Immersive backgrounds and visual effects (VFX) can make your film more engaging, captivating, and narratively driven, but the amount of work you'll need to achieve it depends on your production type. Traditional production and green screen shoots "fix it in post," which can delay distribution and cause the final image to look different than the director's vision. Light-emitting diode (LED) volumes move the decisions up in the workflow to solve issues in pre-production.
With virtual production (VP), decisions that used to wait until editing now occur before the camera rolls. While this may sound like more work for the producer, most of the pre-production checklist ultimately falls on the studio. Here's everything you need to know about the planning phase of the virtual production workflow.
Virtual production shifts much of the work of both production and post-production, such as preparing VFX, into the pre-production phase. This can streamline virtual production and post-production processes and enable faster distribution.
This shift also requires more prep work from producers and studios, who both carry different responsibilities in this new type of pre-production. Virtual production studios and crews now take on much of the technical preparation and execution, allowing producers to stay focused on creative calls and approvals.
Producers' responsibilities in pre-production focus more on decision-making than execution, ensuring the production process and final product align with their initial goals. Key producer roles for virtual production include creative, budget, and scheduling decisions.
Producers retain creative approvals, collaborating with art, camera, and volume operations teams to bring their visions to life. Beyond initial concepts, a hands-on approach allows producers to make final pixel decisions, such as which brand colors to incorporate in the background or how they want their products framed.
Producers still own key logistics decisions, too. They're still the decision-makers on final calls about production budget and any budgetary changes, ensuring the investment cost doesn't exceed the potential return. They also own production and distribution schedules based on marketing and production needs.
Virtual studio production crews include virtual production technical supervisors, volume operations teams (volume ops), virtual art departments (VADs), and dedicated studio managers. Depending on the studio, these teams can either accompany your existing production crew or handle most of the production process themselves. Their responsibilities include setup and technical execution — and they're accountable for communicating it all clearly, too.
Virtual studios own infrastructure and system setup. They use real-time rendering, camera tracking sensors, and lighting synchronization to make everything work in unison during production. From there, volume ops and VADs put in the hours to turn creative concepts into virtual, photorealistic worlds that look cohesive with your physical set dressing and subjects.
And good virtual production teams know clear communication and collaboration with producers is critical. Your team should ensure you know exactly what to expect on your first day in a VP studio.
A successful virtual production workflow hinges on pre-visualization (previs) and technical visualization (techvis). Previs allows creative decision-makers to see what their films will look like early in the process, transforming storyboards into life-like visuals. Meanwhile, techvis for virtual production serves as the decision point that shapes the entire shoot.
During technical visualization, studios use 3D simulations to plan out how every shot in a scene will be captured. This allows them to maintain realism and make sure both the digital and physical sets align as intended.
Key techvis steps include:
LED volumes let studios leverage two types of background: 2D plates and real-time 3D environments.
2D plates feature pre-rendered photo or video backgrounds for scenes that require minimal camera movement. For instance, the volume could provide the background outside a car window during a driving scene or offer a basic background with slowly moving shapes while a brand spokesperson delivers their message. 2D, pre-rendered backgrounds are typically cheaper to produce and take less time to prepare during pre-production and principal photography. Using 2D plates in virtual production is ideal for speed and repeatability, though they offer practical limitations when moving the camera.
For real-time 3D environments, Unreal Engine and other high-power rendering tools let virtual studios generate visuals in real time based on camera movement. For instance, if the camera moves 45 degrees around an actor, the screen's visuals should move in unison while showing the background from the new angle and perspective. These environments offer unmatched levels of depth, realism, and parallax, perfectly simulating a real-world landscape. They're ideal for camera movement, dynamic visuals, and reflection-heavy work, while also letting crews leverage in-camera VFX (ICVFX) workflows.
LED volume production checklists and schedules are largely defined by the asset deadline. This is the hard deadline for locking the digital environments' final look, usually 48 to 72 hours before production. Environments must be approved, and the VAD should be heavily involved. The environments must also be optimized by this deadline so they can run clean at frame rate before being handed off to the volume ops team.
The number and complexity of the assets you need for your virtual production can directly impact the asset deadline — and the deadline can limit the assets you can use. It all depends on what's most flexible for your production, stressing the need for comprehensive techvis and previs.
The camera and lighting departments provide the on-stage integration layer, and this is where your crew and the studio's volume team get on the same page — the technical handshake that decides whether a shot reads as a real location or as a camera pointed at a screen. Getting that collaboration right ensures footage doesn't look like it was filmed in front of a screen by making the background an immersive part of the frame.
The director of photography (DP) and the VP supervisor collaborate on various camera decisions, including lens mapping, sensor sizing, and equipment selections. Real-time digital environments require crews to use sensors and camera tracking hardware that allows the LED volume to respond to every type of camera movement, including zoom and focus adjustments. These sensors must be calibrated to the size of the virtual studio to accurately align with the virtual "camera" inside the Unreal Engine.
Camera tracking can directly impact lens choice, as you'll need lenses that hardware can effectively track. Beyond that, ICVFX workflows depend on lens mapping, allowing the screen to adjust to the lens's unique optical distortions and focal length.
Lighting is the other half of the handshake. The wall is a genuine light source — bright enough to key, though it tends to land as back and side light — so your gaffer and the studio's lighting team balance it against practical fixtures that sync to the environment, matching color temperature and brightness as the background shifts.
When successfully synchronized, the volume and studio lights work together for seamless reflections and color. This way, they can capture a beautiful, photorealistic "golden hour" scene that looks like it was filmed during sunrise or sunset without being restricted to an hour of photography. Likewise, production teams can film outdoor scenes without dealing with the practical logistics of actually filming outside.
Lighting and volume ops teams should take extra time refining on-set lighting for color consistency. Teams will use a process called a "color-matching pass" to make sure the lighting and colors of subjects and set dressing match the virtual environment.
The deep-tech layer of the pre-production checklist is almost exclusively the studio's domain. Experienced production professionals know how to effectively operate equipment and ICVFX workflows while preserving production quality and time.
A few interlocking pre-production elements keep the camera and the volume in agreement. Synchronization keeps all devices operating in unison with one another, ensuring that the background adjusts in real-time with the camera and that the studio lights adjust according to the screen.
Frame rate dictates how many individual images the camera captures per second. Accurate time codes and synchronization guarantee the camera's frame rate and shutter speed align with the LED volume's render and refresh rate, limiting the risk of the screen flickering on-camera.
Generator locks tie it all together. They distribute a master time code signal to every device on a virtual production set to maximize synchronization. They directly "lock" shutter speeds and refresh rates together, so the camera only captures clear, static images, even when the camera's moving.
Color management requires the volumes ops, VAD, and lighting teams to work together to maintain color consistency and predictability. Color palettes and white balances should match between virtual and physical sets while aligning with the intended color choices.
The Academy Color Encoding System is a framework that guides teams throughout this process. ACES tools translate inputs from the camera and the virtual environment to create a unified color space. This allows volume ops teams to automatically adjust the screen's color temperatures to the camera's needs, allowing them to quickly match the physical and virtual sets with limited manual effort.
Master Scene Files (MSFs) contain all the core assets and camera angles for each digital environment — or sometimes for the entire production. These must be completed and consolidated by the asset deadline, serving as a universal reference for every department and team. MSFs can even be stored and saved for future campaigns, which can be excellent for long-term branding.
MSFs then allow crews to prepare the volume for each specific production, such as by setting up and testing specific camera angles and lighting positions.
All of pre-production prepares the crew for the actual production, but the prep work continues until the camera actually rolls. In the final 24 hours, producers and studios should double-check the morning-of items together to confirm the final technical handshakes between creative and technical teams. You can split the list cleanly between what you sign off on and what the studio confirms.
Your sign-offs:
What the studio confirms:
A successful virtual production hinges on comprehensive pre-production guided by a clear artistic vision. Forge Virtual Studios handles most of the technical prep and execution so producers can stay focused on the creative decisions that matter the most. Our expert team walks agency and brand leaders through the pre-production checklist to equip them with everything they need to deliver an engaging, narratively-driven message.
Get in touch with Forge Virtual Studios for a technical consultation or to tour our 30,000 square foot facility.