The new version of The Batman, currently in production in the UK, is using the same virtual production techniques as The Mandalorian.
During season one of the Disney Plus series, the production team used an LED wall driven by the Unreal real-time game engine to create other worldly locations. Earlier this year, Industrial light and Magic launched StageCraft, a virtual production unit built around the Mandalorian technique.
ILM chief creative officer Rob Bredow told the annual View conference that The Batman’s production design team has pre-built practical sets in the UK and an LED wall has been built around these sets to enable use of virtual production in those specific scenes.
Greig Fraser, who worked as director of photography on The Mandalorian, is also DP for The Batman.
“[The] Holy Grail is that our entire workflow can go real time, with less time waiting for computers to process,” said Bredow. He added that both ILM and Epic Games (the parent company of Unreal Engine) are making “big investments” in such development.
