What is virtual production in fashion film?
Virtual production, in the sense used on fashion and music video sets, means shooting talent in front of a large LED screen that displays a 3D environment rendered live and tracked to the camera. The background moves correctly as the camera moves, and the screen lights the subject. The result is captured in camera, not added later. James Coote has shot it for Balmain, on a Dayfornight LED volume, and for Polo & Pan with MADO XR.
How an LED volume works
A curved wall of fine-pitch LED panels, sometimes with a ceiling, surrounds the set. A game engine renders the environment in real time. A tracking system reports the camera's position and lens, and the engine redraws the perspective so that parallax is right from the camera's point of view. Because the wall emits light, the environment also becomes the key, fill and reflections on skin, fabric and metal. That last point is what makes it interesting for fashion.
What it changes for the cinematographer
On a normal set the DOP lights the subject and the background separately. In a volume they are one system. The brightness, colour and content of the screen is part of the lighting plan, and the practical lights on the floor have to agree with it in colour temperature and direction or the eye sees the seam. The DOP also has to manage moiré, the screen's refresh and colour gamut against the camera's sensor, and the fact that the background is only correct from the tracked camera's position.
The upside is control. Golden hour lasts all day. A location on another continent is a file. The garment can be seen against three cities before lunch. For a brand with many deliverables from one shoot, that is the real saving.
Two worked examples
Balmain Pre-Fall 2022, directed by Norbert Schoerner and produced by La La Land, was shot on a Dayfornight virtual production stage; the behind-the-scenes clip on the project page shows the volume. Polo & Pan, Tunnel, directed by Zite & Léo for Téléphone Maison Films, used MADO XR, with the performers inside live-rendered environments. Both were fashion- or music-led shoots where the environment needed to be impossible or expensive to build, and where the talent needed to be free to move.
When it saves money, and when it does not
- Saves · many environments in one day; weather and daylight independence; travel and location fees avoided; reflections and interactive light captured in camera rather than composited
- Costs · stage hire, 3D environment build, engine and tracking crew, a longer prep period
- Breaks even · roughly when the number of looks or environments is high and the shoot days are few
A single look in a single real location is almost always cheaper on location. A twenty-look collection film across five imagined places is almost always cheaper in a volume. Most briefs sit between, and the honest answer comes from a conversation with the DOP and the stage before the budget is locked.
What a brand should ask before booking a volume
- Who builds the 3D environments, and from what references?
- Has the cinematographer shot on this stage, or one like it?
- Is there a test day to check fabrics and skin against the screen?
- How many environments and looks are planned per shoot day?
- What is captured in camera and what still needs post?
James Coote shoots virtual production as director of photography and builds 3D previs that can feed the same stages. See the virtual production page or write to james@intangible.tv.