Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1521956
T E C H 41 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E Airbender" at the WFW virtual production stage in Burnaby, Canada (operated by Pixomondo). It's a 2,200 square-meter, 310° virtual production stage, with 2,500 L E D w a l l p a n e l s a n d 76 0 L E D c e i l i n g panels. Toonen spent over six months on the Volume, working through numerous fantasy-based backgrounds in UE5. Seeing how the backgrounds work with the set and costumes is important, but getting a real- istic, cohesive look in-camera begins with pre-production collaboration among the art director, set designers, and virtual art department. The digital background is just one aspect of the whole production. As Toonen cautioned, "You can't just show up with backgrounds that a visual effects studio built, put the actors in front of it, and think you're going to shoot it. The whole goal of using an LED Volume is to achieve in-camera final visual effects and not replace everything after the fact. There needs to be a clear goal from the start. It's not just digital backgrounds. The best virtual production shoots are a marriage between the practical and virtual, and that can't just come from one department. It comes from everyone looking at the set and the scene we're trying to make, and finding the best version. " He offers a concrete example of an ocean scene: a ship deck is built on set and a vir tual sky and ocean are in the background. They work separately, but to make them work well together, there needs to be some interaction between them. "By wetting down the floors, or wetting down the props and the set, you're going to get all the real reflections from the LED walls. Something small like that really starts to blend the two. Some of the most successful sets — like Pixomondo's work on 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' and 'Discovery' — have a lot of reflections, such as completely reflective floors, because it just adds that extra parallax and movement and realism. That's something you could only capture in real life. If it were shot on green screen, it wouldn't have those natural reflections. But again, you have to start as early as possible with the visual effects team, lighting team, cinematographer, and director working together to achieve it all in camera." To help a virtual production look re- alistic, points where practical and virtual elements meet, such as the floors, should match perfectly. While on set, Toonen does a process called " blending" in UE5. He explained, "You have a lot of creative tools in Unreal Engine 5, like one to color-correct regions. You can color grade parts of your virtual scene — make them darker, brighter, change the color temperature, or change the color entirely — just like you can in Da- Vinci Resolve or any compositing software. This allows you to blend the practical and virtual seamlessly." Also, lights can be added to the virtual world in UE5 to match the practical set. For instance, if a lighting team adds a bright hair light behind an actor, Toonen can add a light that is the same color temperature in the virtual background. "I can add that around the actor, or to the top of different buildings behind them, just to take it to that next level and do things you would be doing in post. We have the flexibility to pull that off on-set," he said. I t 's i m p o r ta n t to n o te t h a t d ra s t i c lighting changes (such as changing day to night) will require "light baking" in UE5. VIRTUALLY SPEAKING: Members of a virtual production workshop learn the ropes; facing page: virtual production on Netflix's "The Last Airbender." P H O T O : N E T F L I X