Where is virtual production delivering real value today—and where is it still over hyped?
Virtual production has proven to be a transformative technology over and over again on high-budget TV and film projects. TV programmes which have successfully used this technique tend to be well established, such as Doctor Who, flagship and franchised, like The Mandalorian or House of the Dragon, or formats that can be sold and redistributed internationally, like game shows.
These traits make these shows low-risk as they have an established audience or continue to generate revenue into the future through franchising. However, public service broadcasters like the BBC make a high number of low-cost productions in order to serve diverse audiences and demographics. This is the essence of public service vs for-profit production, aspiring to deliver a wide variety of content at as low a cost as possible. Low-cost productions of this nature cannot use virtual production because the startup costs and studio rental is prohibitive. Additionally, short production cycles may mean these productions are less willing to overhaul their well-established workflows as a consequence.
Although virtual production is able to deliver real value to high-budget TV programmes or in Hollywood at the cutting edge, we believe there’s a missed opportunity here. For broadcasters and particularly PSBs, these technologies are often not viable at all. It is in low-to-mid-budget television and filmmaking that we would like to see development in virtual production.
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What are the biggest technical and workflow challenges when deploying or scaling virtual production—tracking, lighting, latency, content—and how are they being solved?
We have identified cost and logistical challenges as being of utmost importance to integrating virtual production across broadcasting. The upfront costs include designing and speccing the appropriate LED volume, digitally designing the virtual environment and on-set rigging and calibration. Once these are paid, the ongoing studio rental can be tens of thousands of pounds per day of shooting. These costs are simply too great for many productions.
There is also the question of scheduling. Although virtual studios of different sizes with varying LED installations are being deployed all over the nation, there is a practical challenge around scheduling and organising teams to get access to the most appropriate technical facilities, when their number is limited by availability and cost of installation.
At BBC R&D, we are working on Beepy VP, a prototype low-cost virtual production system which can achieve in-camera virtual production using only a large monitor or screen together with a consumer-grade computer. It uses a marker-based tracking system derived from robotics and AI-created virtual backgrounds trained from photographs of real locations. Beepy VP is designed to address not only the cost of specialist facilities and background creation, but also the issue of logistics by not necessitating an LED wall or specialist hardware to achieve virtual production.
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What new skills are now essential—and how do you realistically build teams that can operate across real-time engines, AV systems and production workflows?
The question of upskilling and reskilling employees in our sector to be robust to technological changes is one which is not new and is extremely salient in the era of AI. In order to think about skills, it is necessary to think about how we staff our workforces.
TV and film in the UK have a very complex and fragile labour market. Staff are often freelancers and rotate between jobs regularly. Training and upskilling are often completed by crew ad hoc on an individual basis, and not supplied strategically by production companies and broadcasters. This is not conducive to efficient and strategic long-term technology transformation. In order to encourage the rollout of new technologies and encourage their adoption, there is a need to consider this staffing model and the skills deficit. To bring about the efficiencies technology promises to the creative industries, there must be long-term strategic leadership driving its adoption.
Additionally, there must be clear skills pipelines for staff technicians who are compensated appropriately for the expertise they bring to realise creative projects. Technology doesn’t on its own deliver value, but a skilled and effective workforce will deliver the value technology promises to broadcasters and production companies.
