By Alex James Kane, AVIXA
If you’ve ever heard innovative filmmakers or game developers talk about “the volume,” there are actually two or three different variations on the concept, depending on the technological context of a given production. More and more, in common parlance, the volume refers to a relatively nascent tech developed by Industrial Light & Magic for The Mandalorian.
Inspired by the work of blockbuster filmmakers like Jon Favreau (The Lion King ’19), Gareth Edwards (Rogue One), and Gore Verbinski (Rango), ILM StageCraft and similar technology have been widely adopted by the film industry at an astonishing pace—made all the more attractive during early COVID-19 lockdowns and safety protocols.
When you think of how a live-action scene is shot for movies or television, you might conceive of a fairly simple either-or dichotomy: the actors go to a location and shoot the scene “for real,” or they do it on a green-screen (or blue-screen) stage, with the background and other elements of the scene added digitally in post-production. While these are still common ways of doing business, it leaves out the messy gray areas in between, which are not unique to the StageCraft volume but date all the way back to the earliest days of cinema.
What is LED Volume?
An LED volume is a large, curved wall made of high-resolution LED screens that displays realistic virtual environments for filmmakers to shoot live-action scenes against. Unlike traditional green screens, the LED volume projects real-time backgrounds that respond to camera movement, making scenes look more natural and believable.
If you watch movies that predate the prevalence of digital VFX (or CGI), from 1980s science fiction to old black-and-white Westerns, you’re likely aware of techniques like matte paintings and rear projection. From the earliest silent films and Hitchcock thrillers to all the digital action spectacles and Marvel movies since, many of the most memorable shots in motion picture history involve some form of compositing, where two or more images are spliced together to create an illusion that shocks the senses, awes us, or transports us somewhere we’ve never been before. Continue reading…
SOURCE:
AVIXA.ORG: https://www.avixa.org/pro-av-trends/articles/led-volume-for-immersive-productions
