2023-04-12 21:13:15
In The Madalorian, Lucasfilm’s space western, have “shot” on the exteriors of alien worlds without leaving the set, and not only that. All the special effects have been built from curved LED screens and Unreal. This is only the beginning of a revolution in cinema and science fiction that expands the limits of what has been possible until now.
The end of chroma on filming sets
Contemporary cinema is undergoing a technological transformation that affects all professions derived from film production. Never before has so much cinema been produced or consumed as now. The irruption of platforms streaming It has meant a profound change, but the pandemic has precipitated in a few years important changes in the technological agenda of film production, the forecast of which was to implement them in a slower and more gradual way.
Studio work using chroma was imposed in film production from the development of VFX effects and has reigned in the productions of the last decades. Now it has given way to a technology capable of offering virtual spaces endowed with great realism, which allows shooting exteriors, the most spectacular, without leaving the set and with enormous precision. It is achieved through LED screens that simulate real space.
Of Terminator 2 a Avatar
The first morphing cinematographic was used in the film Willow (R. Howard, 1988) a Lucasfilm production that won the Oscar for best special effects. The technique was universalized by Michael Jackson in the video clip of Black or White and that same year James Cameron went even further with Terminator 2the first film that used the morphing to simulate human movements endowed with impressive realism. After this film, Cameron, who also won the Oscar for best effects, founded the Digital Domain company with Stan Winston and Scot Ross.
The next step was taken by the ineffable Steven Spielberg with Jurassic Park (1993), a film in which the level of realism of the computer-generated images of the dinosaurs was surprising.
The cinema was beginning to take an unprecedented flight thanks to new tools such as Softimage and other specific software such as Renderman o Massive.
Filmmakers could start dreaming up real or fictional dramatic scenarios and situations with a visual display that cinema had never been able to create before. Final Fantasy: The Strength Within (H. Sakaguchi, 2001) made a highly commendable attempt to recreate humans using computers, but it was Georges Lucas and Peter Jackson who starred in the 2000s scene, incorporating increasingly sophisticated visual effects in the saga. Star Wars or in the character of Gollum, from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), developed by Weta. But the rules of the game changed again at the end of that decade, when James Cameron presented Avatar in 2009. This film combined camera tracking work (camera tracking) with motion capture (motion capture) and allowed the movement of the actors to be replaced by virtual characters.
The Mandalorian: A new twist
So far we have talked about the evolution of visual effects after a studio shoot with Cromakeywhich is the situation preceding the possibilities offered by LED technology and the new shooting system in real time that began to be implemented with the production of The Mandalorian.
It should be noted that, from a technical point of view, the world of videogames has gone ahead of cinema, making possible real-time rendering engines as powerful as the Unreal Engine, capable of supporting photorealistic images in real time.
The evolution of this real-time rendering capacity has been the key to operating the change in the shooting system with a formula that seeks, among other things, to reduce production costs, the dream of any executive producer.
A virtual world in 4K resolution
The change in the shooting system basically consists of substituting post-production work for camera work, creating a studio where the actors and some elements located in the foreground are real and behind them a whole virtual world moves in 4K resolution. generated by large-format led screens that move in real time.
for the filming of The Mandalorian It has required a semicircular screen of more than 70 meters long and 6 meters high, creating a 270 degree circumference topped by another large screen on the ceiling of the studio. The technology StageCraft It has also been used in the production of Batman of 2022.
Lucas Film. Pinterest, CC BY
The technical advantages of this new system are many: scene changes and control of the final image, something that until now was in the exclusive hands of post-production; light and color correction of the screens identical to those marked by the camera, which allows real and virtual elements to be integrated; dramatic immersion in the scene for the actors and the technical team, which leaves behind the eternal green background in which everything had to be imagined; reduction of the work of filming on location, the most critical moment of any shoot, always subject to unforeseen events and, above all, at a high cost due to the movement of equipment; Lastly, it reduces post-production time.
It is true that all are advantages, however, this type of filming is only available to those who can afford it. The empire cinema is like that, although the rental price of this equipment can vary greatly depending on the needs.
Quentin Tarantino, to cite an example from another sign, believes that these systems break the natural magic of filming outdoors. For my part, I completely agree. But that is another story.
#LED #screens #expand #cinema #future