I have a good friend who is a producer that said ” wow, I didn’t see that one coming so fast”. What he was referring to is of course the incredibly rapid rise of Virtual Productions in giant studio stages using LED Volumes.
The timeline of growth and adoption of the virtual production process has without a doubt been fast-tracked (and I mean really fast-tracked), by the pandemic. As creatives, we all got shackled in a world of lockdown that took away all of our freedom to travel, and the ability to be on location, meaning we couldn’t scout, recce, pre-light, shoot, and make the most of the magical light that we image makers chase like it’s our oxygen. It also meant that the wheels of the production machine had come off, and no films, TV, stills shoots or commercials were being produced, which of course meant no content was being created.
The pioneers of the industry like ILM were already (long before the pandemic) creating full studio stage productions using warehouse-size LED walls bigger than the average house, and utilising the gaming technology of epic games Unreal Engine gaming technology. This was not only groundbreaking, but it gave directors, DOP’s and actors the ability to shoot multiple location scenes in one day, choosing what light they wanted to shoot in, and save millions in production costs by keeping crews in one place on their doorstep, rather than moving the production circus from location to location.
Whilst the pandemic has been the main factor for the insatiable appetite to shoot in LED volumes, the tipping point happened very very quickly and gained momentum that I believe would have taken 3 or 4 years to get to a position of growth that we are currently witnessing. Almost every studio of a decent size that I know is investing heavily in technology, and virtual production sets are becoming essential to most studios in order for them to adapt to new filming methods. Otherwise, they run the risk of looking in at their competitors being booked back to back for days and sometimes months at a time, charging astronomical studio fees for the privilege of using an LED volume.
The costs on the face of it seem extortionate ( sometimes 10 times the normal fee for a large empty studio hire ), but the actual production savings are considerable. These cost savings, along with the time savings of shoot schedules, and the ability to always get the scene and the lighting you require, means that the demand for LED Volumes isn’t going away any time soon.
All this tech however is pointless without quality assets and content to fill the vast walls of an LED volume, and it’s fair to say that if you are an Unreal Engine artist in virtual production, you will have plenty of work for a long time to come. For us, at Domeble this new production process presented a great opportunity, and we have established great relationships with many of the studios and virtual production companies, who love our content. They love the content because it is founded on quality and hi-resolution production values, and more importantly it looks amazing on the volume walls. Our photogrammetry processes also offer full parallax scenes, that look stunning inside unreal engine scenes, adding even more reality to the production.
Image Courtesy- Arri
We also mustn’t forget our super hi-resolution 360° HDRI’s that offer dynamic fidelity and wrap-around vision, and it’s almost as if they were created for a virtual production process. So if you are a virtual production company or a large stage with an LED volume, please do get in touch with us, and we’d be delighted to give you some assets that you can test. These are fast-moving and exciting times in our industry, and there is a massive shift in how we create and how we continue to be creative. It’s not just how we produce the content, but more how we consume the content, from Virtual productions to immersive tech, there is no doubt at all we are all experiencing a new creative landscape.
Written by Carl Lyttle – Founder @Domeble
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