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Virtual Production in association withThe Immortal Awards
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Behind the Green Screen: “We’re Democratising Content Production”

01/12/2022
Production Company
London, UK
366
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Morden Wolf founder and CEO, Rob Chandler, on what virtual production can add to the creative space and the goal of making content production accessible for all

Rob spent almost 30 years of his life helping top tier companies achieve their marketing goals. When covid hit, he rose to a new challenge to answer some of the questions he’d been pondering for years; why does good content production cost so much time and money, and what can we do about it?  

LBB’s discussion took a deep dive into the world of virtual production, as well as getting to know Rob on an individual level. Here, we get a front row seat to someone completely infatuated with the work they do, whilst gaining an insight into the work itself, and what we can expect from the future of Morden Wolf within the VP space.  

 

LBB> Rob, you’ve been on this VP journey for around two years now. Tell us a bit about yourself and what you did before.  

Rob> Up until the pandemic I’d spend the best part of 30 years working for high tech companies such as Microsoft and Epson in a marketing function. In the 90’s I worked for Psion, a UK company, who’s hand held computer was a precursor to the iPhone. Most recently I was at Salesforce.org, a large US CRM company with a philanthropic mission. There I was a global events director working on third-party and first person events.  

 

LBB> Why the move from corporate to VP? 

Rob> The reason for moving from the corporate world to setting up my own business is because VP seemed to answer a challenging question I’ve had over the years. Filming and live broadcast being really expensive, so limiting the volume of content that could be produced. Filming always took a lot of effort, time, and money, while social media content creators were production engines, kicking out creative by the bucket load, getting viewing numbers most brands could only dream about for a fraction of the cost. So, there is a huge gulf between these two methods of content production. VP seemed to answer that question with quicker more affordable content production, at a quality level brands felt comfortable with.

On one end of the technology scale, we have web cameras and iPhones. We can make content as much as we want, really cheaply, and effectively, free. But at a price, low production quality. High quality is something non-negotiable for brands. At the other end of the scale, where high production is demanded, the approach is largely inaccessible for the majority of creators and organisations. One of the reasons is that film production just can’t go wrong, reshoots or unplanned post production are really expensive, and no client is happy to pick up that bill. So, the ‘wedding’ approach is applied. For a stress-free memorable weddings, you have to cover all the bases with people and suppliers who know exactly what they are doing, even though they may only be involved for an hour, without them, you’re taking high risks on a day that hopefully, won’t be repeated and memorable for the right reasons.  

This approach is for all the right reasons, for example, while at Salesforce, they are very particular, and rightly so, in demanding their events to be 5 star, the same goes for their content production. Just like a wedding, for first person events, things just cannot go wrong. You can’t have the coffee come late, you can’t have the ice-cream melt. You can’t have the AV not working. Everything has to work because just like weddings, there’s no reshoot. But you have to pay a premium for that, right? And that's the same with filming, you can’t have the avoidable going wrong. The same goes for broadcast, it has to be really, really good.  

I saw an opportunity in virtual production for clients, creators and creative teams to be able to access the disruptive tech and innovative workflows that would increase their production value in a relatively cost-effective way and at speed. I could see it really impacting the world of content makers as well as indie filmmakers. But it also works right through the marketing mix; from advertising, to internal communications, training, hybrid events, important announcements etc. The great news is that virtual production is becoming more accessible because we know that the general development of technology means that once it has been invented, over time it gets better, cheaper, and faster.  

So, I decided to leave Salesforce and become one of a handful of virtual production studio founders.  

 

LBB> What skill from the corporate world has been most useful to you in the area of VP? 

Rob> Without a shadow of a doubt it is the production of live events. Because they are a moment in time and as I’ve mentioned you can’t ‘fix it in post’ for a live event. You can’t ask everyone to come back a week later because that didn’t go right. It’s about having the mentality that the shoot has to be right at the point of filming. So, everything needs to be sorted in pre-production. That’s the point. One of the biggest benefits of virtual production is that it’s all in the camera. You push the record button, and that magical CGI world comes to life in the real world. I’ve been doing this for two years and I still come into the studio and just giggle when I see it working.  

 

LBB> What role does pre-production and planning have in the current VP workflow? 

Rob>  Pre-production and communication will forever be the most valuable parts of the workflow. It only takes a tick in the wrong box, or a setting change for the system not to work properly. It can only take someone trying to be helpful to hold up a shoot for two hours. A client might ask, “can we just move that CGI a bit over?” If it’s a junior member who’s asked, they might not have the fortitude or experience to either say no, defer to a more senior producer or be able to explain the likely time impact. It really is just like a live event. If pre-production is done well, there are no stresses whatsoever, it can actually be relaxed. So, for production roles, I look to hire people who have produced live events or broadcast live, it is a core muscle that is very hard to learn on the fly.  

 

LBB> What kind of VP does Morden Wolf specialise in and why? 

Rob> We specialise in using live chroma keying, which has come a long way recently. So that is typically using a green screen studio, but it can also be blue. The process is very effective and simple. The tech turns everything of a particular colour, say green, transparent which allows you to superimpose a CGI background behind the live action, and most importantly, locking the live camera and lens movements to the background. You use green because it tends not to be in skin tones; same with blue. We use this method, relative to an LED screen because they are expensive to both buy or rent for the type of R&D and shoots we do. For the types of wide shots where LED come in to their own, you need a lot of space and panels. Whereas for green screen shoots there are a lot of studios, they are respectively cheaper to build, and the cost of the paint isn’t cheap, but it’s a fraction of the cost of LED panels. Interestingly, you can also use white cycs and flood them with green or blue light. We’ve recently tested it and it works perfectly for cowboy shots and closer, you need the right space and lighting but it’s really quite amazing when you see it. So, you can imagine great use cases, a fashion shoot for example which includes green clothing, you can just change over to a blue light. That flexibility is incredibly appealing to an area like ecommerce. 

What’s also very cool is that the studio tech can be moved around quite easily. We have previously set up the virtual production kit in an existing green studio, and everything we needed fit into an Audi TT.  

To cement the point of flexibility- whilst you can record live (final pixel), you also have the ability to record the telemetrics (tracking data) of the camera and lens while shooting. That enables us to create a digital twin of the physical camera within the CGI environment. So as the camera moves around within the real world, so too does the virtual camera in the CGI world. Recording the telemetrics means you can update the CGI at a later date, and simply re-render it when final with all the camera and lens movements included. Post production would only require composting the foreground and background plates without any additional tracking as the parallax will be fully maintained. 

For example, if you’re relying on the CGI to be ready before talent turns up for a shoot, but the CGI is delayed, the talent will inevitably be hard to rebook with cost implications. With chroma keying VP, expensive talent can be filmed at any time while using a proxy CGI background. The final or updated CGI background can then be applied without expensive post production. 

This also opens up the ability to localise content really simply; the area of brand advertising and product placement is a perfect example. Maybe for an ad shoot we have a brand of cola for one market, but a different look and feel for another market. There’s no need to reshoot or duplicate the shoot with different sets. A simple update to the CGI art with the alternative brand can be made, then backplate is re-rendered with camera and lens data and voila, a simple post production process later and you have two localised versions.  

For the world of ecommerce, you could hone and grow it exponentially. For South African, French, Mexican etc audiences, unique backgrounds could be simply applied to a film as and when required.  

With the addition of multicamera filming, the creative possibilities and production flexibility is endless. 

 

LBB> How can VP reduce the size of teams required for shoots? 

Rob> We can shoot with just two people, which seems unthinkable. But we really don’t need a huge crew to be able to do certain productions as we’re in a controlled well-rehearsed environment. It’s not right for all productions, but this skeleton crew mimics the approach that social media content creators take. Be lean with less fuss, less time, less money and yet produce more content. 

We aim to just push the record button and capture immediately. There is far less stopping and starting as long as everything has been tested for beforehand, the scene and shots work. And in the majority, the final results are perfect for the type of content required.

However, I would never recommend it for clients or a crew who are new to VP unless they were super open minded, willing to feel uncertain or taken a short awareness course. 

 

LBB> Can you see an opportunity to combine green and LED production? 

Rob> There is no reason why you wouldn’t combine LED with green/blue screen in a hybrid virtual production workflow. But there is also no rational reason why you wouldn’t combine it with a traditional location shoot or set build shoot, or a traditional post-production approach either. It is a tool, just like the other options, for delivering the story you are trying to tell. As these technologies mature, new technologies are going to come out as well; so in 12 months’ time we might be talking about another technology which is under the banner of virtual production.  

None of them are going to replace the other and that’s the key thing to bear in mind. Set builds have never replaced location shoots and VP, LED or otherwise, won’t replace sets, what they will do is give options.   

Be it LED volumes, chroma keying or the next best version of VP, they have been invented and can’t be un-invented, so to consider their use absolutely makes sense for a raft of reasons. 

My gut feeling is that the number of LED stages will continue to increase but they will be smaller (so cheaper to own or rent and run), making them more accessible to content makers. The compromise will be accepting that wide shots will have to be on a green screen or on a larger volume.  

There are huge benefits to using an LED stage but it's about asking what is the right tech for the shot. There is definitely value in working with a variety of scenarios. 

Future content makers will have to choose the technology or approach for the shot required, giving you the best result for the resources available. If your creative is based on Mars, and building a set isn’t possible, and there are no LED volumes available for budget or availability reasons, you’re going to be doing it on a green screen. The good news is that using the green screen VP flavour, is likely to be the cheapest option, especially where final pixel is acceptable. 

 

LBB> Talk to us about the ‘margin pyramid’.  

Rob> It’s all about the disruption of new technology and workflows. That’s effectively what apps and subscription models have done to a lot of businesses over the past decade. Where previously you had a box product, you can now subscribe to that as a service. With boxed products, someone would have had to design and produce the box, write and print the manual, then someone would have to move it around, stock it and the customer would have to pay for it up front at its full price. When the subscription model came out it killed all of that. It allows producers a bigger margin based upon the fact they have cut all of the logistics used previously with box products.  

That’s similar to someone who wants to commission content, as there are a lot of stages to deliver the final product. Traditionally, you need a venue suitable for the production; location, set or studio, grip hire, as well as pre-production, crew and post-production. Even for the smallest and most simple types of content, that’s pretty much that same workflow. You end up with this layered cake of freelancer and supplier margins that are continually growing. So, the end client gets this big bill because that’s how content has always been produced.  

What we at Morden Wolf are looking to do with VP is to be disruptive and own the production workflow from start to finish. But unlike boxed product examples, we don't see it impacting the status quo at all, our feeling is that it’ll open the floodgates to meet the demand for channels desperate for a production value higher than web cameras.

Ownership of the workflow in a VP context means that scripts can be written and commissioned, with simple virtual production and post-production in mind. Shooting on Mars, or a field full of candy will be as simple as a location shoot, if not simpler. 

 

LBB> What factors could be holding back the mass uptake of Virtual Production by corporate clients and smaller businesses? 

Rob>  I think it all comes down to lack of awareness really. While at my previous company we used to speak about ‘the art of the possible’. People just aren't aware of what ‘the art of the possible’ for VP is. You don’t know what you don’t know, right?. Clients and producers need to see and experience more VP in order to build that muscle.  

However, a really good VP is indistinguishable from any other method, you just don’t 9and shouldn’t notice it. So, it’s a bit of a challenge to show clients what the art of the possible actually is, unless you go left field creatively wise or constantly film BTSs. One great example of left-field creativity is one of our clients really leans into a stylized effect that is impossible to build in the real world. He has chosen to create these symmetrical and cartoon-esque environments, which aren’t striving for ‘realistic’ at all, but more interestingly, this approach opens the door to a whole new world of creative options.  

In addition, currently, clients are used to producing content in a particular way, with no real reason to change. With change comes risk. However, I do feel that over the next 24 months, with what we are facing economically, there will be a big increase in the use of VP. This is because budgets are going to need to achieve more with less. Clients are going to be challenged spending £30,000 on a single video when there is a way to do it very efficiently, for so much less, and we at Morden Wolf are here, waiting to guide them through that process.  

 

LBB> What technology does Morden Wolf rely on?  

Rob> As I mentioned before, we’re mainly in a greenscreen studio and specialise in real-time chroma keying. We do also use LED volumes but green paint is a lot cheaper to test with. For real time chroma keying, we use Mo-Sys StarTracker for camera tracking, digital twins of these are placed in Unreal Engine 5 with the Mo-Sys VP Pro enterprise UE plug-in. If you’re unaware, the CGI for most VP is built on a game development platform called, ‘Unreal Engine’.  

Mo-Sys has been producing StarTracker for quite some time and they are viewed in the industry as one, if not the best. We are very lucky that we’ve got three StarTrackers, combined with Blackmagic Ursa Mini cameras and Canon 18-80 lens. While StarTracker may not be the cheapest tracking system, it is absolutely rock solid, so we know that any problems generally aren’t from Mo-Sys’ technology, and any issues we do encounter tend to of human error. We also have a Mo-Sys StarTracker Studio, a powerful all-in-one, three camera Virtual Production Studio; it’s a plug and play system with external keyer, ATEM and render engines. You can load it in a van, deliver it to a pre-prepared studio (only requires reflective stickers on the ceiling or floor), plug it in and you have a virtual broadcast studio ready within an hour. It’s pretty cool!  

We have been quite lucky in that we have been able to access all of this. As I mentioned before, the hardware is guaranteed to get cheaper, easier to use and faster. Having done this for two years I can say it is very different now, compared to what was available only a few months ago.  

For instance, only last month nVidia launched their 4000 series of GPUs, which if the early tests are anything to believe, can handle nearly twice as much processing. This combined with Epic’s release of Unreal Engine 5.1, which processes virtual sets more efficiently, is set to make Virtual Production even more attractive.  

Mo-Sys are also launching the StarTracker Mini, this is a lower cost unit designed for smaller studios, education, and high-end YouTubers. These three releases are game changing for the creative industries, as every existing studio can become VP ready with a relatively low investment cost.  

In five years, VP will be an overnight success, as there is no rational reason it won’t be. 

 

LBB> Finally, can you tell us what Morden Wolf is working on at the minute? 

Rob> We are doing such nuts and the odd sensible thing right now;  

We’re testing metahumans (computer controlled humanoids which live in UE) interacting with a live actor, but also within a CGI environment. We are in concept phase using deep fake of historical figures, over the metahuman which is controlled by mo-cap and face-capture. The idea is that the main live actor’s character can interact with these figures while being filmed live, removing the need for lengthy post production. 

We have some non-standard training videos in production. Non-standard, as the training environments are set in the client’s future headquarters, the building has yet to break ground. We can typically shoot 20 to 30 of these simple short films in half a day, and edit them all in the other half day, all with a skeleton crew. It’s full on, but just needs that ‘live’ mindset to achieve these timelines. 

We are also excited about the emergence of the vertical format. It is how we naturally hold our mobile screens and it’s here to stay. I’m thinking a lot about TikTok because that exemplifies not just the vertical format but super short form storytelling. Yes, there are currently a lot of dogs and cats, but if you were around in the early 00’s that was pretty much what the internet was. This format is a huge opportunity for storytellers, creators, and information suppliers to rethink how to create content.  

I’m most excited about the disruption this type of VP will cause, and that it’ll put the fun back in production if approached appropriately. Once people get their heads around it, it’s brilliant. When people first see it in action it’s like having an 8-year-old come down on Christmas morning; they are genuinely gleeful. The ability to be really flexible, agile, creative and achieve these productions within the catering budget of some productions – so producing content ordinarily wouldn’t be achievable, is amazing. 

What we are doing here, is democratising content production for everyone, and that’s pretty great.


Morden Wolf is based in North Greenwich, London and also operates from Broadley Studios in Marylebone. To find more about how virtual production can impact your content, attend their skills workshops or discuss an installation please email: hello@mordenwolf.com

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