09/21/2021

How Hollywood is Embracing the World’s Blackest Black Paint

The future of entertainment is all about Vantablack

No color—or, more accurately, lack thereof—has caused more of a media frenzy in recent years than “Vantablack.” The blacker-than-black paint absorbs so much light (99.96 percent) that when it’s applied to something, that thing appears to not exist, giving off the effect of a black hole. Originally developed for satellites by the U.K. company Surrey NanoSystems, Vantablack’s cool factor quickly won over artists and marketers alike, who found a use for it in $75,000 Swiss watches, a BMW campaign and a stage set at Coachella. 

But until now, Vantablack’s non-scientific uses have been just that: buzzy, one-off projects that have generated short-lived bursts of noise and media fascination, but not much else. That’s largely because Vantablack has been too expensive and fragile a format to work with at scale, not to mention to transport around the world, meaning it’s been virtually impossible to translate the paint to everyday use. Dust particles accumulated during travel, after all, would ruin the effect of a Vantablack-coated surface. To avoid this, teams of engineers have been deployed to spray the paint on projects once they’ve already been assembled—a costly process in itself.

But thanks to the creation of a simple, Vantablack-coated tile, the paint is now poised to become much more accessible, particularly to creatives in the entertainment space. The use cases for Vantablack are endless, from creating special effects to even replacing green screens. The tiles, developed by creative agency Levitation 29 and Production Resources Group, an entertainment event production company, are a lot like very large Lego pieces. Measuring about 2 feet, 11 inches by 4 feet, 4 inches, they come coated in Vantablack and can be locked together to create a wall, a ceiling or a cube. (The pricing of the tiles has not yet been determined, according to Levitation 29.)

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.