VIRTUAL PRODUCTION. TRAINING
A dose of reality Over in leafy, affluent Beaconsfield, visual effects MA students at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) recently completed a new short film, where they adopted VP techniques for the first time. Reality Heist is a five-minute original story of a scientist who finds, after some experimentation with a mix of technology, she can skip dimensions at the flick of a switch. Moreover, the short film blends traditionally post-rendered, photoreal CG with real-time, in-camera VFX. Ian Murphy, head of VFX at the NFTS, describes how an environment created in Unreal Engine was shot on the school’s brand-new LED wall. “This combines seamlessly with material from a traditional location shoot containing a set build and props, with CG assets added in post,” he clarifies. “It was important to the students and I that, with exciting advances in technology, the VFX team is now part of the creative decision- making process early on.” According to this leading international film school, the VFX industry is changing quickly. It has moved on from needing
LEARN ON THE JOB The NFTS Reality Heist short film utilised an Unreal environment on the school’s new LED wall
finish – through watching the short film’s VFX breakdowns.” After weeks of building CG assets in Maya, compositing in Nuke and training in Unreal Engine, the completed project is described by Murphy as “a neat and revealing education in blending VFX that is traditionally rendered and composited with its real-time, in-camera ally – nicely finished with some subtle colour grading and a fantastic original soundtrack.” The students behind the film will graduate in March 2023. workforce in the deployment of virtual and real-time technology for storytelling,” confirms Gregory-Clarke. “These include facilitating on-set placements and training sessions in partnership with the team behind Fireworks , a short film directed by double Academy Award-winner Paul J. Franklin. And also a first-of-its-kind VP accelerator programme for UK companies – VP Futures – in partnership with Future Screens NI, supported by Epic Games and Industrial Light & Magic.” As part of StoryFutures’ Virtual Production R&D Discovery Pilot, Anna Valley is running a project focused on solving VP workflows and compatibility between teams of technologists, digital artists, lens technicians and performers. The company is working with Royal Holloway academics and students over three months, to design, create, build, shoot and finish a piece of content at Anna Valley’s facility – with the latter acting as technical lead and technology provider. “We’re planning on expanding our graduate trainee scheme – launched in 2019 to give the next generation of project managers, engineers and technicians invaluable hands-on experience in live events – to include VP skill sets and opportunities,” says Nowak. “As patrons of the Guild of British Camera Technicians, we will be developing training materials – and we are in
graduates that sit all day in facilities (or at home), headphones on, deeply focused on pushing final pixels around. Now, they must understand the entire VFX process, and be resourceful, communicative and comfortable on a film set. Murphy says this need is ‘naturally well catered for’ at the NFTS. “It’s in everything we do,” he confirms. “Viewers can discover how the team achieved this full, in-house, VFX-heavy production and what the VFX department at the NFTS is capable of – in terms of storytelling, as well as final pixel
IMMERSIVE LEARNING Pixotope is making virtual production technology more accessible to VFX graduates
“Since audiences are so accustomed to VFX-heavy content, anything less than that will soon feel flat”
66. DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
Powered by FlippingBook