity to make films with images in public domain: images that after meticulous scrutiny survived the erosion of the post-digital era. This film celebrates the harvesting of images and their recovery and reaffirmation by digital collectors: an active recycling in favour of new narratives with old images.
The procession
Travelling to the interior of Portugal often means going back in time. To the place where the customs and traditions slowly change. A portrait of what could be framed as evolution. Even in a time of exacerbated acceleration, the touch and active presence in allegorical rites represents only one more act for mutual social protection in the isolation and fragility of a country where everyone spends their time on the beach facing the sun. This portrait intends to make the values of honest, hardworking and proud people survive.
The Sisyphus dance
Hermes, a state-of-the-art automaton, realised that the humans he had been charged with watching had the ability to read books, an activity considered dangerous at a stage of development when everything was decided by a state intelligence centre, whose members were virtual, and nobody knew how to fight. Reading books was a way to keep alive the critical spirit, the creativity and the sensibility, through which the individual affirms himself as unique, free to refuse that collective, totalitarian and alienating universe. From the contact with the two humans, the automaton recognizes itself differently and reverses the path of persecution. It is to itself that it refuses, its abnormal constitution that does not allow it to relate emotionally nor to choose the definitive solution to its case, death.
