Synchronised Realities in Film Production

Blackfish is the first virtual production studio in Poland, synchronising the real and virtual reality using gaming technology. But what the virtual production actually is? And what it means for future of film and advertising industry?

Imagine: you can teleport yourself and the whole film crew! Of course, it’s an illusion but good enough for the camera to show it as visually believable 2D picture, photorealistic with perfectly matched perspective and light. As a viewer, you don’t see where one reality ends and the other starts.

Real time virtual production is recording real actors’ scenes inside a photo-realistic digital game engine environment. Sounds complicated? Yes, but this is one of the simplest definitions.

The biggest opportunity in virtual production is – you hardly need to learn it. Once you see it and experience it, you intuitively know how it works. We are not changing any of the usual tools of film production. The camera, the lenses, the grip and the lights are exactly the same. The only difference is the filming location. We are in a film studio inside a computer-generated game, projected on huge, high quality LED walls around us.

Virtual Production - How it Works

Almost everyone has at least once played a first person POV shooter game. We know how it works. You can walk around a game level and you can look around. Wherever you point your POV (or simply your gun), from this perspective you will see the game level. Rule number one of these games is to move all time, so your POV changes all time and is generated in real time by the computer or console. It’s kind of obvious in first person POV games but in fact this is how a virtual location works. The camera is tracked, and the engine generates perspective for this POV in real time and projects it on the LED wall.

The main difference is - in a game we are moving the game level with an assumption that the player’s eyes are all time in front of the monitor. In Virtual production we have much bigger screen and movement of camera, so the system adjusts the view.

The virtual production happens with usually a bit longer preproduction, but almost zero or limited postproduction needed. Director’s and DOP’s teams are involved in prep together with virtual production team. So, let’s say: it’s post in prep. We see the result already on set in camera.

Blackfish studio’s expertise is to plan, predict and be able to test as long as we feel and believe the magic is here.