Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1505029
Fall 2023 – LOCAL695.COM 31 overlaying them live over the actors. This allowed the director and actors to see the 3D cartoons playing basketball together in real time while filming. Conversely, while working on Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, we used entire rooms of 180° video walls where the set is placed inside the walls, and the walls change the imagery while rolling. This means a green screen and huge sets are no longer needed. The backgrounds are baked into the picture and look seamless on camera. Video assist has revolutionized the entire creative process! What we can do now is amazing, but it is additional work. With the new demands of technology and the current shooting culture of wanting to see a quasi-final concept of the finished product while shooting it, extra demands are being made in the video assist world. After recently being part of Local 695's LED wall training at Stargate Studios and going through ROE Academy's LED wall certification program, I realized that modern Video Engineers and Video Assist Operators need multiple skill sets comprised of many visual components. You need to understand camera processes, video editing, VFX workflows, color timing, and video engineering to get these walls working in the camera frame. The technology available continues to get more complex and our skill sets as Video Engineers have to grow along with it. Yet getting additional staffing on any given production can be like pulling teeth! On a conceptual level, all of this isn't that different from what Video Assist Operators have always traditionally done. We've always been responsible for recording all the video and reference audio signals, cataloging that media for later reference, and playing it back for all parties. It's the massive scope of what this work entails that has grown in a huge way. Video engineering is entering a new renaissance right now. It is a very complex visual field now in palette which you collaborate with directors and producers continually. Your computer is your palette and you assist the directors to create these new worlds instantly while recording. You will need to be more ingenious in order to succeed. All of this happens from your three little carts, on a film set wherever in the world you are, with your little wheels pushing around your long octopus cables, running like the wind to get it all plugged in, streamed, and working before the camera sets up. It's a whole new exciting game out there now. This is the next level of what's happening, where video engineering is headed and we are all very much needed on set to perform these duties. Live compositing of VFX in QTAKE for Star Trek: Picard.