The film industry has a complicated relationship between technological advancements and tradition. As film makers we love going to the BSC expo every year and looking at all the shiny new film toys. The thing about all the new toys though is that they're based on old ways of doing things. We light a set, put actors in it and point a camera at them. That's not a criticism, it's a very successful formula that works and has worked for over a hundred years. Much like the internal combustion engine.
We have a phrase in the film business, 'industry standard'. It's an unofficial seal of approval. It means that the film equipment that falls into the welcoming embrace of 'industry standard' is battle tested, reliable and produces results to our expected high standards. An example of this would be the ARRI Alexa in it's various forms. It's been around for years and is reliable, familiar to all crews and produces a very high quality image.
It makes perfect sense, films are expensive to make and reliability saves money. Things going wrong on set costs time and time on set does not come cheap. We also have an industry standard for the way we do things in film. New ideas that break with the traditional way of doing things can be considered, risks. Risk is a word that investors don't like. However, breaking with tradition is when exciting and trend setting things happen. That risk can become genre defining. Comedy Director Taika Waititi, directing Thor Ragnarok was a risk. It went on to set the new standard for super hero movies.
As a millennial I grew up around computer games and have seen it evolve from basic pixel graphics played on a CRT TV with a crap areal cable that you could never get right, to photo realistic, fully immersive virtual reality games. Over this time cinematography has also played an increasingly large role. Game cinematics are now huge marketing assets. Game makers have been paying attention to cinematography techniques to enhance their games. Camera angles, lighting and set design are now a fundamental part of the atmosphere and story of games. The gaming industry is already very familiar with cinematography.
The video below is made in the Unreal 5 game engine. Impressive right?
At some point in the not too distant future, Film, Computer Games and Virtual Reality are going to hit a convergence point. Virtual studios are already bridging the gap between Film and VR. A virtual reality studio is essentially a giant VR headset that you can fit a film set inside. Rather than going into the virtual world however, it brings the virtual world out to us. But what happens when you add elements from gaming to that equation, and I don't just mean the unreal games engine that the virtual film studios run on. What would this convergence look like?
In 2020 Retired Formula One driver Jenson Button recruited James Baldwin to his British GT Championship team. The reason this is noteworthy is that James Baldwin was a simulation game racing driver. He competed online in sim racing games, he didn't race real life cars. James won his debut British GT Championship race, in a real life racing car. The physics of the games and his sim racing setup was real enough that he could jump into a physical car and win against seasoned GT racing drivers. The convergence between gaming and motor sport has already happened.
So how does this relate to virtual studios and film? What effect does it have?
Imagine a scenario where you are shooting a big Fast and Furious car chase scene in a virtual studio. You have your actors in their physical star car surrounded by a virtual studio environment. In this environment you could have stunt drivers using sim rigs to drive virtual cars with realistic physics in real time. The star car can have it's controls, the steering wheel, pedals and shifter set up as a sim rig too. The result of this is that it can now drive freely around this virtual environment, interacting real time with other cars driven by stunt drivers. Dangerous stunts become completely safe. Resets, full control over weather, time of day and wetdowns is now possible with a click of a button.
This is technology that already exists. I could jump into my own sim racing setup right now, put on my Oculas Quest 2 and then drive around a virtual environment of my choosing. I can have whatever conditions I want in whatever car I want and then place a camera wherever I want and film a sequence. Combine that with a virtual studio and you have some very exciting possibilities.
The biggest impact of the DSLR revolution was how accessible it made film making. The resources needed for the production of studio tent pole films like the Fast & Furious franchise are reserved for a very select few. The innovation of Virtual Studios have the potential to make producing films of that scale much more accessible to a much wider selection of film makers. I'm excited to see what the creative minds that drive our industry forward are going to do with this opportunity. As technology inevitably improves and becomes more cost effect, that accessibility is only going to increase.
A new industry standard is being born. What are you going to do with it?
