Your virtual production weekend watchlist

Welcome to the weekend in VP Land -

Got a roundup of videos to check out today, along with a breakdown of some of the visuals that were employed on the Sphere at the Vegas F1 race.

Let’s jump into it!

SCREENING ROOM

Your Weekend Queue

A few videos on our radar that are worth grabbing some tea or coffee and checking out.

The short film FLITE, directed by Framestore’s Chief Creative Officer Tim Webber, is now available to view above.

There’s an in-depth interview with Webber in Issue 12 of before & afters magazine.

Stargate Studios founder Sam Nicholson published a BTS video of Shrapnel, a VP production that used a hybrid setup of LED panels and greenscreen with real-time keying for preview.

• 70 Setups a Day: Part of the goal was to test how fast they could move with a VFX heavy shoot with lots of stunts, action, and handheld camera work.

• Real-time Greenscreen: Blackmagic tools enabled the multicam, real-time keying pipeline, using an ATEM Mini Extreme ISO, Ultimatte for keying, and 8 HyperDecks to record all ISO feeds.

• 4 ISOs Per Camera: Each HyperDeck recorded foreground, background, composite, and the alpha channel for each camera.

Bilawal Sidhu published an excellent roundup video of all the fascinating applications he’s seen of reality capture, from Gaussian splats to 3D scene scanning and everything in between.

He also dropped a new favorite phrase: Visual Umami

A few highlights:

• Creating reality-bending VFX

• Dynamically capturing movement in 3D

• Relighting subjects dynamically based on new environment scans

• Reality capture for virtual production plates

• Connecting physical and digital worlds

Also check out Bilawal’s newsletter Creative Tech Digest.

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SECOND UNIT

How the Vegas Sphere Took the F1 Broadcast to New Levels

The Las Vegas Grand Prix is a few weeks behind us. F1 racing milestones aside, this was the first time we got to see the Vegas Sphere in full action as part of a live broadcast and sporting event.

Here’s a roundup of some of the most innovative uses:

• Displaying this awesome (and now iconic) Las Vegas art collage

• A giant American flag for the national anthem

• Individual driver graphics for their introduction

• Emoji face in a race helmet watching the cars drive by

• Changing to a red or yellow orb to reflect any race flags

• Turning into a massive checkered flag and showing the podium winners

In the Sphere’s digital shadow was another impressive LED display: the F1 logo on top of the custom-built paddock. This also updated with graphics, sometimes mirroring the Sphere, like this hero graphic of pole setting Charles Leclerc.

Structures built for the web: The inside of the sphere is built to experience in person.

The outside is built for the web.

Many of the graphics can only fully be appreciated from aerial shots (especially the F1 roof, which can only be seen from above).

It’s a structure for capturing ‘wow’ images for social media and for taking live broadcasts to the next level. It will be interesting to see how future venues are designed to bring hybrid graphics to live broadcast events and make them share-worthy.

VIDEO VILLAGE

AKS

🌐 Around the Web

🕺 HTC VIVE launches Ultimate Trackers and FOTA 6 platform improvements

🎞️ 'Play Your Way Into Production' game explores working in the film and TV industry

🗓 Schedule posts and track your social media with Metricool*

🤳 Breakdown of the multiverse looking wedding photo circulating online (and how the iPhone camera uses computational algorithm when taking pictures)

📹 Camera Review: Blackmagic Design URSA Mini Pro 12K OLPF

🟩 Breadbin Productions uses the Ultimatte 12 HD real-time compositing processor for virtual production

* Sponsored Link

CALL SHEET

📆 Upcoming Events

December 3
Virtual Production Meetup
Lake Balboa, California
Virtual production basics on a green screen for newbies, and more.

December 4 to 6
stYpe Virtual Production Academy
Shanghai, China
Elevate your virtual production skills in the heart of Shanghai.

December 6
Cuebric and disguise Big Reveal
Virtual / disguise Los Angeles office
Join the livestream for the showcase event.

December 11
Virtual Production: Exploring career options in a new artform
Virtual
Online panel discussion delving into the spectrum of roles in Virtual Production and the LED volume.

December 12
Live Session: AI Video for Pre and Post-Production
Virtual
From storyboards to visual effects, learn how to incorporate Runway's production and enterprise-ready tools into your creative workflows.

January 8 to 12
Virtual Production Essentials - Final Pixel Academy/Media Cymru
Atrium, University of South Wales
Carefully curated bespoke Virtual Production intensive week developed specifically for advertising, film and video agencies, and production companies based in Wales. 

Istituto Marangoni Visual Design Courses

Visual Design
Multimedia design for integrated communication
Milano - Sept 2023 to Jul 2024
London - Oct 2023 to Jun 2024

Digital Design for Immersive Experiences
Bridging physical and digital worlds and leveraging the power of immersive installations
Milano - Sep 2023 to Dec 2024

Have a film-related event to share? Just reply back to this email and let us know the details.

ABBY SINGER

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