Enhanced Environments
In-camera shooting solutions and green screen replacement options have allowed filmmakers the flexibility to shoot scenes that would have previously required complicated location shoots or costly post-production visual effects work. PRG’s Enhanced Environments is a unique solution they developed to bring a scripted location in TV/Film inside to any stage in the world. Using projection, LED and lighting, they create natural-looking backgrounds and reflections on set. The controlled, immersive environment allows actors to respond and visualize and lets filmmakers save the costs associated with location shoots and the accompanying potential complications of street closings and weather delays. Plus they can go from day to night sequences or change locations with a push of a button, as well as store and playback unlimited options for location imagery quickly accessible on set.
The PRG Enhanced Environments process allows filmmakers to light talent and objects with amazing natural authenticity. The lighting effect is spot on so talent and crew alike visualize actual environments and perform against a dramatic and dynamic background without the guesswork of staring at a lifeless, empty green screen. From pre-visualization to production the film’s creative team can create an enveloping media environment on as large a scale as needed, utilizing PRG’s proprietary technology, tools and techniques. All supported by the experienced PRG team of Enhanced Environmentalists to enable each film’s custom solution that is scalable to any size, is cost-effective and time-efficient.
This technology is particularly effective for ‘car process workflow.’ The PRG team can engineer, provide and install multiple LED resolution panel arrays and projection systems displaying driving plate footage based on input from the production’s creative team. Playback is controlled on set from media servers, creating a truly interactive and immersive environment. The Enhanced Environments shooting solution is used by leading cinematographers, several of whom spoke about the value of this shooting option.
Cinematographer Matthew Libatique, ASC, (Don’t Worry Darling, The Whale, Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, Black Swan, Noah, Mother!) stated, “You know, if you look at films these days, you literally wonder if they were actually traveling or not. It’s because of the advances that PRG has been able to make. It’s supporting filmmakers to achieve these shots. It could be inside a penthouse in Dubai, it could be a spaceship, it could be traveling towards the moon.”
Cinematographer and Visual Effects Director/Supervisor David Stump, ASC, (Little Fires Everywhere, The Morning Show, The Happytime Murders, American Gods, Quantum of Solace, Flight Plan, X-Men, Batman Forever) noted, “This enhanced lighting technique enables you to run the actual background plates on LED screens outside the windows and above, to simultaneously light and composite driving shots. One of the immediate benefits of using a system like this is that the actors can look out the windows and know where they are.” He adds, “This actually has a big effect on budget because there’s no post production to do on these shots because there’s no green screen outside, there’s no compositing. There’s, there’s no uncertainty about what you’re going to get in post-production, and the editor can make his decisions about what takes to use. These are finished shots. It’s as close as you can get to shooting on location.”
Director of Photography Markus Förderer, ASC, BVK (Red Notice, The Colony, Bliss, Independence Day: Resurgence, I Origins) commented, “I think for a cinematographer, it’s like an ideal solution because you can not only control the background, but you control the exposure. You can defocus the background more if there’s something distracting. The big advantage of LED video walls is the bigger dynamic range. You can create very bright highlights and very deep blacks. You get really nice specular reflection on exterior cars, backgrounds, which sometimes even if you’re expose it accordingly, you can get real flares off your background, which is very nice.” And for the actors, he said, “In my experience, actors love it, they walk on a stage and they’re always surprised when they expect a green screen, and then they see what’s actually gonna be happening in front of camera. Like in my case, we shot a helicopter crash, and at some point, the helicopter started spinning, and they just looked out the window and saw the world spinning and made it really feel real.”
Förderer’s helicopter crash is exactly the kind of shooting requirement that cinematographer Jim Denault, ASC (Yellowstone, All the Way, The Looming Tower, The Grizzlies, Trumbo, Boys Don’t Cry) finds the Enhanced Environments solution well suited to do. He explained, “The main thing that makes me interested in the system is that you can put people in dangerous situations and do things that look like complicated driving sequences. Also, if you want to do a pickup, the playback operator just hits a button and you reset.”
Libatique concluded, “We come up with an idea as a filmmaker and a company like PRG, because they’re so well versed in this technology, they’re able to advance it to fit our needs. It goes into the head space of this company and they can come up with solutions for you. So if you don’t have to be bound by what’s been done before, you can look forward to something that hasn’t been done.”
Learn more about the Enhanced Environments and all the Virtual Production solutions available through PRG at https://www.prg.com/en/services/virtual-production
