Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1492604
VIRTUAL PRODUCTION www.postmagazine.com 11 POST JAN/FEB 2023 ALKEMY X CREATES 10 ENVIRONMENTS FOR T-MOBILE SHOOT NEW YORK CITY — Alkemy X (https://www.alkemy-x.com) and director Jonathan Yi used virtual production and extended reality (XR) techniques on a new package for T-Mobile for Business. LED volume screens displayed envi- ronments that were created in Unreal Engine, which Yi and his team designed months prior to the shoot. The production team collaborated remotely in the metaverse with agency VCCP NY using Oculus headsets, and 3D design and modeling software, Gravity Sketch. This allowed everyone to get a comprehen- sive look at what the environments would look like, long before ever stepping on-set. The project came together during a Seattle-based shoot, allowing the production to make final adjustments in-person. Alkemy X ultimately created 10 photorealistic locations for the three videos that were produced on the same stage. This would have been both physically and logistically impossible without these techniques, and resulted in major time and cost savings, as well as a decrease in production travel, thereby cutting down on carbon emissions. The team leveraged the Mo-Sys StarTracker, which uses an LED sensor and small reflectors mounted in the studio to map the orientation of a real-world camera into the pre-modeled virtual environments, which were rendered in realtime. This allowed the team to map the Unreal environments on the volume wall so that when the camera — an Arri Mini LF with Zeiss Supreme Prime lens- es — moved, the Unreal environment reacted realistically to its movement. Given the in-depth work crafting the environments during pre-production, the post production scope was scaled down as compared to similar projects of this scope, with no green screen cleanup and very little compositing needed to complete the project. Adobe Premiere and After Effects, as well as Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve were used in the post production process. IMPOSSIBLE OBJECTS ACHIEVING GREATER SUSTAINABILITY VIA VIRTUAL PRODUCTION LOS ANGELES — Creative studio Impossible Objects (https://www.impossi- ble-objects.co), which specializes in virtual production for both commercial projects and original content, is embracing realtime technology to blend the physical and digital worlds. The studio was founded by Joe Sill and Jerad Anderson, and has established a number of partnerships that have allowed them to contribute to projects for Blizzard, Google Play, Western Digital, Honda and Toyota. Impossible Objects' preferred LED stage partner is NantStudios in El Segundo, CA. NantStudios' 24,000-square-foot LED stage is powered by Unreal Engine and includes technology such as Brompton's Tessera SX40 LED processors, ROE Visual's Black Pearl BP2 LED panels and Carbon CB3 LED panels. Impossible Objects has filmed several projects at NantStudios, including an automotive demo film for the Polestar 2 electric vehicle. The demo was created to convey the potential of virtual production to automotive marketers. In it, a driver heads out of town, taking her Polestar 2 through the city and into the distant mountains, with the light and reflections changing throughout. All of the environments were created ahead of time in Unreal Engine and shot on the NantStudios volume, with Brompton's (www.bromptontech.com) processors helping to maximize the performance from the LED panels. "With each production at NantStudios, we can rely on their experienced team and the outstanding visual performance enabled by Brompton process- ing to deliver exemplary results," notes Impossible Objects' Joe Sill. "Especially for automotive projects, we're aiming to achieve a very seamless photoreal look, and Brompton helps us deliver that. With the Polestar shoot, we came in with our environments, and with Brompton's Dynamic Calibration technology and the 3D LUT feature, we were able to see our footage in the camera exactly as we had built it in Unreal Engine. We were very happy with those results." "Brompton's extended bit depth capabilities were also a huge benefit on the Polestar project, as we had a lot of ambient light and reflections that all needed to be accurate," adds Luc Delamare, Impossible Objects' head of technology and virtual production supervisor. "The added precision you get with extend- ed bit depth, especially on the low-end brightness levels, makes a significant difference compared to what we've seen previously." The Polestar project enabled everyone involved to understand both the creative and sustainability impacts of virtual production. The ability to film mul- tiple environments, all from the same set, makes production more streamlined and efficient, while reducing the financial and environmental costs of travel. "What we were able to achieve on this project, thanks to virtual production innovations, has really energized the automotive advertisers," notes Sill. "It has opened up a whole new world of creative possibilities, while also achieving greater sustainability in the production process — something that's particularly important to electric vehicle makers like Polestar."