Product in Use: A Look at ICON Virtual™
Located in Burbank, CA, ICON Virtual™ is a company featuring a virtual production LED Volume. It was started as a separate entity by Blizzard Lighting out of Waukesha, WI which manufactures and distributes LED video, and entertainment lighting, products. Blizzard brought on VFX Technologies as a partner in ICON Virtual. Here’s a look at the LED Volume at this California facility, which uses a range of Blizzard’s lighting products and accessories as well as its own IRiS ICON™ VP+ LED video panel that was specifically designed for virtual production and for on camera work. In addition to having an LED Volume, ICON Virtual and VFX Technologies offer virtual production integration services.
Blizzard co-owner and COO, Atom Slaby talks about what they would like industry professionals to know about ICON Virtual. “We’re focused on solutions. Whether clients are looking for time at our VP stage in Burbank, or need support with VP/Volume integration services, our primary goal is finding the right solution for their specific needs. Some of the key markets we support include both principal photography and reshoots for film and television; commercial advertisements; and Education—virtual production programs are being introduced in the cinema departments at many universities and they need the gear as well as integration services, training, and ongoing support.”
Slaby continues, “Once we decided we wanted to get into the VP space, my partner, Founder and CEO, Will Komassa, is the one who really deserves the credit for seeing the opportunity—we then laid out what we could do well and where we were deficient. From there we went to work on finding the right partners to cure those deficiencies. That’s where VFX Technologies came in. Sarote Tabcum, CEO of VFX Technologies, and his team’s experience serving the visual effects industry, combined with the unwavering support of their customers, made them the perfect partner.” ICON Virtual has also partnered with NovaStar LED processing, RED™ cameras, and Vicon motion capture, to ensure they are offering the cutting edge of technology.
Tabcum brings decades of experience in the VFX industry and knows that the screen technology is of paramount importance. “The ICON VP+ is a very focused product line from Blizzard that goes into eXtended Reality (XR) and Virtual Production (VR) areas,” says Tabcum. “If you need the high quality and high fidelity out of an LED panel, specifically for XR and Virtual Production shoots, this is the panel. It comes down to everything, like gold traces, integrated circuits, the chips we use for the processing scan rates, etc. The blacks are really good. There’s a lot of design and testing that went into making these LEDs work for production use. A lot of LED panels are made for retail or different types of usage like concert touring where they need to be bright and rugged but aren’t really high fidelity. ICON VP+ panels were specifically made to be shot with a camera, whether it’s for virtual production, eXtended Reality, or keynotes and presentations. When you want to shoot and have beautiful, pristine images, this is what you go for. And we have LED lights that are controlled by our systems that are utilized for Virtual Production, so everything’s tied together. The whole goal is to have a package made for cinematic or content media usage.”
End User Experience
Sunny Zhao is an Emmy Award winning director, cinematographer, and the founder of Dreams Factory. As the Cinematographer that shot the dance/music video “Kiss the Girl”, featuring Derek Hough and Hayley Erbert, Zhao worked in ICON Virtual’s LED Volume in Burbank. “I really liked working in that volume,” recalls Zhao. “In fact, it was the first time I had ever worked in a volume and it was a very good experience. We used the ICON VP+ LED panel, with a pixel pitch of 2.6mm, which worked really well for our shoot. The crazy thing about that panel is the brightness. Originally, we were really concerned about how punchy the LED wall would be. When you’re shooting on a virtual sound stage, once you add smoke and haze, all that stuff comes in and it sometimes just minimizes the screen; makes the screen look very milky. That was concern number one for me. But it wasn’t a problem with the ICON VP+ panels, in reality, we actually didn’t even have the brightness all the way up. We set the output level on the LED wall at 55%, 60% at most. It was not even close to what it’s capable of.”
For the shoot, Zhao worked with a content creator that built the content and set extensions out in Unreal Engine. The backgrounds are of a woods and swamp complete with the flittering glow of fireflies. The floor featured a shallow pool so the two dancers could kick, splash, and dance through the water, which would later present another potential concern for the cinematographer, but first they needed a moon. “We had to find the perfect area for the moon and that it wasn’t too overexposed, because we planned to overexpose it just a little due to the haze on the set. The moon turned out pretty damn good looking for what we wanted. Then, one of the crazy things, because they were spinning and kicking in real water, the LED wall got wet. In fact, a good portion of the wall got wet. I was concerned that the water would cause us problems later on in post-production. Fortunately, I was handling the post work on the video. At that time I kept looking for weird wet spots but I never found any spots, and the walls kept working just fine.”
Zhao noted that he had limited space to hang backlight to create the light from the moon on the dancers, but in the end, it turned out he didn’t need all that much light for the scene. “I didn’t have room to put really big fixtures on top of the wall to create a backlight from the virtual moon,” he says. “I was only able to put one source up, approximately where the moon on the screen was but just above it. Turned out that the moon on the screen was bright enough to help backlight a lot of the scene. That’s one thing about the LED walls that people don’t pay enough attention to, they can be an actual light source, if you use it properly. And there are now LED lights that can use the same file to mimic what the LED wall is putting out. Those lights provide a very similar feeling.”
After shooting in the ICON Virtual volume, and finishing the “Kiss the Girl” video, Zhao reflects on what he liked about the ICON VP+ LED panel. “We did a lot of tests prior to the shoot day, and they all looked great. I shot this video with the [Red] V-Raptor camera. The contrast was so good with that particular LED wall and the black was really deep,” he comments. “I mean, it’s really dark. The black areas can be very, very dark, which is nice. And I go back to it’s honestly just really bright. I was pleasantly surprised by that. It was all a very good experience.”
The ICON Virtual LED Volume
At the Burbank location of ICON Virtual, they have an LED volume stage set up for people to come in and shoot, as well as to get demonstrations on the Blizzard and ICON Virtual products. The LED volume is J-shaped and consists of ICON VP+ 2.6mm LED video panels. It is 56 panels wide x 10 panels tall, measuring 45’ wide (91’ linear) x 16.5’ tall. The resolution is 10,752 x 1,920 and has a refresh rate of 7,680Hz. ICON Virtual uses NovaStar processing for the LED wall with four NovaStar MX40 Pro processors. Other key elements in the ICON Virtual Volume include Custom Trussing; Unreal™ Servers; Camera Tracking; and RED Camera. RenderNodes include four VFX Technologies Unreal Servers; AMD™ Ryzen Processing; AMD Threadripper Pro, 156GB RAM; Nvidia A6000 48GB GDDR6; and 10GB Ethernet. Volume Control includes two VFX Technologies Workstations; AMD Threadripper Pro; 128GB RAM; Nvidia A5000; and 10gb Ethernet. They deploy Stype’s RedSpy 3.0 for camera tracking. For more information about ICON Virtual, go to www.iconvirtual.com
ICON VP+ LED Video Panel
Blizzard is the manufacturing partner for ICON Virtual’s ICON VP+ panel. The panel has a pixel pitch of 2.6mm. With a close pixel pitch and better scan rates, the panel delivers the most color accurate, high-resolution images. The ICON VP+ was specifically designed for film to deliver best-in-class clarity and color. In addition to in-house quality control and U.S. tech support, the ICON VP+ comes with a “no fears for 7 years” warranty to keep your show up and running. To see the specs on the ICON VP+ LED Video Panel, see Buyer’s Guide, this issue.
