Hollywood is looking to new solutions to allow for minimal human contact whilst filming movie and TV projects, enter StageCraft technology that has already been used extensively on The Mandalorian and The Lion King.
VFX supervisor Rob Legato (The Lion King, The Jungle Book) is not having as much trouble working at home and making movies as he thought. He told Indiewire, “As much as it’s great to be in the same room with people, sometimes you don’t need to be,” he added. “I have a setup in my basement similar to The Lion King with a dolly, hand-held camera, pan, and tilt wheels and using the Unreal game engine with an operator on Google Meet.”
It turns out that it might be all you need with modern technology.
Legato is currently working with an unnamed director on a huge pitch involving a ton of visuals. In order to meet the goals he set for himself prior to the pandemic, he has found a way to continue to work from home.
Legato operates the camera, filming a car chase with characters he animated on a virtual location. “It’s going to be based on real locations, and it’s going to look photoreal, and some bits and pieces, as you construct the sequence, will have a video wall setup,” he said. “And one of the reasons we’re doing it with Unreal is, a bit like The Mandalorian, where, as we’re designing and creating the sequences, there’s an eye toward reproducing some of it on the video wall for close-ups of cars and sets that don’t have to be built or finished.”
So, is this where Hollywood is going?
We’ve covered this topic in other NFS articles, so I’ll keep it brief. StageCraft is an artificial landscape using the popular game engine Unreal Engine by Epic Games to support the backdrops in creating a reality with practical effects.
That means actors won’t’ t have to venture out into the real world and risk exposure, and this eliminates the need for costly, and time-consuming location shoots entirely.
“It’s going to be the wave of the future, no question about it,” Legato said. “And people are really interested in it now [during the lockdown]. It’s hastening acceptance because of the ability to do it and be socially distant still.”
He elaborated, “You don’t need to hop from exotic location to exotic location for a day or two of work. You can plan out your sequence where you don’t have to do that. You can take advantage of the digital backlot, and you can basically replicate what you can get on location. It doesn’t take long to master it if you understand how it works, how to control it, what every set up is, how to light it, and how to color correct it.”
Rob Bredow, executive creative director and head of ILM, said to Indiewire, “There is a global shortage of shooting stages, and that’s not likely to change in the near term. StageCraft allows productions to significantly reduce the number of stages needed concurrently, given the flexible nature of the LED volume. The technology has come at just the right time to help the industry continue to produce quality content despite the challenges we all face.”
That seems ideal in these trying times.
Read more at the link below.
