American Cinematographer - January 2021 - 63

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" We're using photogrammetry
and laser scanning to capture
the miniatures and light them.
The beautiful photographic
flaws of nature are what make
reality look real and CGI look
artificial. "

will be opened up later, like the ability to
shoot multiple angles simultaneously. Also, as
LED-module quality increases, we can worry
less about getting too close to the screens and
revealing any imperfections. "
Stump notes that the exponential growth
in virtual-production techniques has created
a parallel need to continually educate its practitioners. " It's tough to spend enough time to
learn all these new techniques, " he says. " Virtual production is just another tool in the box,
but the toolbox is getting so big the need for
education is greater than ever. That's why the
VES [Visual Effects Society] handbook is now
so densely packed - there's so much to know. "
" I feel like I've been to the frontier, and it's
great, " says Hyoguchi. " People just need to
learn the new techniques. You can make a very
low-budget movie look like Lawrence of Arabia.
If it wins at the box office, great. And if it fails
at the box office, the studio is not going to go
under. It's like the stock market: Do you want
to put all your money into Nike, or would you

rather have a diverse portfolio? "
Gods of Mars benefited from support from
Epic Games, which assists emerging virtual-production filmmakers via technical outreach and Epic MegaGrants. " The MegaGrant
program was created to help people who want
to do something with Unreal but don't have
enough funds, " says David Morin, head of Epic's
Los Angeles Lab. " Or there might be reluctance
on some part of the team to use new technologies versus proven methods. The grants are
there to help 'de-risk' a project. " The Gods of
Mars filmmakers tell AC that an Epic MegaGrant
is covering half the cost of the production's experimental research and development.
Regarding the significant uptick in virtual
production's popularity since the advent of the
pandemic, Morin notes, " It's in times of disruption that innovation can leap forward. A typical filmmaker may feel stalled right now, and
that is an ideal time to look at new technologies
and retrain. In-camera visual effects have gone
from a high-end technology used for major

Epic has enhanced features in
Unreal Engine that are of particular
use to cinematographers, says
David Morin, head of Epic's Los
Angeles Lab. " For one, the Rest API
allows you to extract some part of
the Unreal Engine user interface
and put it on a simpler interface
where you can just move sliders.
For example, a cinematographer
can move the sky and alter the
density of clouds or trees using an
iPad - they don't need to sit down
in front of the full Unreal interface. "
And with the planned 2021 release
of Unreal 5, the system's image
quality will rise significantly.
Another critical cinematography
tool that has been emphasized in
Unreal is the virtual camera. " It's
a way to see your finished visual
effects through the viewfinder
or monitor as you're shooting, by
overlaying visual-effects imagery
onto the live camera view, " Morin
notes. " Unreal can now make a
photoreal, real-time rendering of
the visual effects in the digital
world. That makes it possible to
exercise your craft as a filmmaker
and as a cinematographer on the
digital scene without having to
wait to see everything come
together in post. "

JANUARY 2021 / 63

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American Cinematographer - January 2021

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