WORKFLOW FALLOUT
I NS I DE FALLOUT’S UN I QUE WORKF LOW Stage Precision shares how it bridged the gap between traditional and virtual production
F allout ’s worldbuilding required the use of extensive virtual production technology to bring its environments to life on celluloid film for executive producer Jonathan Nolan. Creative design and VP studio partners All of it Now (AOIN) and Satore Studio consulted Nolan’s production team on their first time shooting in a large-scale 24K resolution in-camera VFX LED volume – and their toolset included deploying Stage Precision’s SP software as a versatile monitor to manage multiple tracked objects and cameras in the middle of the set. “Our goal was to blend background scenes generated using Unreal Engine and seen in-camera, with data from tracking systems attached to those same cameras to create a seamless production pipeline of visuals displayed on the LED screens in the volume,” begins Berto Mora, head of creative technology at AOIN. One of the main VP elements of the show focused on scenes featuring the Vertibird helicopter, set against a barren and post-nuclear wasteland backdrop. To achieve this, a hydraulic-powered Vertibird prop was placed in front of a collection of movable LED screens, displaying the desolate background and forming the physical basis of the shoot in the volume. AOIN and Fuse Technical Group customised Stype Follower tracking beacons to fit both the Vertibird prop and the volume’s movable LED carts. These beacons send their positional and rotational tracking data within the volume to Unreal Engine and Stage Precision simultaneously. As the Vertibird, film cameras and movable LED carts move around the volume, the tracking data must update the background LED content to the correct position and perspective relative to the helicopter doors and camera views.
Not only did SP provide a valuable tool for data validation and camera tracking, the AOIN crew leveraged SP’s data monitoring features to build an alert system in case of data issues. After importing 3D models of each screen, prop and camera model into SP, they programmed each model to light up green whenever there was good data transmission and red for any errors. “There is much data to be handled, so it was fantastic to bring it all into SP where we can check and monitor the statuses of our tracked systems,” says Neil Carman, technical director at AOIN. “Catching dropouts or errors in data means rectifying any issues before the production crew is aware, which is critical when downtime for troubleshooting on a film set can result in costly budget overruns. Traditional film crews hope their VP counterparts do not delay or intrude too much on their workflow. Stage Precision allows us to work in parallel with them instead of halting the whole production. Our post-production partners can also work faster knowing we have delivered fully informed tracking data recorded within SP instead of data unknowingly strewn with errors.”
TRACKING TOMORROW SP software’s role extended beyond tracking, acting as a tool for visualising complex shots
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