Has virtual production lived up to the hype?

A 2021 trend report commissioned by the Göteborg Film Festival predicted that Virtual Production would be completely normalised by 2026. Now that this year has arrived, Sam Kemp at Garden Studios gives his views on whether this forecast has come true.

Virtual production has become a part of most modern productions, at least in the context of simulated travel. Most HETV and feature films use LED volumes to shoot driving scenes with their principal talent, due to the speed and ease of shooting compared to traditional low-loader methods. 

Advertising clients were some of the first to use VP to enable productions to work during the pandemic, which has continued and been honed into further cost savings, while also increasing creativity with experienced directors writing treatments with VP in mind.

However, some poorly executed VP productions have given incorrect expectations to producers and creatives that VP can never deliver photoreal environments or backdrops to match the quality of traditional greenscreen compositing.

The cost of VP also remains high compared to traditional production methods, and the knowledge required to maximise schedules and thus make cost savings is still lacking in the wider industry.

VP has a higher cost-per-day of shooting, which can initially put inexperienced teams off before they have a chance to understand the real cost savings that come through efficiency, and a reduced total number of shooting days.

According to Variety, the FX TV series, Snowfall, saved up to US$49K per episode by using VP to reduce transportation man-hours, shooting time and crew loads.

VP ultimately reduces risk and creates a controlled environment where almost all costs can be planned for in advance. Compared to location shoots that might incur unexpected costs, or scenes that require significant VFX work later. 

The knowledge gap in conventional production teams is definitely shrinking – more and more of the technical crews we work with have some experience working on a volume stage. Producers are less wary of using VP due to this increased understanding, reducing the amount of onboarding and prep with incoming crews, which reduces the overall cost of a volume shoot.

Even so, there is still a knowledge and experience gap in technical crews to successfully run a volume, which limits how quickly the VP industry can scale. Productions need to bring in experienced VP supervisors early, ideally during prep, to help advise how best to proceed on simple things like correctly matching the lens height of photographic driving plates to each vehicle for correct perspective.

Although many VP courses teach Unreal Engine and ‘VP supervision’ in a week, very few tackle the wider skillset required to fill out an on-set VP team: image processing, colour pipelines, camera tracking and system infrastructure.

Still, more and more universities have been identifying VP as a key skillset to teach the next generation of filmmakers, with many constructing their own small volumes to allow students the necessary hands-on experience. 

VP technicians with experience across multiple disciplines are highly in demand as they can cover multiple bases, reducing the number of teams needed to execute, and therefore, the overall cost of the shoot. Media server operators with on-set experience are especially in demand due to the fast-paced changes required, not something typically required of those from a corporate or events background. 

Experience with image-based lighting is another key skill set where simulated travel is becoming the primary use case. Being able to best choose how to drive complex DMX lighting fixtures from different data streams isn’t just about traditional lighting craft, it incorporates networking and advanced lighting control software, too.

The technology is still new, and many processes still require manual adjustments by skilled operators, not dissimilar to the workings of the traditional film crew, but further efficiencies can likely be made to result in further time saved, and therefore, cost savings.

Time efficiency is the next big win for VP, reducing both the prep time and the time for on-set changes to minimise downtime and maximise the amount of the day being used to capture content. This comes from increased industry experience catching issues before the shoot day, as well as increased technology use, automating processes like media ingestion, plate perspective warping and colour-matching.

The pool of experienced VP technicians will grow, giving studios more resiliency and the ability to hire day players to scale up and down as required for individual shoots. Juniors in the industry will climb upwards, taking with them the VP knowledge gained and an awareness of virtual production as an important tool in the production toolbox.

Virtual production has become a key element of the film and TV industry, reducing long-term costs, decreasing production time, and improving sustainability. While there are still aspects keeping VP from being completely normalised, such as the skills shortage, it’s definitely been established as a critical technique.

Sam Kemp is VP supervisor at Garden Studios