Virtual production decentralizes Hollywood

How LED screens are changing film production

Things were looking good for Diamond View at the start of 2020. The Tampa-based creative video agency was shooting Super Bowl spots and other glitzy commercials for clients like Jack Daniels, Subway and Jeep. Then COVID-19 arrived and productions across the country were shut down overnight.

“When the pandemic hit, it was very obvious: if we couldn’t travel, we couldn’t do our job,” Diamond View founder Tim Moore said in a recent chat with Protocol. “If we can’t solve this problem, we will go bankrupt.”

The team needed a way out and came across virtual production, a new approach centered on real time which, among other things, includes the use of giant LED screens to film the actors in front of whatever background a scene calls for.

• Using these types of LED screens offers two advantages: scenes don’t need to be shot on location, and talent doesn’t have to act in a vacuum in front of some green screen. Instead, actors, directors, cameramen, and everyone else can see in real time what the scene will look like.
• These types of LED screens were used by Disney’s Industrial Light & Magic to shoot “The Mandalorian” and by Netflix to make “1899,” among other projects.
• Moore soon discovered that off-the-shelf LED technology was too expensive for his company, so he began sourcing the components himself. “99% of the world’s LEDs are made in Shenzhen,” he said.
• Moore’s team built a 100-foot LED wall from scratch for the company’s Tampa studio and used it to shoot commercials for clients like Mercedes-Benz.
• Then something unexpected happened: Moore started getting a lot of incoming requests to build custom LED walls for third-party studios. “We never thought of this as a business model,” Moore said. “We were just cheapskates who couldn’t afford the real stuff.”

Encouraged by the response, Moore decided to double down on virtual production. Diamond View created Vū Technologies as a separate company, installed 10 LED walls in third-party studios, and raised a $17 million funding round to create its own network of virtual production studios.

• Vū has since opened studios in Las Vegas and Nashville, and plans to move to Orlando soon.
• The company wants to build an extensive network of studios across the country, which can then be used to film Hollywood-quality fare everywhere. “We expect to open about 10 this year,” Moore said.

Virtual production allows companies to effectively decentralize their work. Instead of having everyone in one place, they can cooperate in multiple studio spaces.

• “If the director is in New York, the actor is in LA, the DP is in Atlanta, they can walk into a studio and they can make a movie or a video,” Moore said. “This is a major paradigm shift that will really disrupt the industry in the next two to three years.”
• This kind of decentralized approach is not only cheaper and faster, but it’s also a safer way to do business during future waves of COVID-19. “Our goal is not to have hundreds and hundreds of people on set,” Moore said. “It’s a much more confined and controlled environment.”

Virtual production is adopted across the industry for various reasons. Along with cost savings and security concerns, LED walls and other real-time technologies allow directors and producers to change things up during a shoot, where they previously had to fix errors in post-production.

• “That doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to make the movie any faster,” Shawn Dunn, senior product manager at Epic Games, said during a recent panel on the subject. “But you’re going to see a lot more iterations, which will give us a much better product in the end.”
• Dunn, whose company’s Unreal Engine is often used in conjunction with LED walls for virtual productions, also admitted that the industry is still in its “MacGyver” phase, with a number of companies developing local technologies to meet their needs.
• “We’ve seen people put up an LED wall that was just one TV,” he said.

Vū Technologies has now done 150 shoots in front of LED walls, but Moore is already thinking beyond commercial video productions. Eventually, the same technology could be used for virtual events, corporate training and even education, he suggested. Vū’s ultimate goal was to build “the largest network of multi-user simulators in the world,” Moore said. “I think it will spread to several other industries.”

—Janko Roettgers

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Today’s employment landscape is challenging for organizations looking to recruit and retain top technology talent. Recent labor trends, many of which are fueling the Great Resignation, have shown leaders across industries that their employees are looking for more.

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