Virtual production is taking off across the entire industry, as multiple sectors such as retail marketing realise that the advantages it brings Hollywood can apply to them as well.
The technology behind virtual production is advancing all the time, but to date there hasn’t been much discussion about virtual production and its potential in other areas beyond high-end film and TV work. That though is starting to change, and the noise levels are rising in places you might not have expected, including the global brand marketing, advertising, and creative agency world.
Much of this change is driven by some harsh realities of production for retail marketers in particular. Real world challenges are increasingly hindering productions for retail brands, mainly because location shooting is expensive and disruptive, and it introduces pain points that may not be obvious or clear in the creative ideation process.
In retail marketing, brick and mortar stores tend to be where brand equity is built — it’s the primary user experience for customers. But shooting in these spaces introduces a host of obstacles that add to the complexity and expense of a shoot. Securing permits, arranging overnight shoots to avoid customer disruption, repeated set builds, privacy concerns when shooting in pharmacies or clinic spaces… All these quickly become prohibitive and will either compromise or shut down a production before it even gets started.
Door G is an independent creative production studio based in East Providence, Rhode Island. Its virtual production studio combines physical sets with digital environments blended seamlessly on its J-shaped LED wall, which is an impressive 56-foot-wide and 14-foot-tall (17 x 4.25 metres). Developed in collaboration with leading companies such as Mo-Sys, INFiLED, NVIDIA, Brompton and Puget Systems, Door G’s virtual production stage integrates with Unreal Engine to enable a sustainable storytelling approach. It is also the first virtual production studio on the East Coast of the US to be awarded the EMA Green Seal for Studios by the Environmental Media Association.
All this technology enables it to solve those real-world pain points for retail marketing, and allows it to quickly build controllable retail environments without going anywhere near the bricks and mortar buildings.
Not everything can be done inside a volume. As such, Door G is a big proponent of hybrid approaches when and where it makes sense — it shoots practical elements on location and integrates plates in the volume for spaces that are too small, too sensitive, or too hard to access. This includes areas such as doctor’s offices and clinics in the healthcare space.
For retail marketers, this means embracing a hybrid approach to productions; virtual retail environments built in Unreal Engine that are treated as reusable brand assets and combined with practical, physical elements. Like this:
Scott Maiocchi is Door G’s head of production and a film and television production industry veteran. He has helped steer the company to treat VP as a tool in the toolkit; not solely as a replacement for all location shoots.
“We look at virtual production as a solution to three common client needs: speed, quality, and cost-control,” he says. “These are solutions to real-world problems our clients face. In addition to some of the more obvious challenges of location shooting in stores, clients are concerned with speed to market, repurposing content for social media and reducing the number of days on shoots. The more physical locations required means added days and added costs. With virtual production, we can shoot multiple spots, with multiple locations in a single day. This is transformative.
“There’s an old expression in the industry when things go wrong on a shoot — ‘just fix it in post.’ But with virtual production, we’re eliminating those risks and compromises because we’re in full control of the digital environments. Now, we have a new expression, we can ‘fix it in pre,’ which means we’re addressing issues or challenges in pre-viz, long before we start shooting.”
“Sustainability is not just about supporting a cause, it’s also about making substantive contributions to that cause. All of our project proposals have sustainability elements designed into them,” adds Jenna Rezendes. Rezendes is an executive producer at Door G, and she spearheaded the effort to achieve these sustainability standards.
“When we can shoot three productions, depicting multiple locations, in a single day without ever leaving the stage, we’re showing clients an entirely new approach to operational efficiency. Less travel, fewer set builds that will only be thrown in a dumpster afterward, all translates to reduced waste, reduced carbon emissions and significant cost savings. It’s a game-changer.”
Not only that, it’s a verifiable one too. Productions shot in the Door G studio carry the distinction of being created in an EMA Green Seal certified space, indicating that they have been made in line with the sustainable practices increasingly important to today’s audiences and stakeholders.
“We’re really proud of this achievement and our commitment to offering the creative industry a smarter, more sustainable way to produce content,” she concludes.