Maintenance Required

The team provided previsualisation work on several of these driving sequences to help plan out how the filmmakers would capture the scenes, before delivering the plates needed for the film's ICVFX shoot and managing the shoot at the MARS Volume.

The 16k 360 degree plates that were created for five of the film’s driving scenes allowed the director and DOP to shoot multiple environments faster and more easily than doing it on location, while achieving a much more realistic final picture than using green screens.

Dimension’s on-set team were on hand to deliver on-set supervision of the ICVFX shoot. This included using the Arri Color Calibration tool which has since become the foundation of the team’s colour calibration process for most LED volume shoots. The team also provided the filmmakers on set with a 360 video review system on a tablet which they could use for quick visual reference of the car plates while shooting and planning what’s next.

The use of virtual production on Maintenance Required shows a trend in the size and the scope of shoots taking advantage of virtual production and LED volumes. What might previously have been reserved for large-scale shoots on sci-fi or fantasy projects, is now accessible for any size of production.

“We had a really smooth and successful collaboration with the team at MARS, with the creative team and VFX Supervisor on set to explore the possibilities of running this car shoot on the film,” commented Albert Vidal, virtual production supervisor.