POST


VFX REPORT


Top left: The Last Kingdom from BlueBolt


Top right: Epic’s Unreal for All Creators from The Mill


Middle: The Old Guard from Milk VFX


maybe not travel as much as we did before.” Other forms of virtual production can be used


in much simpler ways too “whether you’re using LED screens or not,” says Framestore’s Manz. Virtual scouting before any shoot helps the production designer work out what needs to be physically there, what extras need to be physically at the location, the interaction between those extras and their distance from actors. “We use VR tools quite a lot for virtual scouting so you can drop yourself into the scene, put people around you, and literally plan with cameras what you would be seeing and how many people you would need.” And that’s becoming more common “because you have to think a bit more cleverly and creatively about how you’re going to achieve what you want in camera because of COVID.” And “with the right show in the right context,


there’s a lot to be said for working in some, cheaper virtual environments for a while,” says Williams. Apart from any COVID based reasons, it avoids arriving on set and thinking “that pillar is a bit of a worry now. The director can go in and start working with their DoP, and really understand how their set’s going to work and how that location might work. You’re


54 televisual.com Autumn 2020


answering a lot your creative questions before you get anywhere near having 100 people at a location.” All of this pushes vfx earlier on in the process.


“What vfx always asked for is to be more at the beginning of things and this is accelerating that acceptance,” says Manz. “We’re very embedded with the art department and cinematographer. We’re like a digital extension of both of those departments.” “Even before COVID, vfx had become a relatively


integral part depending on the job,” says Chapman. “But bringing virtual production into the conversation means post production becomes pre-production. It becomes more integrated into the shoot rather than after the shoot.” All of this will take a cultural shift for productions


used to doing things in a set order. “It’s a bit weird to go to a TV producer or a commercials producer and say to them ‘we’re going to need the set up front or we’re going to need at least the geometry up front,” says Bailey. It will come, although the day when all vfx is done up front maybe a while away yet. “It’ll be long time. That’s sort of like our version of the singularity. It’s like a VFX singularity. happen; I just don’t know when.”


I’m sure it will


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