VIRTUAL PRODUCTION: ZOIC STUDIOS

[ CONTENTS ]

VFXVOICE.COM

FEATURES

8 VIRTUAL PRODUCTION: ZOIC STUDIOS

Zoic’s Julien Brami describes their foray into LED walls.

14 VIRTUAL PRODUCTION: AARON SIMS CREATIVE

The benefits of jumping head-first into real-time solutions.

20 COVER: DUNE

With 2,000 VFX shots, mostly by DNEG, realism rules Dune.

26 PROFILE: DOUG CHIANG

The remarkable career of the artist guiding Star Wars projects.

32 ANIMATION: INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE

Inside the blurred lines between animation and live action.

38 PROFILE: LENNY LIPTON

Visionary author of The Cinema in Flux illuminates film history.

44 FILM: FREE GUY

The joy of creating a video-game world where anything goes.

48 VIRTUAL PRODUCTION: INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE

Expert perspectives on the near-future of virtual production.

56 VIRTUAL PRODUCTION: LED WALLS & STAGES

Where to find LED walls and stages in the U.S. and Europe.

62 PROFILE: HAYLEY WILLIAMS

Dad, mentoring, teamwork shape SFX supervisor’s career path.

68 VIRTUAL PRODUCTION: VIDEO GAMES

Game innovators on today’s virtual production connections.

74 FILM: REMINISCENCE

Practical effects and tons of water simulate submerged city.

80 VR/AR/VR TRENDS: LIVE VR THEATER

Adding immersive storytelling to live theatrical experiences.

86 TV/STREAMING: DOOM PATROL

Effects grounded in reality anchor the outrageous and surreal.

DEPARTMENTS

2 EXECUTIVE NOTE

90 VES SECTION SPOTLIGHT: LONDON

92 THE VES HANDBOOK

94 VES NEWS

96 FINAL FRAME – DUNE

ON THE COVER: Ornithopters, modeled after flying insects, in flight in Warner Bros.’

Dune. (Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures)

Correction: Pixomondo Visual Effects Supervisor Michael Shelton’s name was misspelled in the iPhone article in the Summer issue.

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VOL. 5, NO. 4 • FALL 2021

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OFFICERS Lisa Cooke, Chair Emma Clifton Perry, 1st Vice Chair David Tanaka, 2nd Vice Chair Jeffrey A. Okun, VES, Treasurer Gavin Graham, Secretary

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ZOIC STUDIOS AND THE LESSONS LEARNED FROM ITS LED WALL

By IAN FAILES

If there’s one thing changing the way that physical production and visual effects interact right now, it’s the rise of LED walls, also known as LED volumes.

LED walls form part of the shift to virtual production and realtime content creation, and have gained prominence by enabling in-camera VFX shots that don’t require additional post-production, offering an alternative to bluescreen or greenscreen shooting, and helping to immerse actors and crews into what will eventually be the final shots.

Several production houses and visual effects studios have built dedicated LED walls and associated workflows. Some rely on bespoke LED wall setups, depending on the needs of the particular project. One company, Zoic Studios, even embarked on a project to install a LED wall inside existing studio space and use it to further the crew’s understanding of virtual production.

How did Zoic do that exactly? Here, Zoic Creative Director and Visual Effects Supervisor Julien Brami breaks down the process they followed and what they took away from this new virtual production experience.

A HISTORY OF VIRTUAL PRODUCTION AT ZOIC

Zoic’s foray into LED walls is actually part of a long history of virtual production solutions at the visual effects company, which has offices in Los Angeles, New York and Vancouver. In particular, some years ago the studio developed a system called ZEUS (Zoic Environmental Unification System) that could be used to track live-action camera movements on, for example, a greenscreen stage and produce real-time composites with previs-like assets. The idea was to provide instant feedback on set via a Simul-cam setup, either a dedicated monitor or smart tablet.

When Brami, who has been at Zoic since 2015, began noticing

Images courtesy of Zoic Studios.

TOP: An overhead lighting rig is installed on the LED wall stage.

OPPOSITE TOP: Zoic Studios Creative Director and Visual Effects Supervisor Julien Brami reviews a real-time scene on a laptop.

OPPOSITE BOTTOM LEFT: Zoic Studios tests the LED wall that was set up at its Culver City, California location.

OPPOSITE BOTTOM RIGHT: A hand-held test-shoot against an LED wall environment.

“FTG [Fuse Technical Group] lent us an LED wall for about three months, and it was really exciting because they said, ‘We can give you the panels and we can do the installation, but we can’t really give you anyone who knows how to do it. You have to learn yourself.’ So it was just a few of us here at Zoic doing it. We each tried to figure everything out.” —Julien Brami, Creative Director and Visual Effects Supervisor, Zoic Studios

a major shift in the use of game engines for virtual production shoots on more recent shows – The Mandalorian, for example, has of course brought these new methods into the mainstream – he decided to try out the latest techniques himself at home using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.

“I’ve always been extremely attracted by new workflows and new technology,” shares Brami. “I mostly work in the advertising world and usually the deadlines are short and budgets are even shorter, so I’m always looking for new solutions. I’d been looking to employ real-time rendering in a scene as a way to show clients results straight away, for example.

“So,” he adds, “I first started doing all this virtual production stuff in my own room at home using just my LED TV and a couple of screens. What’s amazing with the technology is that the software is free. I just had a Vive controller and was tracking shots with my Sony DSLR. As soon as I saw something working, I called [Zoic Founder and Executive Creative Director] Chris Jones and said, ‘I think we need to do this at scale.’”

‘WE NEED TO LEARN IT’

With an Epic MegaGrant behind them, Zoic partnered with Fuse Technical Group (FTG) and Universal Studios to create a LED