Making Movies is Going Virtual

Making Movies is Going Virtual 

You may ask, what is virtual production? Isn’t that what we’ve had this whole time? Well, no not really. In the beginning there was film. Like actual, old school film that required a crank and spool in order to record images and where the cutting room floor was an actual place. This kind of technology was the pinnacle of movie making since its introduction in the mid 1800s, and though there were various developments in projectors and recording devices since then, the process remained largely the same and was the primary way in which movies were made. That is, until the digital camera hit the scene in the early 2000s. 

At the time digital cameras didn’t exactly measure up to the quality standard that film was cranking out. Many people and experts alike even thought that digital cameras were a fad and weren’t worth the investment, but much like people thought the internet was a fad in the early 90s, they were very very wrong. The potential of going digital was unbounded and those who realized that invested in it, and would ultimately go on to blow film cameras out of the water in every category in just a few years.

With virtual production we are seeing an incredibly similar situation happening that we did when digital production took over film, but now we can recognize the signs and symptoms of the coup d’etat and prepare to embrace it in order to go forth into the unknown and release the true potential of movie making. Virtual production as of now is where the digital world and the real world meet in the middle and create a hybrid of sorts, the term itself covering a wide range of computer aided tools and methods for filmmaking all included under the same umbrella. For now, with digital production, it’s a rather linear process where the visual effects are usually inputed near the end of filming. In general this means that, hypothetically, if a director is making a movie and working with his actors and says, “O.K. I want all of you to pretend you’re in a jungle and you’re running from an enormous boulder.” The actors have to pretend and have to try to envision a giant boulder chasing them with little more to go on, and the director has to pretend along with them and hope it comes together in post production. Whereas with virtual production things are different. 

During the virtual production process, virtual and computer generated aspects can be generated in real time before, during and after the actual production which allows for greater flexibility for everyone involved. Terms like motion capture are becoming a staple in the industry allowing an actors body, movements, gestures, features, and expressions to be recorded in incredible details which allow for advanced visual effects (VFX) artists and developers to adjust, animate, or even completely change on a whim. In studios that are set up for it, large format screens are set up that have cameras embedded in them, making the studio walls an interactive high resolution environment allowing for the actors to better delve into their craft with this immersive technology, and for directors to better visualize how a scene may play out and make adjustments as needed. The best part is that we are just barely scratching the surface of what virtual production is capable of. As of now virtual production is a hybrid, a combination of both the virtual and physical world, whereas where it’s heading is towards becoming a new species entirely, a purebred that will take over the whole of the entertainment industry. Relative to how DVDs were a stepping stone from VHS tapes to Netflix, virtual production as of now is only the beginning and a stepping stone to going completely virtual in the near future.

Gargantuan companies such as Disney, Paramount, and Warner Brothers beginning to adopt and even help to further develop the virtual production process is a huge tipping point. When enough studios adopt a process, there becomes a demand for supply, which in turn leads to more manufacturers creating the tech, more people who want to learn the programs and more schools who teach about how it works and how to use it. This leads to further development and at the rate things are going it’s only a matter of time before we won’t need to have physical studios anymore. Much in the same way that movies were physically made with a camera and in order to get the film from your director you had to physically walk over and get it, now media can be transferred with the touch of a button, and it won’t be long before everything is done exclusively with a computer screen.  

Why have a physical brick and mortar studio when you can have one with you at all times that can fit into your pocket? Why have studio lights that break when you could have a virtual light that can be moved anywhere in a scene and adjusted to any setting conceivable? Why take so much time and effort to fabricate a physical environment or background that has to be taken apart every time a scene changes when you can make something on your computer that looks better, that can move, and change completely as needed whenever you want? The costs that add up for a physical production far outweigh the money that could be saved and used as an investment into the future of technology. Imagine never having to buy materials to put together a set that will be blown up in the next scene and never used again? Maybe not today, maybe not next month, maybe not even next year, but sometime in the very near future when enough investment in technology, the people who make it, and the people who use it has reached its pinnacle, movie making will be entirely virtual. The process has already begun, it’s only a matter of time before movie making as we know it will change forever.

About Vedette Finance

Vedette Finance, founded in 2012, by CEO and Founder, Tarek Anthony Jabre, is a film development and finance company, with a wide reaching international network of finance and talent. For more information, visit www.VedetteFinance.com