PRODUCTION/POST
VIRTUAL PRODUCTION
The Mandalorian: the most high prof ile user of VP yet
Studios, says that budget is already not a barrier. “We’ve found that with a turnkey solution, by opening up to people that aren’t Disney and Marvel, on a slightly smaller scale they can end up getting 90% of the shots they weren’t able to because of COVID or for budgetary reasons.” Dimension‘s Thomas says the
“evolution of virtual production technology and the adoption of real time rendering solutions are making it more accessible. We’ve worked on everything from small- scale to very high-end productions, covering music videos to feature films.” DNEG’s Franklin predicts that “virtual production tools will become ubiquitous across all levels of production and budgets within the next few years. The core technologies - specifically real time gaming engines - are from the consumer world where the pressure is to keep the prices low.” The tech is developing rapidly,
as are the workflows. As yet, there is no standard way of doing things. “There are lots of parallels in the way that various virtual productions are mounted, and the realtime engine component appears to be converging around a handful of software tools such as Unreal Engine and Unity, but
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every virtual production is a custom- built system,” says Franklin. “It’s still very early days,” points out
Bajt, but “there are elements that are starting to become standardised and improved. The roles and areas of responsibility are now fairly well defined and standardised to an extent. And the tools, both software and hardware, are starting to get there in terms of their functionality and feature sets. However, these tools will always be developing.”
Where i t works What else is developing is exactly
the type of shots and genres that are best suited to the LED wall. “You can use it for any genre and any sort of environment,” says Garden Studios’ Pilborough-Skinner. “But the ones that do stand out are anything sci fi, because you’ve normally got a lot of bright and brilliant lights. The more light sources you’ve got, and the more reflections on props and actors, the more novel it can be. But you can definitely achieve any sort of genre or environment on stage with enough set dressing and planning.”
Pilborough-Skinner goes on to say
We’ve worked on everything from small scale to very high-end productions
Ed Thomas Dimension
that “there’s nothing you can’t achieve, it’s just whether or not it’s worth the resources sometimes to do that on a VP stage. We’re really upfront with producers and directors about this.” MPC’s Jopling says that
“anything is appropriate, but for full CG environments, currently dry rocky desert scenes or cityscapes work well” while at the moment “forests with dynamic movement, water and
splashes, dust and clouds” are tougher but “Unreal 5 has improved some of these
considerably.” Framestore’s Webber concurs
that the tech works best “when you’re working with a non-existent environment or one that’s impossibly hard to reach - a different planet, a fantasy landscape, a period piece where the landmarks no longer remain or somewhere incredibly remote” but not so well with “contemporary, traditional drama - it would take some serious conniving to persuade your producer to use the LED volume to recreate a chip shop or a supermarket.” “One thing should be remembered
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