VIRTUAL PRODUCTION: HOW TO USE IT
PRODUCTION/POST
Dock10’s vi r tual studio set up
a location so you do need to think a little differently about certain shots/ angles etc, but once you embrace this it opens a world of new possibilities.” There are other limiting factors.
“The resolution of the LED walls is currently lower than we would all prefer,” says Thomas. “This limits how close the camera can focus on the actual wall without it looking blurry or pixelated. This can limit the creative choices the DP makes and can break the illusion that it’s real.” Another big restraint is stage size,
says Chaundler. “You are restricted to your shooting area, it’s not exactly rocket science. The other limitation is people in the background. You can get away with metahumans so long as they are in the far distance, so populating backgrounds can be challenging.” Nor is working with animation in
a virtual production -whether LED or not - the same as being ‘in a game’. “Animation [and VFX] can be as
going to look like, you’re getting all of those things dialled in and in a very exciting way, integrating it deeper into production.” “They see live composites
of each camera,” explains Milligan. “The camera operators have a monitor that shows them what the final composite looks like. When they rack cameras, they can tell what digital elements and what real elements are in and out of focus, and they see what happens when they move the camera. The client sees that too. If they look at the monitors, they know exactly what the show is going to look like.”
Get involved “Whether it’s at the pre-visualisation
stage or all the way through to LED Wall ICVFX, what real-time virtual production brings that differentiates itself from traditional production is interactivity,” says Thomas. “Amongst other things, interactivity in layout, lighting design, on-set feedback for crew and cast and interactivity in the iteration process. “I would always ask how much
Once you embrace this, it opens a world of new possibilities
Chris Chaundler QUITE BRILLIANT
their particular production would value and benefit from the layer of interactivity that virtual production offers and how much they understand about the benefits but also the challenges that can be part of virtual production,” he adds.
To the limit “A production that wants
to approach an ICVFX methodology for some portion of their production should be prepared to move some of the time and money they might otherwise utilise in post to the pre-production
process,” says WBSL’s Beagan. “The
shortened post schedule and reduced quantity of VFX shots will be most achievable by getting buy-in early in your project.” “It’s worth saying that we turn
away many more briefs and scripts than we take on,” warns Chaundler. “The possibilities of this technology are fantastic but you also need to accept there are certain compromises that you need to make and so it’s really suited to creatives, directors and clients who can be a little more open-minded. You’re not actually on
complex as it needs to be, but the limitation with animation in a virtual set is a practical one that comes down to having an animator available who can react in a rapid enough manner,” says Thomas. “They’ll produce animation that gets assimilated into the system to then be displayed on the wall. Simple animation can be authored ‘live’ on set inside something like Unreal Engine, but complex animation changes will need to go back to the origin, which is often a DCC tool such as Maya. And that round trip can make it inefficient for virtual set\volume work.”
Choose wisely You should be thinking of virtual
production as a creative solution, not a cheap alternative. “It can be a very cost-effective solution, but if you’re approaching your whole production like this, you’re better sticking with methods that you know well rather than new emerging technologies,” says Chaundler. “It’s not the magic bullet for everything, it’s just another tool in a producer’s armoury. In a few years we won’t be calling this virtual production, it will just be known as production and every producer/ director will be well versed in using it.”
Summer 2022
televisual.com 115
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