In a not-so-distant future, an off-world syndicate of couriers transport precious and illicit packages via inter-planetary portals. They alone hold the secret to the dust that powers them. Our story takes place in the early morning hours, when a disheveled retired bureaucrat wanders through the unfamiliar streets of Neo Tokyo to hand off a mysterious briefcase.
That’s the premise of the short narrative technical test recently completed on the LED Volume at Picture This.
In our series of blog posts – the “New Normal” – we are looking at what creative options have been put in place to offset the disruption that Covid-19 has caused for production businesses here in Oregon. This month we caught up with Picture This, one of Portland’s leading provider of Camera Rentals, Projectors, and Picture This Production Services that have offered over 30 years of excellence in production and live events in the Pacific Northwest.
Marrying game-engine technology to virtual production techniques cracks open an expansive new world of creative filmmaking and business opportunities.
Virtual production, utilizing Unreal Engine, a video game rendering technology, and immersive LED screens, will be the new driver for innovation in cinematic storytelling enabling a creative flexibility previously unimaginable.
The first production to truly take advantage of this revolution, and helped create it, was The Mandalorian, on Disney+.
And now this technology is in Portland.
This innovative workflow was used to film more than half of “The Mandalorian” Seasons 1 and 2, enabling the filmmakers to:
greatly reduce on-location shoots
capture a significant amount of complex VFX shots with accurate lighting and reflections in-camera
simultaneously integrate and manipulate live-action and computer-generated assets
actors work in an actual virtual environment–combining advantages of location shooting with CGI imagination.
