Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1522701
dor for previs. And then the other primary vendors were—aside from DNEG— a company called Whiskeytree, Wētā Digital, and Rodeo FX. I had some secondary vendors as well. One of note was The Distillery. But the principal four vendors in post production were DNEG, Whis- keytree, Wētā Digital and Rodeo FX. Did they focus on specific episodes or scenes, or across the entire series? Stephen Rosenbaum: They worked pretty much across the board. Wētā was the outlier in that respect. They only worked on Episode 9. But the other three principal vendors worked across all the epi- sodes. And we cast them into certain roles. For example, Rodeo FX principally did environment extension work, but they also did some in-air battle sequences. The same with Whiskeytree, for that matter. They did some plane sequences and then also did some environ- ment extensions, whereas DNEG principally just stuck to air-battle sequences. You've embraced virtual production in your feature film work- flows in the past. What was the extent of using LED volumes in this case? Stephen Rosenbaum: The virtual production work we had done specifically in this case was building LED walls. We had three-and-a- half volumes. I'd say 90 to 95 percent of that work was plane work. It was mostly interior plane shooting. For example, our primary vol- ume was a large, horseshoe-shaped configuration. It stood about nine meters high by about 15 meters wide. And at the opening of the horseshoe, we had inserted a large motion base on which we rested plane set pieces. Primarily, we had the nose and the cockpit set piece, interior set piece. The actors would be inside of these sets, and we would have cameras inside and sometimes strapped to the outside of the sets, shooting the actors. If you want to break it down, anything that was facing inward, looking at the actors or interior, looking out over the actors was a set, usually shot up on the volume. Anything wider than that was computer generated. We would intercut with interior shots of the actors reacting, and then reverse cameras over their shoulders looking out at the action. And in that case, they were able to respond to the content that we play back on the walls. And that content was previs. When people are doing LED wall work, they're trying to play back what we call 'final-pixel' content. In this case, the schedule didn't warrant us preparing the final-pixel quality. It was just too much con- tent. It was nearly five-and-a-half hours of content…So I made the decision to just playback previs content, which was the right deci- sion in the sense that it gave the actors an idea of what the action was out the windows. Their eye lines were accurate. The lighting was accurate. You could get interactive explosions, flak blasts, and so forth. The camera knew how to respond as well. So as the plane flew by, they could whip pan with a German fighter as it flew past the win- dows. There was a total understanding with just enough playback from the previs. From that, then we had to replace most of the con- tent that was out the windows using rotoscoping techniques. The series' primary LED volume was a large horseshoe shape. 16 cgw a p r i l • m ay • j u n e 2 0 2 4