Those About to Die

The Peacock / Amazon Prime Video series features a huge number of epic landscapes and locations, as well as impressive crowds watching high-octane chariot racing inside the Circus Maximus. And it was for this reason that the show’s production team - which was being led by producers/directors Roland Emmerich and Marco Kreuzpaintner - knew that virtual production should become a key component in the show's creation.

Dimension also rolled out an innovative volumetric crowd system for the show’s large crowd scenes which saw background actors volumetrically captured in full costume. This meant they could be added to the virtual backgrounds to create a realistic crowd on the LED volume at Cinecitta Studios in Rome.

Watch our in-depth behind the scenes featurette

Dimension’s goal for Those About To Die was to provide the project's visionary filmmakers with the creative freedom to do whatever they wanted on set, but do so with an air of authenticity in what’s seen through the lens.

These creatives included Executive Producer and Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, 2012, White House Down), who's no stranger to high octane action, his partner on the project Marco Kreuzpaintner (Bodies, Soulmates) and VFX Supervisor Pete Travers. They all fully embraced the show’s virtual production workflow which resulted in Dimension’s delivery of 1,800 final pixel shots, with less than 40 requiring any post-production.

The shoot took place at the legendary Cinecitta Studios in Rome. The setup in T18 features a 24-metre revolving stage and an 8-metre tall, 51-metre U-shaped LED volume which is the largest permanent Virtual Production Stage in continental Europe.

Control over Lighting

One of the key advantages of shooting on an LED stage is lighting, and that was no more apparent than for Those About To Die. Ambient lighting and specular highlights from the LED volume were naturally reflected into the scene and onto the cast. This control over the lighting meant the crew could shoot scenes in ‘magic hour’ without the rush of chasing the warm, soft light that you can only get just before sunset.

Pete Travers, VFX Supervisor explains it; ‘Magic hour outside when you shoot, it's not really an hour, it's a lie, it's actually maybe 10 minutes… On this show, we took ‘magic hour’ and we turned it into ‘magic day’. Because we could shoot all day long in the same, exact lighting conditions.’

Dimension’s Executive Producer on the project Steve Jelley added; ‘the lighting is what really cuts it. Roland wanted to shoot a lot at magic hour, he wanted to have that feel of a very stylised look in terms of lighting design. It’s not just the environments that we put together, it's a complete world that you get drawn into.’

A Colossal Virtual Crowd

If there’s one thing that ancient Rome with its gladiators and chariot races, was huge crowds; something that absolutely needed to be reflected in the show. So, we combined our expertise in volumetric capture and virtual production to pioneer a virtual crowd system, developed for in-camera VFX on the LED volume.

Using the Polymotion Truck, Dimension and MRMC’s mobile volumetric capture studio, the team scanned 90 actors and generated over 500 individual performances which were used to populate the crowds. This technique created a virtual crowd of 32,000 which could be scaled up to 80,000 to fill the entire Colosseum when needed on the volume.

Unlike traditional CG extras, these volumetric characters interacted with the volume’s real-time lighting and allowed for live art direction on-set instead of needing to add and relight them for each shot in post-production.

Virtual Rome wasn't built in a day

One of the biggest reasons for adopting virtual production on this project was to give the audience as authentic an experience of Ancient Rome as possible. So our team built a 3D realtime model of Ancient Rome in Unreal Engine which was used on the LED volume throughout production.

‘Shooting this on VP enabled us to achieve scale... and having the whole city of Rome behind even smaller conversations. We could always put epic in the background,’ said Pete Travers, VFX Supervisor

Having the 3D environment there on-set not only added a layer of realism to the shots also acted as a performance tool for the cast who weren’t looking at a chromakey. Game of Thrones favourite Iwan Rheon, who plays Tenax in the series said; ‘I just think for an actor it just feels much more gratifying, you can just immerse yourself, especially when you’re doing something historical like this.’

Putting Virtual Production in Focus

The sense of grandeur and scale of the period is what made Ancient Romes so significant. It's for this reason that Emmerich wanted to shoot on wide lenses, which means that the entire LED wall had to be in focus at all times.

This hadn’t been done in this way, but it's the sort of challenge the team at Dimension like, so we looked at how we could make it happen. Steve Jelley explains; ‘Roland wanted to [...] use the maximum amount of the volume. We rebuilt the pipeline in order to deliver something that could generate that amount of resolution, and that became freeing because we could shoot all the medium-wides that you weren’t able to do before. And suddenly, that’s become a part of our toolkit.’

With a fully realised 3D Rome and the ability to shoot with creative control, Dimension and DNEG 360’s innovation and commitment to virtual production on this project means that ''Those About to Die' is a benchmark for reimagining historical epics and bringing them to life with authenticity.

All ten episodes of ‘Those About to Die,’ are available to watch on Peacock and Amazon Prime.