ON THE WALLS Cinematographer Nikolaus Summerer (fourth from left) and colleagues on the set of Netflix's 1899. The production employs an LED volume at Germany's Dark Bay Virtual Studio, built in association with the Arri Solutions Group. ISO switcher, which gives us a 1080p eight-way split we can share from the location each day and discuss. Ultimately, our immersive plates are stabilized, de-grained and stitched so each scene can be played back through DaVinci Resolve into Epic's Unreal Engine on set. The final image is then distributed across multiple Blackmagic 8K DeckLink [cards] to 14 4K quadrants mapped onto the massive LED volume from NEP Sweetwater. " Nicholson sought ways to make the plate-capture both high-quality and cost-effective. " People tend to forget that the current LED volumes are 10-bit color with relatively low resolution, " he says. " So, it's essential to match your cameras and your final content to the LED display from the outset. We are now using multiple high-quality cameras, lenses, memory, storage and playback at less than half the cost of what it was a few years ago. The cameras and data are evolving so fast that today's solution may be replaced by something completely different six months from now. " 28 / JULY 2021 PHOTO COURTESY OF ARRI INC.