American Cinematographer - September 2022 - 66

The Virtual World
Cinematographer Antón Fresco at the camera, capturing live-action
material alongside director Emma Needell (top, left).
facial performances captured by
head-mounted iPhone camera
rigs provided by Standard
Deviation, with the aid of Cubic
Motion's facial-capture technology.
The team then did a second
mocap pass for virtual-camera
moves, with the selected performances
from the first pass played
back in real-time from Unreal
Engine, with MetaHumans " performing "
the mocapped action in
lieu of the individually crafted CG
characters that would be incorporated
later.
Needell notes that neither the
virtual environments nor the final
characters were finished when
the material was filmed. " That
made it a little tricky at times for
all of us to imagine what the shots
could be, " she says. " You just
have to numb your brain and think
about composition. "
" We did a lot of work to
naturalize the camera and the
virtual-cinematography process, "
Roffee says. " We built a physical
camera rig that was more than
just an iPad or a fancy game
controller. It was more like a fullsize
camera body with weight and
counterbalance. It helped bridge
the virtual scenes to the look of
the live-action cinematography. "
Roffee's mocap team assisted
Fresco on the day. " There's no
focus puller needed - the camera
rig is there just to give the feel
of something on my shoulders, "
Fresco says. " Focus was handled
by a group of technicians observing
from a wall surrounding
the mocap volume. They could
easily change the scale for each
shot. For example, in one scene,
I wanted to go way up high on
sticks, and they said, 'We can just
make you a giant person instead,
and you don't need to get on real
sticks!' Working with Ben and his
team was amazing. "
The Ryot team also got an
assist from Bron Digital to help
increase the realism of the virtual
camera. " Bron profiled many
[real-life] anamorphic lenses for
Unreal that were complementary
to our live-action [Lomos], " Roffee
says. " Between those post-processing
visual imperfections and
the handheld virtual-camera
operation, we tried to blend the
two worlds seamlessly. "
Fresco enjoyed the tactile appeal
of mocap sessions, but also
noted the challenges of filming
pre-recorded performances. " Cinematography
is such an emotional
medium, and it's all about being
near the characters and their
emotions, " he says. " Also, part
of being a cinematographer is
discovering happy little mistakes
with the actors and capturing
them. That's harder to do when
you're not interacting directly with
the actors. "
Postproduction Options
Needell took advantage of the
malleability of virtual production
to continue to adjust shots during
post. " There was a dancing scene
in VR where we originally wanted
the characters' movement to be
the focus, " she recalls. " So, during
the motion-capture session, we
The director's " aesthetic north star was
'country sci-fi.' "
66 / SEPTEMBER 2022
American Cinematographer - September 2022

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