VIRTUAL PRODUCTION: THE FUTURE


PRODUCTION/POST


your post work into prep, you have to pre-commit half a year before you go on camera to full backgrounds and colours, often when you’re simply not there yet in the creative process with scriptwriting, casting and closed financing. It’s a huge boundary to embrace this methodology, which only high resolution asset libraries can help us overcome.” “Pre-production schedules don’t


always allow enough time for a single company to build all the assets for a big show, so we’re going to see a model develop where multiple vendors are feeding a single brain bar content,” says Whitlam. “For this to succeed we’re going to need agreed nomenclature and delivery specs, as well as a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities, titles and hierarchy between VFX, VP and traditional roles on set. “Having a well-designed


foreground set and the time in pre- light to properly integrate the virtual environment so the seams disappear between foreground and background is key to the success of a VP shoot,” adds Whitlam. “Giving production designers the tools to visualise how their physical sets will look in the volume before they build them would


be of great benefit.” “There is still a gap between


final content processes to build worlds,” says Martin Taylor, Director and Co-Founder of Prox and Reverie, which has recently announced the opening of a purpose-built XR studio, The Forge, in Doncaster. “We’re exploring different options, including two-way capture into virtual worlds and collaboration across distance. Our main aim now is getting tools into the hands of directors much earlier in the process.” “For us the bit that is missing


is interoperability - being able to do everything in real-time virtual settings without leaving a creative session, to save session progress, then pick up in different locations and be able to invite in others seamlessly,” says Taylor. “The cloud needs to play a role, we need to be able to share across sessions and locations, and any way to have ‘always with you’ tech is helpful. The more cloud rendering the better, as this will help develop greater photorealism on smaller devices.” Raitt hints this is a way in which the Unity-Weta deal could deliver,


We’re only at the end of the very first cycle of this way of working


James Whitlam Framestore


with the cloud giving access to the massive compute cluster of servers known as the Weta render wall. “You could put them into the cloud as virtual instances that anyone in the world who was within a low latency zone could spin up. You could summon the Weta art stations and render wall to do your simulation computes and your renders. It’s not just about everybody logging into the same document and editing at the same time, it’s about being able to hand off a lot of work so that if you have 1000 people working on a show, they can, in an organised way, collectively


contribute to the final experience.” Another company which has seen


a huge uptake in virtual production is disguise. CTO Ed Plowman echoes Taylor’s observation: “Producers end up spending copious amounts of time constantly re-working an approach to fit their next shoot, especially as the current methods of synchronisation are not fit for this particular set of purposes. That’s where problems with signal chain latency and other limiting factors start to creep in. “This lack of reproducibility is


Winter 2021 televisual.com 71


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