Smaller crews, fewer extras, reduced international travel and restricted contact with key people are all likely to be aspects of film and higher-end TV drama production in the months to come and until it’s safe to revert to something resembling normality. Or, will the new ways of working that have been forced upon the industry remain in place for the foreseeable future?
Writing on Medium.com, Richard Jones points to the return of the sound stage as the centre of film production, and asks how this will work practically, especially when they are limited in number and in high demand.
Could the use of advanced systems such as Lux Machina‘s 8K video backdrop become common as big budget location shoots prove to be enormously difficult, even impossible to wrangle?
Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender and a host of other less well-known open source or non-commercial tools are being embraced by filmmakers operating in all sorts of different physical spaces to convince audiences that they are watching something that is real, but was in fact generated artificially. See the Parasite VFX breakdown video above, for example.
Will CG and VFX artists vie with DoPs and art directors for more of the production innovation plaudits? Will a single location be used multiple times in a single movie, with the magic stitched together on workstations and made to look photo realistic using ever-growing and ever-more sophisticated render farm environments?
As well as virus outbreak and lockdown-related restrictions, there are going to be huge financial considerations when planning a production. How will it feel to be obliged by the size of a budget to make a film in a space the size of a large gymnasium? Restrictive and claustrophobic, or surprisingly liberating, because all the complex and expensive logistics have been taken away so the filmmakers can concentrate fully on the job at hand?
Take a look at Richard’s article and let us know what you think. Is he exaggerating his future vision? Has he not taken his thinking nearly far enough? We’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions.