Virtual Production: Passing Filter or Permanent Fixture.

Is Virtual Production the future, or merely a trending filter, a passing filter or permanent fixture of filmmaking? This is a question that gets asked so much. Will we have forgotten or embraced this technology 2 years from now? This is a great question, a question that changes how we view the technology and a question that I will attempt to tackle briefly now.

I believe that Virtual Production, namely Stagecraft, is here to stay. Let me lay out for you 2 strong reasons that this is what I believe.

1. Stagecraft may be shiny, but it is certainly not new.

Have you ever seen a movie scene where the actors are in a car driving along happily? Chances are you have. If you have seen a few of these scenes it is likely that you have seen some background replacement in play(and probably didn’t even realize). Why is this such a common practice? Think about it, why would you get a whole crew to film a moving vehicle moving around through traffic and exhaust when you could get similar quality from the controlled comfort of a sound stage. No travel needed(not to mention danger).

Did you know that this type of background replacement for vehicles has been used since the early days of filmmaking? How is that possible you ask? Enter rear projection.Rear projection is an early filmmaking technique that is just what it sounds like: projecting film onto a surface behind the actors and often vehicles. They don’t even need chroma keying! Does this sound familiar? Stagecraft is built around that same concept of having the backgrounds being projected during production.

As you can now see, as shiny as stagecraft may be, the concept is anything but new. They were using similar technology as early as 1930.¹ This leads me to believe that Stagecraft is not merely a trend but an age old technology once again taking the center stage.

Image of Stagecraft in action. — By https://blog.frame.io/2023/04/24/virtual-production-when-the-fabelmans-met-the-mandalorian/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73676007

2. Stagecraft merely shuffles an existing pack of cards.

Stagecraft is not the reinvention of the wheel. It is more like someone changing the way wheels are manufactured. It would be like if a manager of an assembly line realized that with a small amount of extra equipment and some station reshuffling, the factory could speed up production massively.

In Stagecraft there are still artists designing realistic CGI worlds. There are still actors acting, camera operators operating their cameras, and directors directing. The whole concept is really that of moving the post production into production, resulting in a better experience for the actors and more realism.² This means that stagecraft is unlikely to take everyone’s job like some fear AI will.

Stagecraft is a technology that covers a somewhat small area of visual effects. The area of background replacement. It does not change how we animate, simulate, and 3D model. I would be more critical of a technology that came along and said, “Hi, I’m going to change every element of VFX, from planning to scanning”.

There are many reasons to believe that Stagecraft is here to stay and today I presented you with just 2 of them. Stagecraft didn’t come out of nowhere to shock the world. It is a modernized version of an age-old technology. It takes the elements of the visual effects pipeline and shuffles them to create an experience that is better for the actors performance and helps everyone to visualize the scene they are working on. This is not the reinvention of the wheel but rather a breakthrough in its production.

Thank you very much for your time and have a nice day.

Read an Article Series On StageCraft Here