At this year’s Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS), I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jenna Melfi, CEO and co-owner at Rouge Studios. We had a chance to talk about the evolving art of performance capture, cinematics and storytelling in modern games.

With more than sixteen years in the industry, Melfi has helped guide Rouge from its early days as a small mocap facility into a full-service co-development powerhouse offering everything from motion and performance capture to cinematics, lighting, and VFX. “We went from being a box-rental mocap studio to handling end-to-end cinematics for AAA games,” she explained. “Now we’re a complete creative partner.”

That shift has paid off. During the pandemic, Rouge Studios quickly adapted to new realities, pioneering remote performance capture workflows that let studios across the world continue production. “We were the only studio open in L.A. at one point,” Melfi recalled. “We shot entire games remotely, eight actors a day, streaming real-time face capture over air to Japan.” That resourcefulness not only kept major projects alive but established Rouge as one of the most reliable and flexible studios in the industry.

Today, Rouge’s credits include collaborations with Gearbox on Borderlands 4, where the team delivered the game’s cinematic and lighting work, including its retro-rock intro, and Respawn’s Jedi: Survivor, a project Melfi calls one of her most rewarding experiences.

She also teased Rouge’s ongoing partnership with Archetype Entertainment on the highly anticipated Exodus, developed under the Wizards of the Coast banner. “It’s been a four-year labor of love,” she said, noting how partnerships like these help the studio grow both creatively and technically.

Beyond the technology and talent, what shines through most in Melfi’s perspective is a deep respect for the human side of performance capture. “Actors work their asses off in the volume,” she said. “It’s real acting, it deserves the same respect as being on stage or in front of a camera.” For Melfi, Rouge’s mission goes beyond pixels and pipelines, it’s about preserving emotion, collaboration, and storytelling at the heart of interactive entertainment.

You can listen to the full interview above, where we talk about creativity, leadership, and how Melfi and her teams at Rouge Studios continues to redefine what performance capture and compelling cinematic experiences can be.