VIRTUAL PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION/POST
The LED volume at Garden
S tudios in Wes t London
with the LED volume, which is that, in the final analysis, it’s really a giant TV screen and it produces a structured, but soft and diffuse, style of illumination which is great for an overcast look or dawn or magic hour, but no good for hard directional lighting such as the sun at midday in a desert location,” says DNEG’s Franklin. “Right now, the limitations of the real time engines and the hardware used on set to serve the images to the LED screens places certain restrictions on the complexity of the fully-interactive images that can be used on set. As a result, LED volumetric production tends to lend itself to fantasy projects where the direct comparison to a fixed standard of what constitutes the real world is a little more forgiving.” But the limitations are borne of
the nascent nature of the tech and techniques. “At the moment, we’re only scratching the surface of the use cases for Virtual Production,” says Thomas.
Added benef i t However, you’ll not find many
claiming that virtual production will ever sweep away all other forms of filmmaking. Says Thomas: “It will become just another storytelling tool.
It will greatly revolutionise certain aspects of that process though and the successful productions will be the ones who embrace and initially lean into the workflow with a clear understanding of the benefits as well as the limitations.” Pitts says that “virtual
production will never render location shoots, big physical set builds, or greenscreen shoots totally redundant, but will rather become another tool in the filmmaker’s arsenal, which when combined with these more traditional film making methods can introduce a number of production and environmental efficiencies previously not possible.” One way it looks set to
revolutionise filmmaking though is within vfx, says Jopling. “It will revolutionise vfx and make it become part of the pre-production process with every other on set department.” And that is a big change for
production planning. “One of the biggest challenges is educating traditional pipelines and producers why real-time workflows are not just faster but in some cases fundamentally different,” says Dimension’s Thomas.
Bajt says that “the big hurdle is
The big hurdle is education in terms of explaining what the benefits are
David Bajt Bild Studios
education: in terms of explaining what the benefits are and what the ‘gotchas’ are with virtual production. Explaining what type of shots work in the LED volume, and what you are still going to need to go on location for. This is the type of information that we need to communicate to almost every client.” But once filmmakers
have seen it, they like it, says Pilborough-Skinner. “Nine out of 10 of the
DoPs that we bring through, once you demo it, and give them a little bit of a tutorial,
absolutely love it. They can see the
possibilities and realise it’s not this massive paradigm shift. It’s just new tools to add to their existing lighting toolbox.” Says Thomas: “it becomes very apparent that it’s an enabling technology that is very inclusive of many normally disparate filmmaking disciplines. Production designers get to see their ideas a lot earlier in the process and DOP’s get an understanding of lighting and tone long before any frame has been rendered.” “Integrating platforms such as
Unreal Engine into the process allows Summer 2021
televisual.com 83
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116
