LED // UNREAL ENGINE Virtual Production Demo at Resolution Studios in Chicago

[Music] so [Music] our favorite things in life are traveling the world fine dining and exploring the great outdoors we're not going to let anything stand in the way of doing the things we love to do not migraines not allergies and certainly not a tight production schedule or budget cut moving on so if we want to ski the alps and stroll the canals of venice and watch the sunset from a hawaiian beach all from the same location now we can side effects may include more efficient production schedules much smaller production expenses and total creative control of environments [Music] hello everyone and welcome to resolution i'm todd freeze the chief technology officer here and today i am beyond excited to share this new technology with you what you see behind me is a virtual production set featuring the beach scene that you just saw in the video we just played our demo today is a culmination of a journey a journey that started with the green screen grew to the led wall and has now taken on a life of its own we've pulled together an extraordinary team who have put in countless hours of r d to basically get this technology working and create a world-class workflow that stands shoulder to shoulder with productions happening all around the world this new technology is a powerful and changing changing the world and it's only get better as we move on you're in for a treat but before i get to the show i'd like to thank our collaborators without whom we would have never been able to pull this off scott miller from miller creative who has been an extraordinary partner in helping us bring this entire demo to life and the enormously talented dp mark james for adapting the technology to bring this all of this new technology to the camera and lighting department i'd like to thank gary adcock whose technical engineering proved invaluable and solved endless lists of technical issues and to moses for providing us the holy grail of real-time camera tracking and lastly tom fletcher of fujifilm for his lifelong support of the chicago production community and for helping us bringing us all together so on the behalf of rogerson studios thank you again for joining us and with that i'm going to pass this over to scott and mark thank you todd this has indeed been an incredible journey for all of us and we're thrilled to be partnering with you on this event i'd love to thank resolution studios for hosting today's demonstration and for the many hours their team has put into the research and development and testing that brought us to today we may hold the record for the world's longest pre-light with this project i also want to thank the very talented mark james who has spent countless hours adapting a traditional production workflow in order to communicate with unreal engine mark basically had to learn an entire new language and adapt it to his craft and his support crew so kudos to mark thank you mark i also want to thank peter walsh who is our unreal world operator he has worked for many hours to create or modify the unreal environments that we used in the spot you saw at the top of the show and like mark had to learn a new language the language of traditional production and finally a very very heartfelt thanks to the cast and crew who worked so hard to make this virtual production event possible we all know that technology while mind-blowing can only take us so far every filmmaker knows that without a solid casting crew you don't stand a chance like todd's our journey started many years ago in video production and evolved by adding xr and game development into our workflows before any technology we see ourselves first and foremost as storytellers virtual production has unlocked potential and eliminated boundaries in a way we never imagined possible our only limitations is the limits to our creativity our goal today is to provide you with a high level understanding of the tools needed to utilize this technology and give you a behind the scenes look at the spot that opened our show we're thankful to be part of the story that is bringing this exciting new technology to life on behalf of miller creative thank you for joining us and with that i'm going to pass it over to mark james todd scott thank you for the kind words i feel really fortunate to have partnered up with todd in a studio that brings years of led experience to the table and my longtime friend scott who brings a creative company that has been developing 3d worlds and storytelling for just as long as a dp who is constantly studying new technology being a co-host of this event is an honor so thank you i'd also like to thank arie the images we captured with your mini lf have been stellar fuji's premise to zoom captured beautiful shots with a camera setup built to help us make our very ambitious schedule a final thank you to film gear chicago who supported us with the equipment we needed to turn this technology ecosystem into actual scenes with lights and production equipment i love cinematography because it combines technology art and storytelling i've always been passionate about advancements in cameras and lenses and really any improvements related to production i'm part of this event today because of the collision of that passion and the pandemic unreal engine is free to download and epic games has an extensive training library at no cost when when work ground to a halt in the spring i started there i found virtual production fascinating and i didn't want my understanding of virtual production to end where the wall began so let's get you started on the basics of virtual production what is virtual production well virtual production is an umbrella term for content creation that merges game engine technology with live action in a studio environment essentially it's recording actors in front of photorealistic 3d environments to create the illusion of a location shoot so how does it work first you create environments using 3d programs like maya or blender or photogrammetry a process of stitching together location photos to build a 3d world these environments are imported into unreal engine and then projected on an led volume led walls that are often curved or with multiple sides sometimes even the ceilings and floors are led panels camera tracking gives unreal engine real-time camera positional data and lens metrics so that movement and depth perspective look and feel real practical set design elements are added to the foreground things like ground or floor coverings furniture and trees connect the virtual world to the real environment the actors interact with further creating the illusion of being on location okay so why virtual production a few good reasons are the ability to shoot multiple locations anywhere in the world or otherwise all in one place and total control of your production environments including crowd control lighting and weather something that can rarely be said about shooting on location for all of its technical complexity virtual production simply adds more creative and tactical control over production than ever before so naturally i field a ton of questions about the led panels and the role they play in this new technology first and foremost what makes up a wall led tiles are half meter by half meter and they can be bolted together to create a seamless wall of any width and height usually the next question i encounter and the one that all the producers want to know how much will this cost and what else do they need to pull off for virtual production there are two main questions to answer when planning a virtual production the first one is what size wall do we need as with any shoot this starts with the creative how do the director and the dp want the cinematography to look many of the same rules apply to a virtual production just without all the variables of shooting on location will there be a lot of low angle shots well then you need a taller wall do you have a lot of talent in one shot then you need a wider wall do you have a super tight product shot a 10 by 10 may cut it shooting a couple at a farmer's market we can take it 60 feet wide we will work with you to determine that you get exactly the scale you need to match your creative the second question i get is what kind of tile is right for my production led tiles come in two resolutions two mil and three mil essentially the number correlates to the distance between the led pixels inside the panel and reflect the panel's overall resolution three mil tiles allow for a much larger wall giving you more flexibility but require more distance between the camera and the wall two mil panels have a higher resolution and allow the camera to get closer to the wall with a wider lens but they can be almost twice the cost of a three mil panel it's all about striking a balance between budget and need the last question i commonly get is okay great i want to shoot this virtually in the studio instead of on location now what this one is super important that it's not as simple as renting a studio and a bunch of led tiles it takes a team of professionals and the right engineers to pull it off but you can make magic and cut out many of the unknowns of shooting on location by partnering with the right team to guide you through the production so now that you have the basics of led wall the first step in virtual production is camera tracking all right if i can move action the mosta system was really the missing link as we were building our virtual production pipeline and that it's really critical to get real-time camera data into unreal so that the unreal camera can basically match the real-world environment currently on our main stage here we have 300 little what they call stars which is basically a highly reflective sticker and we map out the exact position of where those stars are then on the camera we have a little sensor that has a little led ring that puts light up and then there's a camera that basically sees the stars we have an ethernet that comes out of that and it's constantly sending out positional data into the unreal engine this includes uh rotation pan yaw tilt boom but also lens information like zoom and focus [Music] action mimosas wants a minimum of 12 tracking points active at one time so by having so many stars we're guaranteed that we have more than enough to capture 3d camera motion in any orientation this display shows us the output of the sensor that's seeing the stars and you're seeing them move in real time so it helps us make sure that the system is completely calibrated show me 55 55 stand by right there we've been working on this for so long that when we finally got all the pieces talking working we we screamed like we put a man on the moon you know because it's something that we've been trying to do and you know we had all the components but the camera tracking is such a critical part it ties all the pieces together and that's really what makes the system work one reason virtual production works is parallax if you don't know the definition of parallax no worries you already know what it is because we observe it every day take a look at our beach scene when the camera dollies in the plant on the bottom right moves out of the frame faster than the plant on the top left why well take a look the plant in the bottom right is closer to camera so naturally the camera passes the near plant first that's straightforward right now let's see the airport shot our couple is walking through the terminal and we are tracking on the dolly the blue stanchions behind our talent are moving across the screen faster than what is deeper in the background like the tv monitors at the top and the first row of seats the end of the terminal is moving slower than those tv screens and seats because the further an object is the slower it appears to move across the screen that's parallax it's a word that is used to describe how the world looks when you combine motion and depth it's simply one of the ways the world is observed it works for our own eyes just like the camera if you're zipping down the highway a road sign passes by your car much faster than the mountains in the distance the perceived speed of objects and how that speed changes based on their distance to you or a camera parallax so as a viewer when you see camera motion on the screen how fast objects in the shot are moving just tells our brains how far they are from the camera on a typical set the word parallax is rarely needed because it's just how the world looks that's why if you film a photograph you can tell it's a flat object there is no depth to show parallax parallax matters in virtual production because the led wall like a photograph is a flat surface so in order for the virtual environment to appear real the camera has to see parallax in the images on the wall and that is where unreal engine comes in what unreal engine does is it creates a three dimensional environment that we put actors within and the way we do that is to track the motion of the practical camera the actual camera on set and that information is sent into the game engine and the game engine then adjusts the background adjusts the parallax and the perspective of the background so that the images projected on the led screen behind the actors look correct for where that camera is in space and that's what makes it look real the sun is up over here yep okay can you bring it back around behind us just a little bit in unreal engine these are three-dimensional objects there really are no limits to what you can move around what you can do you can rebuild the set and you can rebuild it quickly and then end display figures out how to send the environment from unreal game engine to those screens to make all of this come together and work properly you have to have a lot of processing power depending on the size your screen the resolution of your screen all of these things factor into how many computers you have to bring in to make this production work but all of these computers are working together to project a final image so that it can be captured in camera move action places we couldn't go because of budgets or places we couldn't go because of logistics or even places you couldn't go because of a global pandemic you can now go in the in the safety of a studio i've been doing this for almost 30 years and this is one of the most exciting things i've seen lighting and unreal isn't simply about re-lighting the environment you're in it's also about the power of interactive lighting let's grab the sky atmosphere and push the white a little higher and in the mid-tone green let's make it a 0.8 as a dp there are several things that are really exciting about virtual production active lighting is really exciting being able to use the walls themselves to light things you would normally have to avoid and it also gives me a whole other level of control because now i can control what's happening in the background and i can control that separately or in conjunction with what i'm actually filming in the studio and where he looks when he puts him on is important to get the most out of the reflection so he needs to keep his gaze this way yeah and then step off the ski goggles was one of my favorite parts of today actually because when he lowered him into place what you're seeing is really the environment that he's looking out at and normally if you were to try to do a shot like that in the studio they would have to comp that in later and or remove the source our own sources that are actually in there so that was really cool to see okay we're moving on thank you going to the beach in that case the wall was truly providing the majority of the light that was on the subjects grab the sand and give me a 1.6 on the sand and a lot of our other shots the wall is an important background and we are bringing in our own lights to match the environment that they're in i love it another cool advantage of using unreal and doing virtual production is the interactive lighting so we have these side rolling panels which are actually a much brighter so say you're in an environment that's moving like the tunnel that we use for the football player we can walk those panels in and having unreal run through those side panels in addition to the background is generating light and that light is actually lighting the subject and so for something like that where there's motion happening the motion happening on the side panel is actually lighting the subject means that everything's in sync and the lighting on the subject is going to match the background that you're actually filming maybe just paddle it over just a pinch we brought a lot of ideas to the table for this project and we were able to demonstrate a lot of different environments it's not just about having a huge variety of locations available it's about the way the lighting looks and works in those locations we've established that the technology works and we can transport our audiences to locations without ever leaving the studio so the next question we have to ask is why is this technology valuable to filmmakers and producers any producer will ask right off the bat does this make financial sense for the production a virtual production is inherently budget-friendly as it eliminates the need to travel crew and the costs associated with shooting on location a virtual production is also devoid of some of the trappings of shooting on location weather crowd control locations only available during overnight or simply not an option due to covet 19 restrictions not going to be an issue with a virtual production virtual production removes many of the creative boundaries that exist with conventional production it allows us to fully customize a set in any location we can dream up we can use pre-visualization and virtual site surveys to customize and modify our set within seconds we also can easily create modify environments from our imagination that don't yet exist or not yet possible in the real world imagine the creative possibilities of shooting with an eight-hour sunset the creative process is also enhanced for actors or clients being able to see the environment of each scene no longer do they have to imagine what it will look like after the green screen virtual production also creates efficiencies within the post production process unlike the vfx work the effects on led walls are captured in real time in the real camera they no longer need to be created in post production or during editing making it the most efficient form of post no more cleaning up green spill no more worrying about your talent wearing glasses shiny objects that often would have to be fixed in post are recorded in camera with proper reflections in light and because we are shortening or eliminating post-production effects your production can be quicker to screen and most likely less expensive finally virtual production is simply a safer way to work with fewer crew and controlled environments we are reducing many of the challenges of shooting during covet 19 not to mention the fact that during this time many locations have become off limits our beach never closes what we've learned this week is that virtual production is an extraordinary tool that creates endless possibilities and creative space be it a commercial feature or industrial virtual production is cutting edge technology that only elevates our collective capabilities i think my favorite environment was this beach one that we just did especially because in all the other environments we were still using a standard floor but to actually fill in the sand and have a sort of tactile connection to your setting as well that was really transformative plus it was one of the few scenes where we were facing towards the projections versus a green screen where you're kind of looking around and all you see is green right um it's so fun to actually get to see the space that we're playing in all right all right we're moving on thank you next up is city park when it's a green screen the props go down the sides are built but there's nothing to respond to so this is really nice to work with because we can see exactly in real time what it's going to look like watching it all kind of come to life together is pretty exciting if we had to do a comp of this on a green screen yeah we may even have to pull the glasses completely yeah now everything that the glass sees especially if the camera's moving is all just the actual world we can use all the same lighting all the nice spectral things that are happening on the bottle and everything else we can happen anywhere and we can take you to different environments i think the coolest thing about this technology is that even though there's a lot of complicated things going on the camera is just shooting like it would on any other location and so when you walk to the monitor what you're looking at is what the camera's recording it's not something that's composited later it's not something where you don't know exactly what you're lighting for it's something that's really there and tangible and you can see it right away this last week has been absolutely amazing this technology allows your creativity and imagination to take you anywhere wow i don't know about you but i find this new technology just unbelievably inspiring and before i introduce a very special guest uh i'm sure you all have a lot of questions and we have a little bit of time for q a so at the bottom of your screen there is a q a button if you submit a question here we'll do our best to answer some of uh some of them uh so it is an incredible honor to introduce what i call the mayor of chicago production he is the head of the chicago film commission in the film department kwame all right thank you on behalf of mayor lori lightfoot and commissioner mark kelly thank you for having me here it feels great to be back here resolution digital studios as a member of the chicago film production community i've worked here many times uh the film community in chicago is uh very very strong it's growing stronger the economic numbers are only increasing even with the pandemic we managed to still do pretty well this year mayor lloyd lightfoot has included film production as a part of the recovery task force uh so film production is a part of covet recovery economics so the city and the state have both made film production a priority and bringing film production here a priority now that being said the need for infrastructure is very important and we are very very interested in infrastructure that allows production to increase in the city this project is huge in that aspect it not only adds an additional stage to the city in a time where we need as many states as we could possibly get but this technology puts us in a position to really capitalize on virtual production and attract that type of production to the city it also is a great asset to episodic television and other productions that are filming here who have location issues everybody knows about the game of thrones winners we have here in chicago so something like this where you can shoot anywhere at any time is a huge and immense asset to the city and we're excited about the possibilities in the future that this technology holds and we're looking forward to a great relationship with resolution digital studios and we hope that this can just grow into something that can really make a difference in the production landscape in the city of chicago well i certainly want to thank you for your continued support during getting this production community going again [Music] through obviously the covet shutdowns uh we're starting to get some questions coming in uh so we're gonna take a couple of them the first question we have is are we getting we're gonna try to keep these not super technical but we're gonna kind of do a balance here so the first one is are we getting zoom and focused data uh in through the mosta system and i'll get mark once you take that scott the short answer is yes yes we are we've had a lot of success being able to to receive that data in unreal and now you're able to uh the ac can rotate focus and it will change the background uh appropriately if you're if you're rotating focusing closer the things in in the uh closer aspects of the uh unreal environment become in focus and when you rotate and back out things far away come in focus so yes absolutely yeah and i think part of part of what's really cool about that when we were testing it is being able to hold the wheel and change it and you know we all know what that looks like on the lens or in the monitor but to actually see it happening on the led wall was really exciting because you could see the focus plane moving back and forth in the virtual world so i'm excited to see what dimension that adds to virtual production moving forward all right our next question is is the led wall a standing wall or does it need to be constructed for each production so here at resolution we uh because we do have a very large inventory of led walls we pretty much keep uh led walls constructed at all time we're getting tons and tons of calls for this sort of workflow so if you're looking for a studio that is pre-set up to go yes we keep a wall going that being said a lot of times you may need to shoot in another studio or another city or another location the walls can be constructed pretty much anywhere okay another question how do you address typical issue with more a mark why don't you take this one yeah i mean that the key is you know the the led wall is the background it's not what you're focused on right it doesn't mean you have to completely blow it away on the lens but you're never racking all the way to the wall because that's when you see those issues and that's one of the reasons that large format cameras are more popular for virtual production because a large format camera has a larger sensor which is one of the factors in decreasing your depth of field and i think you could see from the spec commercial that we made it doesn't mean that it has to be completely blown away back there it just means you're never going totally focused to the wall all right uh can anamorphic anamorphic lenses be used in virtual production i can take that one absolutely uh there's definitely a couple things that you have to work out uh in terms of making sure that the unreal engine is doing the squeeze so that it works itself out i think now that uh there's a really pretty good workflow uh going for just normal production that's definitely sort of on our phase two uh thing that applies definitely to long long-form and feature films uh question uh do you provide the consulting and execution of the computer system scott why don't you take this yes so the short answer is yes i mean we basically provide all parts of this equation there's a number of different systems there obviously the camera systems the led wall but yes we also provide the integration and and let's talk about the workflow ahead of time too you've got to bring in these 3d environments whether you're creating them from scratch there's also options where you can buy things on the marketplace the marketplace is continually getting larger so that you're able to go out there and if you have maybe a lesser budget on a project possibly find an environment that already exists for your project so once that's done it's taken from maybe even maya or blender or some other 3d program it's brought into unreal we look at it on the screen we obviously optimize it make it polygonally a little bit better for this environment and then you start talking with the art department at that time to to build the art and practical elements that are going to be built into the set so i said the short answer is yes but i guess it was a little bit longer answer okay moving on we're trying to keep time to get as many of these questions as we can here uh what hardware and software did your team have to incorporate to send information from in camera to unreal and out to the led walls uh it's a very it's there's a that's a big topic there but i'll tell you in general uh we are just blown away by the moses system you know uh just a little background you know a lot of people when they're doing r d they'll use a connect there's a lot of different like gaming products to do camera tracking and you know if you're just playing around and doing r d these are cheap ways to get your feet wet but they're really not appropriate for actual paying clients like i the thing i can say about the most is in terms so it's obviously capturing the camera data it's uh basically going out ethernet into the unreal engine we're capturing lens and focus information uh and all that could send past eventually on the wall but you know we the best compliment you have is a box what i call a set and forget you set it up and it works so well that you kind of forget you're using it there's a lot of things going on in a situation like this and not having to worry about camera tracking definitely uh is a it's a boon it really is right and just to add on one thing um so there really isn't anything from in camera that's going into unreal that's what's i think is so cool about it the unreal engine has to know the positional information of the camera in order to make all the uh parallax and other things that are happening in unreal go on the wall the camera itself is just shooting and that data is sent to it via the camera tracking system in our case the most is correct uh moving on can the led panels be placed on the floor for overhead shots yeah so led panels which you know have been around a very long time and they're very very flexible so you can do floors you can do ceilings a lot of times if we're doing car rigged rigged car shots a lot of times will fly a ceiling led panel so that you'll have the reflections of trees and stuff in the windshield and the hood led walls can technically be flown meaning that currently this led wall is hung from truss and motors and when we're done with this we're going to raise it up to the ceiling so that it's ready for the next production or they can be ground supported this kind of goes back to that same thing that you know it's not as simple as just renting some led tile and think you can make magic you really want to make sure you're talking to somebody who can help you through all of these decisions to make sure that you have a great production uh okay another question if the background doesn't move can it be used with a multi-camera setup the short answer is yes with the caveat that your background whatever the perspective of your two cameras are looking at they can't overlap because you would have to calculate you would have to have unreal or multiple unreal sources calculate what the field of view should be for those cameras and there are many ways to capture that it's also possible to have multiple cameras tracking as long as those windows never overlap as well so yes it is possible but it you know that is something that would you would have to drill down a little bit on the technical side based on what your concept is to figure out what is and is impossible but as long as they're not the shots are not overlapping in the background it is possible all right the next question is a doozy all right how much processing power was required for a smooth workflow i'm going to interpret that as you know what kind of gpus and things that we have in unreal and that's a very big topic uh and obviously uh is a big part of us uh having a team to help you with that but i think scott has really championed this uh in figuring this one out all right so the processing power necessary for this i guess we keep saying the short answer the short answer is a lot uh in this particular case we had two rtx 8000s we had a 64 core threadripper in one box we had another a couple of boxes with nvidia products in them i think there was a 30-70 but in this setup you have to have basically three different types of views you have to have a computer that is handling the editing function basically if i'm saying to as a director if i'm saying to the world operator hey i want to move this barrel here or i want to take that tree out or remove that house or can we change where the sun is that's your editing computer you have to have another computer that's using end display and then display is actually projecting things to the screen and it's figuring out what the resolution is and figuring out where the panels are and how things need to be arranged and display also creates um the frustum which is the inner camera versus the outer camera and the inner camera has higher resolution so that second computer is handling end display in the display onto the um the screens and then the third computer is more of a server that keeps track of the different versions of the world that we're creating as we're making these edits you need to be able to coordinate it's kind of like version control and software development you need to be able to coordinate uh that particular version of the world that we created between the two computers so as we move things around in the editing computer we then turn around and it is saved to another server using perforce and then that server synchronizes with the display computer and then display kicks it back out to the screen great summary for that's something we could have a whole webcast and i will say you know this is a first webcast that was really designed to be sort of an overview what is production and that we're doing it um we hope that this becomes a series of webcasts that we kind of did dive deep and maybe a webcast just on camera tracking one on cinematography one on unreal and performance and things like that uh moving on because we got their questions are rolling in we want to get to as many as we can what is the highest frame rate you can shoot without the wall stuttering and rolling again it's not an easy answer so um generally you're what about about 60 frames right now and there are ways of getting around that but the answer is it's complicated it depends on a lot of other factors but there are a lot of r d done in this space especially we see that tabletop shooters are really embracing this technology um and i was obviously wanting to use like a bolt motion control uh and shoot at 300 frames per second we're getting there um it wasn't that long ago that you couldn't do any high speed and here we are doing 60 which is a free you know a pretty big achievement and so there's definitely more to come on that front uh question can we arrange for an in-person demo for my chicago creatives absolutely uh we did this as a webcast obviously because we need to be coveted safe and we are definitely uh planning if you're interested in reach out to us and we'd love to do a demo you know we also when things sort of settle down uh with covet and we've confined a really safe way to do it uh we would definitely like to have an open house so that we can bring in so reach out we'd love to help you with that um okay we got a question for kwame here how is the city of chicago planning on using this technology well uh we definitely are going to promote this to potential uh productions and the episodics that are already in town i mean it's a huge asset for the city and uh this is definitely something that we're going to let people know about and that we're going to promote as an asset for the infrastructure for a film production in the city of chicago uh next one does virtual production in unreal allow for the placement of a virtual foreground asset into the output video stream i'll kind of start this off and i see you nodding so i'm assuming you probably have some thoughts on as well the answer is yes uh with a lot of these things these are not yes or no questions right um you can definitely chain together more and more servers doing more and more things the fact that the moses is tracking all of this data and that we can also save that data on a take by take basis it gives you tons of options right so you can also have an unreal downstream that is also getting the most this data and live keying in like a 3d product right or so sometimes you may want to handle that in post-production in a traditional cgi workflow being able to save all of that camera data saves you from putting tracking marks all over the place and it also uh saves a lot of 3d tracks i'll let you kind of finish this one out sure and it it is also possible um to comp things in based on the way you're projecting things in in unreal and in display but i think part of what really helps tie the real world together with unreal is the use of practical props so yes that is possible but i think it would be worth testing depending on what the object is you want to place versus having an actual prop made or put in place instead of doing it virtually right and i kind of want to kind of play off that you know one of the things there if you notice on all of our shots we basically had foreground propping so sort of foreground middle ground and background this really goes a long way in just making the brain see it and seeing it as a 3d scene and it makes it if you just have an led background with people in front of it you always it's always going to look a little bit you know computer generated and you just got you can kind of elaborate on this yeah no and in a lot of the scenes that we were creating um for that spot we were looking for opportunities to put things whether it was a light pole whether it was a branch of a tree um whether it was a stanchion out at the airport because um while you can you can make things and and you can create uh you know color combinations between the wall and what the camera is seeing um that foreground element just creates that extra little bit that makes it even more believable that it's real all right uh i think we're coming close to the questions are starting to slow down what are the minimum room sizes some room size requirements i'm assuming that you're meeting with studio side so um boy who wants to take this one i mean it it that there's a lot of factors on that obviously it depends on what tiles you're using things of that nature as well um you can't put your person necessarily right on top of the wall with the two mil tile you could be a few feet away but you still need a little bit of separation between the wall and your subject and your camera so it's very similar to shooting green screen or blue screen sure you know you're not going to have your talent standing a foot away from the green screen exactly same rules apply here you'll find that a lot of the concepts in virtual production they mimic and mirror kind of the same things that we were used to i think a lot of people just get a little worried about there's a lot of new terminology in this technology you know but in the end you kind of approach the shoot the same way we've been doing for for history you know the way film production goes all the way back um it's pretty much the same thing but just to give you an idea for scale i mean just from the beach scene that's going on behind us you know our actor i think is 12 feet from the wall and the camera is you know goes from maybe 18 feet to 12 feet from the actor so you're talking about 25 feet you know right there so that we're able to pull off a shot with ease so you don't necessarily need an enormous space but you know it would be hard to just drop this in anywhere sure i think this is going to be our last question here because we're getting low on time uh are you making a copy of this demo available i've had some clients i'd like to share with of course we will definitely be reaching out we'll be posting this whole um presentation so that uh on youtube and vimeo and so stay stand by for that will provide a lot of that information so that you know share this out you know we did this as a way to really just bring virtual production to the chicago production community uh you know the community is really starting to thrive and we just think that this is the future and we just really wanted to have a really good workflow and a team and you know basically compete on the world stage with a lot of the other really large productions you know obviously what disney did for virtual production is that they put the concept on the map you know disney is a brand that has you know very large financial and technical resources working on arguably the largest franchise in history star wars they had the ability to do this any way they wanted and they chose to use this technology and you know we've a lot of us have been working on stuff like this long before man we are in and what disney did is they basically validated that this is a valid workflow and this is a workflow that has so many benefits that it's gonna it's gonna be around for a long time and now you're starting to see all the manufacturers like moses and fujinon and arie you know zeiss and everybody they're all basically uh investing heavily in this technology so this is not just something we're doing this is something we're seeing on a global scale uh with that you guys have any closing remarks we'll start with mark any closing remarks uh i'm just really happy to be a part of the event thank you for making me part of this guys it's been an awesome experience and you know as a dp being able to to shoot in the virtual production environment is exciting because even though there is in some ways complicated visual effects going on at the end of the day it is the camera just shooting in its environment and yeah that's fun to see at video village that that's very important because i think it's so important to normalize this to make it not some kind of just special effects thing that is that is used only in feature work and to make it part of a normal cinematography uh production process sure and and i think too you know as someone who i went through the downturn this year went from being very busy to having work virtually stopped and it has picked up some since then but for me it hasn't all the way come back and and this is exciting because i can see the future here in this too where if there's commercials that need to be shot and the crew sizes get too large or there's you know locations we can't safely enter this provides an opportunity for us to keep working right kwame do you have any last-minute things to add well i just want to echo everything that everyone just said and definitely uh we're excited about this uh you know when you deal with an environment like chicago where there's you know a lot of inclement weather and where you have situations where there are places that you just can't film in police stations the fuselage of an airplane these are all requests that we're constantly getting so this is an option that we definitely appreciate and then it's a huge asset to the infrastructure of the city yeah that's a very good point i mean there are so many places that you want to film and you want to shoot we do a lot of filming uh out at the airport with one of our clients and it's you know they're trying to get airplanes off the gate and the last thing they want is a very large crew in that environment so the ability to take some of that production and put it into an environment like this and still have people who are viewing it believe that they're at the airport is very important right so that we're going to close that out so in case anyone joined late we're going to run the spot that you saw at the top of this webcast again uh this is uh you know we spent a bunch of days shooting everything in this spot that you're about to see again was shot virtually uh obviously in a tongue-in-cheek matter and with that we wish everybody stay safe i can't wait to get this production environment going again if you have any questions please reach out and thank you very much our favorite things in life are traveling the world fine dining and exploring the great outdoors we're not going to let anything stand in the way of doing the things we love to do not migraines not allergies and certainly not a tight production schedule or budget so if we want to ski the alps and stroll the canals of venice and watch the sunset from a hawaiian beach all from the same location now we can side effects may include more efficient production schedules much smaller production expenses and total creative control of [Music] environments [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Resolution Productions Group

Views: 4,354

Rating: 4.9200001 out of 5

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Id: c3AtksnPr-o

Length: 55min 11sec (3311 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021