VIRTUAL PRODUCTION COMMERCIALS
Pirate’s Grog The team at Garden Studios has worked on large-scale commercials with larger sets and physical action, filming TV and social content in under a week. “We’ve also done smaller projects in a couple of days,” says Devine. “A great example is an advert we shot with rum company Pirate’s Grog. This was all done in front of a live audience with three locations, which would only be possible in VP.” It used a 25x5m stage divided into three: • A rowing boat in a thunderstorm, complete with rain rig and lighting fixtures synced to lightning flashes in Unreal Engine using DMX. • A cave system with self-illuminating candles and an in-camera transition to a storm of gold confetti.
• An Indiana Jones-esque boulder run using a treadmill, with live pyro, again synced with the Unreal Engine content. Garden also used a 3x2m ‘tabletop’ stage for pack shots with a second unit. The director was Tom Clarkson, working with DOP Sam Kemp, and other tech partners included MACHINESHOP, Focus Canning, Brompton Technology, Anna Valley, Mo-Sys and L-Acoustics. “Planning in advance, building a robust workflow and scheduling shots effectively are all keys to success,” says Devine. “This includes creating a storyboard, having the 3D assets or video content ready and tested. It’s also beneficial for our VP team to support projects at the early stage and to be on board to solve potential technical problems in advance – leaving time for creativity and flexibility on-set.”
TO THE POINT British Arrows invited ten of its sponsors to participate in a VP series at ARRI
Chaundler predicts a jump in the number of TV ads shot in VP. “Brands are now more receptive and looking at ways to make production more efficient and sustainable,” he claims. “The good news is the technology is getting better and costs are coming down. Every new iteration of Unreal Engine sees a leap in quality and we are literally building a photorealistic CGI world. Soon, we’ll have ‘digital twins’ for everything from products to locations, like supermarkets or restaurants, which will open a whole new world of filming opportunities.” AI will play a big role, he adds, but not in isolation. “Increasingly, TV commercials (TVCs) will be concepted and executed without a camera being lifted. Exciting and terrifying in equal measure!” For Hall, the most exciting advancements to affect the TV commercial side of VP are radiance fields (NeRFs and Gaussian splatting). “Radiance fields are similar to photogrammetry, where you take a lot of photos of an object or an area and can essentially replicate a 3D environment out of it,” he explains. “This technology will be revolutionary for commercial production. I’ve seen instances where a production needed to shoot a commercial in a bar – but only had access to the bar for a short amount of time when it was closed. They generated a radiance field and were able to replicate the bar in VP under different lighting conditions with multiple actors, so were able to shoot the entire commercial using virtual production.”
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