The Blast sat down with Nimrod Harel, renowned mentalist and Co-Founder of GameChanger, to discuss how his team is revolutionizing the future of television production.
With a background in crafting psychological and visual illusions, Harel is now applying his unique expertise to the world of virtual production, eliminating green screens, physical sets, and ballooning budgets in favor of sleek, cost-effective technology that delivers blockbuster-level visuals.
Already powering several game shows, GameChanger’s breakthrough is quickly reshaping the entertainment landscape as we know it.
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Nimrod Harel Is Turning Illusion Into Innovation With GameChanger’s Virtual Production Tech
For Nimrod Harel, illusions have always been second nature.
“Illusions were my life from the age of six or seven,” Harel told The Blast. “I began very early doing that. But basically, GameChanger is taking my hobby and profession to the max in a totally different field.”
As a seasoned mentalist, Harel knows a thing or two about deception, except now, instead of a stage and spotlight, his canvas is cutting-edge virtual production technology.
“When you see a mentalist or illusionist, you know you’re witnessing some kind of magic. You may not know how it’s done, but you understand that you’re being fooled,” he explained. “With GameChanger, the illusion is flawless because you don’t even know that you’re being fooled.”
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That’s the magic behind the tech. By removing the green screen and physical constraints of traditional sets, GameChanger creates fully immersive environments that audiences accept as real, without ever questioning the mechanics behind them.
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GameChanger’s Breakthrough Tech Powers 300+ Episodes Abroad
What truly sets GameChanger apart isn’t just its sleek visuals or immersive sets, it’s the groundbreaking, patented technology behind it.
“This is a patented technology and method, and it’s completely new,” Harel told The Blast. “We are a blue ocean. We have no competitors in this field.”
One standout example comes from Portugal, where GameChanger helped bring “The Piggy Bank” to life across more than 300 episodes. The production featured jaw-dropping visuals: a towering platform where the host and contestant stood, oversized moving parts gliding across a magnetic stage, and family members watching from futuristic pods, all surrounded by a massive oval LED screen.
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“This is the biggest show ever aired in Portugal in terms of production value,” Harel said. “And from a cost perspective, it’s one of the most inexpensive shows ever. The difference is crazy. This is why we call it GameChanger.”
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GameChanger’s Virtual Production Debuts On GSN With A 30-Foot Bingo Machine
Two GameChanger-powered shows have just recently premiered on GSN, one of them being “Bingo Blitz,” where an enormous virtual bingo machine, 30 feet tall, is the centerpiece.
“This is the most beautiful, biggest TV production we’ve ever seen,” Harel said. “And you don’t even wonder how it was done. The illusion is perfect. So in a way, I’m still doing illusions, just a better kind of illusion.”
“If you wanted to shoot something like this in real life, I’m not sure there’s even a studio big enough in the U.S. to house it,” Harel added. “But we don’t need that. Everything is an illusion. Even up close, it looks immaculate.”
That realism is achieved without a single green screen in sight. “Green screens will always look like green screens,” Harel said. “They’re not good enough for primetime TV, unless you have Marvel-level budgets to clean up every pixel. We don’t use green screen at all.”
Instead, GameChanger takes a groundbreaking post-production approach. There’s no special hardware on set, no added risk, and no disruption to the shoot. “We tell producers: Do your show. Shoot the way you normally do. Then we come in afterward and work the magic,” Harel explained. “All the CGI assets are implemented in software, so when the editor goes in, it feels like they’re editing a show shot in a massive, spectacular studio. They don’t even realize it wasn’t real.”
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Producers, often wary of new tech due to cost and complexity, can breathe easy. “For them, we’re invisible,” Harel said. “And that’s one of the biggest breakthroughs. This changes the game.”
From A Tiny Studio To A Massive Spectacle: GameChanger Reinvents ‘Tic Tac Dough’
Another example is “Tic Tac Dough,” the iconic show dating back to the 1950s. “They asked us to do a facelift,” Harel told The Blast, “and now we call it a spectacle.”
GameChanger delivered with a massive robotic LED screen, one that moves, rotates, and even appears to dance during the show. “Without technology, you’re able to create shows. But with it, you’re able to create spectacles,” he added.
Harel also revealed to The Blast that the show was shot in “the smallest studio in the compound,” so small, in fact, that the production team had to scale it down even further to meet their unique needs. “All we had there was an LED screen and a stage,” Harel said. “And yet, what we created looks like it was shot in a multimillion-dollar set.”
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How GameChanger Turns Tiny Studios Into Massive Sets
Using low-angle top shots and proprietary digital processing, GameChanger can manipulate spatial dimensions to make a compact studio appear like a sprawling, high-budget environment. “
You want a camera shot from 30 feet in the air? We can do that without actually putting the camera there,” he explained. “We just shrink the world and press a button. It’s wild.”
Harel even broke down the transformation in detail, pointing to sections of the raw studio footage. “See the areas I marked in red? That’s the real set,” he said. “Everything else, the audience, the massive screens, the surrounding environment, is CGI. And it blends seamlessly. Now you have a show.”
That level of efficiency and realism is exactly what’s positioning GameChanger at the forefront of the virtual production revolution, delivering maximum spectacle with minimal overhead.
