Golden Hour

Golden Hour is a 33,000-square-foot production studio at 6352 Fulton Street East in Ada, Michigan, about 10 miles from downtown Grand Rapids. Owned and operated by IDEOLOGY Productions, it bills itself as Michigan’s first virtual production studio and has supported productions since 2022, according to the studio. The stage is available to production companies, agencies and creative teams regardless of who is producing the project.

Stage A LED volume

• Volume: 54 ft wide and 12 ft tall with a 7-degree curve, 1.5mm pixel pitch and 10368 x 2376 resolution.
• Ceiling and wild wall: a 16-ft adjustable LED ceiling and a 10-ft modular LED wall on wheels.
• Tracking: eight OptiTrack cameras around the volume send camera position to Unreal Engine for real-time parallax.
• Client hub: a custom shipping-container hub beside the stage with a client suite and video village, craft services, a conference room, breakout rooms and a viewing deck.

Every LED volume rental includes a virtual production supervisor and an LED volume technician, and productions may bring their own crew.

Stage B and support spaces

• Stage B: a 40-ft paintable cyclorama sweep with its own client suite.
• A lounge used as a green room, hair, makeup and wardrobe areas, a lunch room, kitchen, props room, 3D print room and set-building workshop.
• Industrial garage doors, a loading bay and 480V power distribution.

Services

In-house Unreal Engine artists build custom environments or optimize client assets for the volume, and camera, lighting and grip equipment plus a searchable prop collection are available on site. Full production support is available through IDEOLOGY.

Notable productions

According to the studio, work filmed at Golden Hour includes spots for the Michigan Lottery, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and Poo-Pourri.