Virtual production is changing how brands, agencies, and commercial production companies craft ads—transforming traditional workflows using technology like Unreal Engine and innovative production techniques.
But does virtual production actually deliver on making commercial productions more cost-effective, sustainable, and creatively flexible, without compromising quality?
TL;DR: It depends on a commercial production's specific creative needs, logistical constraints, and the quality of your virtual production studio and crew.
You might consider virtual production if you're shooting a car commercial with various and visually diverse locations that all need to be filmed during golden hour.
You might consider traditional production if your retail commercial calls for a single real-world location, features day exteriors of actors tangibly interacting with various props and set decoration, and includes multiple wide or establishing shots.
To further explain, let's walk through key virtual production benefits, challenges, and some grey areas to help you evaluate whether or not it might make sense to embrace virtual production on your next commercial production. In this article, we'll cover:
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What is Virtual Production?
Virtual production is an innovative production process that seamlessly blends live-action footage with computer-generated imagery (CGI) in real-time. Utilizing advanced game engines like Unreal Engine, virtual production enables people to create immersive digital environments that can be manipulated during the actual shooting process.
In practical terms, this means actors perform in front of large LED screens or volumes that display real-time rendered backgrounds. Unlike traditional green screen techniques, this method enables actors to interact naturally with their surroundings, and agencies and clients can see the final composition as it's being filmed.
Here's a fantastic behind-the-scenes look at virtual production's function, versatility, and technology advancements.
Virtual Production vs. Traditional Production for Commercials
A traditional production workflow for live-action commercials typically involves pre-production planning, followed by filming on location or set, followed by post-production editing, color grading, visual effects (VFX), and sound design.
A virtual production workflow for live-action commercials shifts VFX work from post-production to pre-production and the shoot itself, relying on a Virtual Art Department (VAD) to design virtual environments during pre-production and utilizing In-Camera VFX (ICVFX) during filming, theoretically removing the need for post-production VFX.
Let's walk through other key differences between virtual production and traditional production techniques and workflows for commercial productions.
Green screens vs. LED volumes: A traditional production might utilize green screen elements during the commercial production, whereas a virtual production replaces traditional green screen elements with LED volumes and virtual environments.
Physical locations/sets vs. LED volume stages: A traditional production requires filming at real-world locations and/or with physically constructed sets. A virtual production films on an LED stage and often integrates physically constructed set elements with digital LED-displayed environments.
Sequential process vs. integrated process: As mentioned above, traditional commercial production moves sequentially from creative development and pre-production through production and post-production. Virtual production for commercials creates a more integrated workflow, merging post-production with pre-production and allowing for real-time digital environments and VFX changes on the shoot day.
Benefits of Virtual Production for Commercials
Virtual production benefits commercial productions by enhancing creativity, efficiency, and sustainability. For brands and agencies aiming to stand out in a competitive market, embracing these advantages can make a significant difference. Let's walk through explore the key benefits virtual production offers for commercial projects and how they can enhance commercial productions.
Enhanced client involvement: Virtual production enables clients and stakeholders to more concretely visualize the final commercial both on set and in pre-production, ensuring creative alignment and facilitating approvals.
Efficient shooting schedules: Especially when the script requires various and visually diverse locations, virtual production environments can facilitate unprecedented efficiency with a commercial's shooting schedule by minimizing physical builds/strikes and travel. An efficient shooting schedule can also mean shorter (or on-time) shoots, reducing crew labor costs and avoiding overages.
Control the time of day: Virtual production allows crews to stop modifying setups as they chase the light during a commercial production. With virtual production, "golden hour" can last for 12 hours.
Reduce location costs and set construction expenses: Virtual production eliminates certain location scouting, permits, and travel expenses, and it also reduces materials needed for building physical sets.
More accurate lighting, reflections, and translucent objects: On a technical level, whereas green screens can cause several issues with green light spill, green reflections, and green visible through translucent objects—requiring cleanup in post-production—LED volumes can offer more accurate on-set lighting, reflections, and refractions. This can be especially important for something like a car commercial, where featured objects are highly reflective and/or translucent.
Improve actor performance with interactive environments: Whereas green screens require actors to imagine surrounding environments and rely heavily on a director's guidance, LED volumes provide the "real" environment actors are interacting with, similar to shooting on location and/or on a physically constructed set. This can facilitate more genuine acting performances.
Limitless visual creativity and dynamic adjustments: Whether you're building imagined worlds or precise historical recreations, virtual production offers limitless creativity to commercial productions. In real time, you can change light sources and transform virtual set elements, bypassing certain constraints of traditional production.
Improve sustainability: Virtual production offers significant sustainability advantages over traditional commercial productions. By reducing or eliminating the need for on-location shoots, it minimizes travel-related carbon emissions associated with transporting crew and equipment. Additionally, virtual production cuts down on material waste by eliminating the construction and disposal of physical sets, as digital environments can replace the need for tangible set pieces.
Avoid weather issues: Shooting on a virtual production stage can preserve your creative while removing common logistical hazards or variables like weather delays. Virtual production allows commercial productions to enjoy the comfort and reliability of a stage shoot while controlling the weather on screen by designing the LED volume's digital environment.
Asset versioning and reusability: Digital assets created by your virtual art department (VAD) can be reused or modified for future commercials, making reshoots easier and less expensive.
More efficient VFX pipeline: Virtual production offers a more efficient visual effects pipeline by delivering high-quality, real-time renders directly on an LED volume, precisely synchronized with camera movements. This real-time integration means that many visual effects are captured in-camera during production, effectively reducing or even eliminating the need for extensive post-production VFX work. As a result, post-production schedules can be significantly shortened, leading to reduced costs and faster delivery of the final commercial.
From our friends at Impossible Objects, here's a behind-the-scenes look that summarizes various benefits of virtual production for a car commercial:
Challenges of Virtual Production for Commercials
While virtual production can offer phenomenal benefits for commercial productions, it can also present unique challenges that brands and agencies should understand at a high level. Let's dive into some challenges and limitations of virtual production for commercials, with the aim to help you decide whether or not it makes sense to leverage virtual production for your next commercial campaign.
Assessing projected virtual production costs: It can be challenging to understand exactly how a virtual production approach might affect your budget. If you're interested in exploring virtual production for your commercial and need an accurate cost breakdown, contact Good Pictures and ask for a free quote based on your specific needs. We are a commercial production company in Los Angeles, and we're happy to outline costs and help guide you toward the best production approach.
Need for combined creative and technical expertise: Virtual production requires a seamless blend of creative vision and technical proficiency. When you're incorporating virtual production technology and workflows into commercial productions, there's a huge difference between passable quality and world class (where viewers would never guess something was shot on an LED stage). Expert virtual art departments (VADs) and experienced in-camera visual effects (ICVFX) crews are essential for delivering on various creative and technical elements.
VADs: Responsible for designing and creating the digital environments, VAD teams ensure that virtual sets align with the creative vision and are ready for real-time rendering.
ICVFX team: Your ICVFX team needs to be experienced with integrating virtual environments and live-action footage during the commercial shoot, able to address any technical challenges on the spot.
Previs: Short for "previsualization," previs is crucial for planning shots, camera movements, and scene compositions within the digital environment. It allows directors, cinematographers, and the VAD team to experiment with different ideas and make creative decisions early in the process.
Techvis: Technical visualization, or techvis, translates the creative concepts from previs into practical technical plans for a commercial production. Techvis provides detailed technical diagrams and data that guide the crew on how to set up cameras, lighting, and other equipment to achieve the desired shots within the virtual production environment. It bridges the gap between creative intent and technical execution.
Potential technical issues: Reliance on virtual production technology can introduce the risk of certain technical issues for commercial productions, including:
moiré patterns: This visual artifact occurs when fine patterns on the LED volume interfere with the camera sensor. Solutions include:
Use a shallow depth of field to blur background elements, including the LED volume.
Tweak focus so the LED volume appears sharp but is technically out of focus.
Increase the distance between the camera and the LED volumes.
When searching for an LED stage, ensure the LED volume's pixel pitch (the distance between pixels) is small enough for your shoot's purposes.
light spill onto LED volume: Excessive light spilling onto the LED screens can raise black levels, resulting in muddier shadows—especially when shooting daytime exterior scenes. Solutions include:
Control light placement and use flags, grids, and/or barn doors to direct light.
Utilize negative fill (light-absorbing materials) to prevent light from reflecting onto the screens.
Adjust the intensity and direction of lighting.
color matching: Achieving accurate color consistency between physical set pieces and digital environments is essential in virtual production. Possible solutions include:
Make real-time adjustments to the digital assets' hue, saturation, and lightness to match physical set decoration.
Use calibrated monitors and on-set color grading tools to ensure alignment.
visible seam between floor and LED volume: Visible seams where the physical floor meets the LED volume can cause an issue for certain shots. Solutions include:
Mask the seam with physical set dressing or props.
Blend the seam using visual effects in post-production.
Design camera angles that avoid showing the seam.
visual realism: Blending digital environments with physical elements in virtual production requires careful attention and technical knowledge. To enhance realism:
Use hazers or fog machines to add atmospheric depth.
Ensure that physical lighting matches the virtual environment's lighting cues.
Accurately motivate light sources to complement the digital backdrop.
changing frame rates: The LED volume's refresh rate (Hz) can cause flicker issues at higher camera frame rates. Solutions include:
Confirm that the LED volume has a high enough refresh rate to support your desired camera frame rates.
Conduct camera tests beforehand to identify any flicker issues.
physical space and framing limitations: The size and capabilities of the virtual production stage may limit camera movement and staging. Solutions include:
Use previs to plan shots meticulously to work within the space constraints.
Use camera techniques like dolly moves or cranes within the available area.
Collaborate with the VAD to optimize virtual set designs that enhance depth and scale.
Pre-production planning: Virtual production requires more extensive pre-production planning to create digital environments and assets ahead of time, typically including previs and techvis phases. If your commercial production schedule is tight, there may not be enough time in pre-production to adequately plan and secure necessary approvals. Remember that your VAD will need to conduct a content validation process before the day of the commercial shoot.
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Virtual Production Commercial Examples
We've curated a short list of virtual production commercial examples to show how brands and agencies are utilizing virtual production. These commercials demonstrate the creative potential and practical benefits of virtual production workflows. Explore these ads to understand how virtual production can benefit your commercial campaign.
If you're a marketing or agency professional with questions about virtual production, contact Good Pictures for a free consultation call. Good Pictures is a commercial production company in Los Angeles with world-class virtual production partners (who led virtual production work on most of the commercial examples below).
John Deere | "All Kinds of Fields"
With virtual production led by our friends at Impossible Objects, this John Deere commercial example showcases the potential to elevate visuals while sticking to a tight shooting schedule—4 locations in 1 day, with 3 virtual environments and a practical set.
Polestar 2 | :60 Film
Another virtual production commercial example led by our friends at Impossible Objects, this Polestar 2 short film showcases the flexibility and options an LED volume provides for shooting multiple locations in a short time frame.
AdeS | "No Trates De Entenderlo, Disfrútalo"
This AdeS virtual production commercial example, with generative AI and VFX led by our friends at Javich & Co, beautifully demonstrates the power of leveraging virtual production, generative AI, and VFX together—staying on-budget and on-schedule without compromising the creative vision for specific locations like the Brooklyn Bridge.
(Spec) | "McDonald's Friends"
This McDonald's spec commercial example was shot entirely in virtual production, demonstrating the ability to replace traditional locations with an LED stage.
Caledon Soccer Club | "What Dreams Are Made Of"
This Caledon Soccer Club commercial example shows off the creative flexibility of virtual production as it relates to locations, crowds, and shot variety. This spot also demonstrates the ability to blend physical set decorations with virtual environments on an LED volume.
OnStar | "The Future is Better with OnStar"
Another commercial example with virtual production led by our friends at Impossible Objects, "The Future is Better with OnStar" does a fantastic job showcasing how virtual production can preserve the purity of your specific creative vision.
A Guide to Choosing Virtual Production, Traditional Production, or a Hybrid
Opt for virtual production for a commercial when:
Your creative vision requires it: Virtual production can be ideal for commercial productions needing complex or fantastical environments difficult to achieve physically.
You have enough time in pre-production: A successful virtual production commercial shoot requires careful and clear pre-production planning and digital design work.
Your shoot days are limited: Commercials with tight shooting schedules can benefit from the efficiency of virtual production.
Sustainability is a priority: Support a brand's focus on eco-friendly practices.
Stick with traditional production for a commercial when:
Authenticity is essential: When real-world locations and tangible sets are crucial for the commercial's desired aesthetic and narrative.
There's a better way to spend your budget: Depending on your commercial's creative, it might make more sense to invest in places other than virtual production stages, equipment, and labor.
Simplicity suffices: For straightforward setups that don't require extensive visual effects or digital environments, a physical location or set may very well do the trick for your commercial production.
Consider a hybrid approach for a commercial when:
Gradual adoption is important: If stakeholders want to explore and experiment before going all-in, allow teams to familiarize themselves with virtual production technologies while still leveraging traditional methods.
You want the best of both worlds: For some commercials, combining traditional production and physical sets with virtual elements can optimize costs and creativity.
If you are a brand or agency professional trying to decide if virtual production makes sense for your next campaign—or if you'd like a free quote—we're here to help. Good Pictures is a commercial production company in Los Angeles with world-class virtual production partners and crews who have extensive hands-on experience with virtual production. Contact us to schedule an intro call.
Sustainability of Virtual Production for Commercials
With environmental responsibility now more important than ever, the sustainability of virtual production for commercials is an important consideration for brand and agency professionals. In many cases, virtual production offers a greener alternative to traditional commercial production by significantly reducing carbon emissions, minimizing material waste, and optimizing energy consumption.
Reduced Carbon Emissions
Less travel required: Traditional commercial productions often involve traveling to multiple locations, transporting equipment, and accommodating crew and talent, all of which contribute to carbon emissions. Virtual production allows you to create diverse environments without leaving the LED stage, reducing the need for travel.
Fewer transportation needs: With sets and locations generated digitally, the transportation of physical set pieces, props, and large equipment is minimized. This reduction in logistics not only lowers emissions but also simplifies coordination efforts.
Minimized Material Waste
Digital sets over physical builds: Constructing physical sets can lead to significant material waste, especially when sets are built for short-term use and then discarded. Virtual production uses digital environments, eliminating the need for certain physical construction materials.
Reusability of digital assets: Digital assets created for one commercial production can be reused or repurposed for future campaigns, maximizing their value and reducing the need for new resources.
Optimized Energy Consumption
Efficient use of resources: Virtual production can reduce overall energy consumption. LED stages can optimize lighting and power usage more effectively than on-location shoots, where control over the environment is limited.
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Conclusion
Virtual production is transforming some commercial productions by offering enhanced creative possibilities, cost efficiencies, and sustainability benefits. However, it's essential to weigh these advantages with the challenges and limitations. It's a case-by-case process to determine whether or not virtual production makes sense creatively and financially for a commercial campaign. Here are some key considerations for decision-makers:
Assess project requirements: Determine if virtual production aligns with your commercial's creative vision and project needs.
Conduct a cost analysis: Evaluate cost differences between virtual production and traditional production approaches.
Evaluate production partners: Ensure your commercial production company partner has the expertise and resources to execute virtual production effectively.
Understand workflow adjustments: Be prepared for changes in the commercial production process and ensure clear communication with all stakeholders.
Ready to Explore Virtual Production for Your Next Commercial Campaign?
We'd love to help. Contact Good Pictures to discuss possibilities or request a quote.
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