TV Production Teams - Virtual Production is Nothing Without You!

In a world highly sensitised around the growth of Artificial Intelligence and the impact this is having on us as a human race it's easy to think that all creative technological developments as a whole could be coming to take your job.

The term virtual production, to many traditional broadcast production staff after hearing from them directly, seems to represent a further job threat too, almost being grouped in the same bracket with artificial intelligence. This however couldn't be further from the reality.

When it comes to the broadcast and film industry, virtual production has been a growing part of the sector for some time.

Disney's 'The Mandalorian' is still given as the main creative reference by most when asked for a virtual production example (although unbelievably this is now 4 years ago!). Whilst this is still a fantastic use case in turn it has created a polarity between the need and relevance of virtual production in every day TV productions such as live sports, entertainment and drama given The Mandalorian is a science fiction fantasy series needing sophisticated on screen visuals and SFX to exist.

This has lead to a generalised belief amongst traditional TV crews that virtual production is only for movies and big budget productions and won't ever be a realistic part of their traditional TV production world.

The vast array of creative and technical possibilities accompanied by the confused understanding between mixed, augmented and extended reality within production has certainly added to the ongoing general lack of understanding amongst the traditional broadcast production community in respect to what benefit virtual production has to broadcast TV traditionally made today.

Having worked in traditional television production throughout my earlier career I am fortunate to know many who still actively work in the industry across entertainment, news, drama, factual and sport.

Many of them have felt the impact of the US writers strikes with productions cancelled that they were due to work on or experiencing the genuine reduction in work due to a fall of new format commissions that have been impacted by the knock on effect of the strike.

Unfortunately, some even leaving their careers in TV altogether.

This has incredibly sad for me to hear and see as someone that knows how challenging it is to carve a successful career out in the competitive world of TV let alone with these additional challenges.

What you have to give up for the job with the unsociable production hours and taxing filming schedules. All things you do for the love of the industry but when you find yourself out for work for 6 months or more, for some of my friends and colleagues it has become a bridge to far.

But virtual production, will only add to this problem won't it?

In fact the complete opposite is true.

One area of virtual production that we have specifically been focused on at a strategic level at Hypothesis Media is live mixed reality - for broadcast transformation as a whole.

Broadcast mixed reality introduces virtual production into traditional TV formats (predominantly live formats) by leveraging the high end photorealistic graphics made possible within Unreal Engine and delivered by premium broadcast software Pixotope overlaying them into traditional TV production broadcast footage where there is an existing production team in place (The term live mixed reality refers to dynamic photo realistic visuals overlaid onto real life broadcast footage. Virtual objects (graphics) interact with the real-life elements in the scene in a combined broadcast experience for the viewer).

By overlapping current broadcast production methods and exposing traditional broadcast production crews to the creative visual capabilities of virtual production contextualises it's content benefits in a way that is complimentary and relatable in an environment that production teams can feel comfortable with. Most importantly these traditional production teams (Camera crew, vision mixers, graphics ops etc) can see the importance of their existing role in delivering virtual production on shows they are already working on. Not technology exclusively for a science fiction fantasy TV show they will never work on and doesn't get commissioned very often!

To put this into context, take a look at this premium live broadcast mixed reality execution broadcast on FOX Sports for the Carolina Panthers. This shows high end photorealistic character animation rendered in real time and overlaid on to the live broadcast feeds to give an incredible visual wow moment for NFL fans watching at home.

The real success for this execution to me wasn't how incredibly realistic the expertly designed character animation panther looked on screen or the fact that was seen by over 20m+ on Facebook & Twitter. It was more that it relied heavily on traditional production skillsets to deliver it.

The traditional live show vision mixer, director, camera operators & producer were all integral to delivering this broadcast visual innovation using their fine tuned traditional TV production skills alongside the specialist live mixed reality teams to bring this to life successfully.

Yes, there was a need to understand how the new mixed reality elements worked alongside their existing roles they have being expertly undertaking for years but on the whole it leaned on all the core skills of live TV production to make it a visual innovation success and up skilling them in the process.

This behind the scenes clip of the traditional broadcast camera operator shooting the mixed reality panther live on Fox Sports showcases perfectly why skilled traditional TV crews are essential for delivering live mixed reality. It also cements the rationale for introducing virtual production to traditional broadcast programming teams as a mixed reality presentation as part of phase 1 transformation for the future broadcasting with virtual production.

Preservation of the broadcast production industry in it's traditional sense is equally important to me as evolving the industry to embrace changes with the right technologies for deeper more immersive audience experiences as a viewer. Inevitably as production teams become more familiar with the technology and the understand grows that virtual production is not a threat in any way to their existing jobs, new global format hits will be created leveraging the technology more inspire a next generation of viewers and audiences.

My advice if you work in TV production today - Virtual production is growing. Be inquisitive, ask questions, don't fear the technology, your production skills are crucial to make it work on screen for the future and further evolution of TV. It might look different in the future but it will involve you and your honed production craft if you embrace it.

TV Production crews - Virtual production needs you!