Leading visual effects (VFX) and animation studio DNEG recently announced their partnership with Dimension, Sky Studios, Creative Technology and ARRI to create the ‘Virtual Production Innovation Project’, an industry-first initiative to provide insights, expertise and practical training in virtual production to upskill the UK’s creative community.
The innovation project collaboration builds on the pioneering virtual production work that the project partners are already delivering across film, drama and broadcast. It is directed by two-time Oscar-winner and DNEG creative director Paul Franklin (Interstellar, Inception) and lensed by DPs Dale Elena McCready and Robert Payton.
“Speaking as a filmmaker, the Sky ‘Virtual Production Innovation Project’ was a dream come true. Working with a state-of-the-art LED volume, I was able to explore a wide range of dramatic scenarios ranging from urban locations through natural landscapes to deep-space sci-fi worlds- all on the same stage. The photographic realism that can be achieved is astonishing-I can’t wait to shoot in the volume again,” said Franklin.
“Virtual production is a creative technology that has the potential to revolutionise the production of filmed content. It is already opening exciting new creative avenues for filmmakers, as well as addressing some of the challenges we face producing content during a period of ongoing restrictions. We’re just scratching the surface of what will become possible with this technology in the next few years, and it is exciting to collaborate with Paul and the teams at Sky Studios and Dimension to produce a series of short films that demonstrate how versatile and game-changing this technology can be in realising the filmmaker’s vision,” said DNEG chairman and CEO Namit Malhotra.
Filmed at ARRI and Creative Technology’s mixed reality stage in Uxbridge, West London over a two week period in October this year, the ‘Virtual Production Innovation Project’ pushes state-of-the-art virtual technologies, workflows, and creative concepts to extraordinary new levels and provides insight into virtual production for the industry. Carefully crafted to demonstrate the advantages and versatility of virtual production, the project will be edited into a series of short films, each offering a deep dive into a specific scene and virtual production objective.
Together, they will provide a comprehensive and insightful view of the state-of-the-art technology, techniques, achievements, and key learnings from the project, demonstrating the versatility of virtual production across a range of genres for broadcast productions as well as feature films. They had announced their joint initiative on virtual production in the early months of 2021.
