American Cinematographer - September 2022 - 64

The Virtual World By Noah Kadner
Alternative Realities: Life Rendered
Life Rendered explores the loneliness
and longing of a closeted
ranch hand, Mark (Owen Teague),
who escapes his isolation through
dating and by donning a virtual-reality
headset. One of writer/
director Emma Needell's goals
for the short film was to carry a
naturalistic feel from the production's
live-action segments into its
virtual scenes.
The VR sequences were
achieved using virtual production,
with motion-captured avatars
of the main actors and real-time
animation rendered via Unreal
Engine. After participating in an
Epic Games workshop, Needell
spent time workshopping and
previsualizing her script on her
own in Unreal - and previs'ed
the entire film before bringing in a
production team.
Beginning With Emotion
" I wanted to ground the visuals
in human feelings and give it an
indie feel, " the director says. " I
was essentially going for Terrence
64 / SEPTEMBER 2022
Malick in VR. "
Once Needell felt prepared to
move forward with the live-action
shoot, she chose Antón Fresco
as her director of photography.
" I've worked with a few different
cinematographers, and you can
always talk about the look and the
texture, but Antón also has a big
heart, and that's where he leads
from creatively, " Needell says.
" He didn't even want to start by
looking at the previs; instead, he
wanted to go through the script
and discuss the emotion on each
page. He taught me how to begin
with emotion. Then we crafted
the visual language together. "
Adds Fresco of this firsttime
collaboration, " This project
sounded so interesting, with the
mix of live-action cinematography
and virtual-production sequences.
Also, Emma and I spoke the
same cinematic language; she
wanted to work with a lot of
negative space and silhouettes [in
order to express Mark's] longing
to be somewhere else, but also
the close relationship to his father
[played by Luce Rains], which
puts the character in a divided
emotional state that evolves to
darkness and isolation. "
Needell notes, " Negative
space and silhouettes are a
classic visual motif of the Western
genre, which I wanted to lean
into. They also evoke two important
emotional themes: loneliness
and obscurity. By emphasizing
empty, open space, we are communicating
to the audience that
Mark feels lonely - and with silhouettes,
that Mark is obscuring a
part of himself. " She adds that her
" aesthetic north star was 'country
sci-fi.' "
Live-Action and Virtual Phases
Needell and Fresco chose an
Arri Alexa Mini LF with a rare set
of Lomo Round Front anamorphics
- which incorporate Cooke
Speed Panchro spherical base
primes - for the live-action
material, shot over three days at
a ranch southeast of Denver in
July 2021. Fresco's crew included
gaffer Dane Peterson and 1st AC
Tod Boyle.
" We showed Emma several
camera and lens possibilities, "
says Fresco. " She was fascinated
by the look of the Lomos and
how we could close down the
aperture and transform the image
into something unexpected. For
example, the 35mm looks completely
different at a T5.6 than it
does wide open. "
Once the live-action shoot
was completed, the cast and a
subset of the crew reassembled
a month later for a weeklong
virtual-production shoot at Ryot
- a content studio and innovation
lab in Los Angeles. Benjamin
Roffee, director of digital at Ryot,
served as the cinematographer
and virtual-production supervisor
for this work, and Fresco was the
virtual-camera operator.
At Ryot, the actors were
motion-captured in a mocap
volume. The first pass was captured
by Vicon cameras - with
IMAGES COURTESY OF EMMA NEEDELL AND ANTÓN FRESCO.
American Cinematographer - September 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - September 2022
