Inside Fallout’s Unique Workflow
Posted on Jul 18, 2024 by Samara Husbands
Stage Precision shares how it bridged the gap between traditional and virtual production
Fallout’s worldbuilding required the use of extensive virtual production technology to bring its environments to life on celluloid film for executive producer Jonathan Nolan. Creative design and VP studio partners All of it Now (AOIN) and Satore Studio consulted Nolan’s production team on their first time shooting in a large-scale 24K resolution in-camera VFX LED volume – and their toolset included deploying Stage Precision’s SP software as a versatile monitor to manage multiple tracked objects and cameras in the middle of the set.
“Our goal was to blend background scenes generated using Unreal Engine and seen in-camera, with data from tracking systems attached to those same cameras to create a seamless production pipeline of visuals displayed on the LED screens in the volume,” begins Berto Mora, head of creative technology at AOIN.
One of the main VP elements of the show focused on scenes featuring the Vertibird helicopter, set against a barren and post-nuclear wasteland backdrop. To achieve this, a hydraulic-powered Vertibird prop was placed in front of a collection of movable LED screens, displaying the desolate background and forming the physical basis of the shoot in the volume.
AOIN and Fuse Technical Group customised Stype Follower tracking beacons to fit both the Vertibird prop and the volume’s movable LED carts. These beacons send their positional and rotational tracking data within the volume to Unreal Engine and Stage Precision simultaneously. As the Vertibird, film cameras and movable LED carts move around the volume, the tracking data must update the background LED content to the correct position and perspective relative to the helicopter doors and camera views.
Not only did SP provide a valuable tool for data validation and camera tracking, the AOIN crew leveraged SP’s data monitoring features to build an alert system in case of data issues. After importing 3D models of each screen, prop and camera model into SP, they programmed each model to light up green whenever there was good data transmission and red for any errors.
“There is much data to be handled, so it was fantastic to bring it all into SP where we can check and monitor the statuses of our tracked systems,” says Neil Carman, technical director at AOIN. “Catching dropouts or errors in data means rectifying any issues before the production crew is aware, which is critical when downtime for troubleshooting on a film set can result in costly budget overruns. Traditional film crews hope their VP counterparts do not delay or intrude too much on their workflow. Stage Precision allows us to work in parallel with them instead of halting the whole production. Our post-production partners can also work faster knowing we have delivered fully informed tracking data recorded within SP instead of data unknowingly strewn with errors.”
Extensive and time-consuming camera tracking calibration across different technologies was unified into SP, further saving time. Recalibration throughout the shoot could be run quickly and efficiently from the single source of truth in SP. “SP gave us the agility we needed to adjust on the fly,” continues Mora. “If we lost tracking at any point, we could unhook a camera from the data flow in the SP interface and move it to where it was meant to be in the workflow without needing to manually move cameras around.”
With a unified tracking and data-monitoring workflow put in place, the AOIN and Satore teams also found
SP’s 3D viewport features to be pivotal in providing a visual reference to what was happening in the volume. AOIN built a 3D model of the volume, complete with Vertibird, cameras and movable LED screens to compose a bird’s-eye view of the action taking place within the studio.
“Because both the set and volume were so large, we didn’t have a direct line of sight to what was going on during filming. SP gave us that visibility, which is beneficial not just to us, but also the other crew members less familiar with VP,” remarks Tupac Martir, founder and creative director at Satore. “When the DOP had questions about the position of the LED screens, we were able to use SP as a previsualisation tool to show him how he should block out his movements and lensing.”
The AOIN team also capitalised on the collected data and 3D models to create a virtual tour of the set on a VR headset, and deployed AR tests to ensure the 3D space remained aligned with the physical set.
Reflecting on the Fallout project, the AOIN team testify to the time-saving power of handling complex VP workflows in SP, and its ability to reduce downtime. “There are several people on-set, and navigating all of these moving parts can be challenging,” explains Carman. “We were fortunate to have SP in our toolkit on this project. Even though this was a new workflow for us, we realised we needed it once on-site. SP’s user interface made it easy and intuitive to roll out.”
AOIN came to understand that the system they created in SP expedited the smooth operation of the volume and offered an extra layer of visibility which would not have previously been possible on a shoot of this scale. “The whole crew were appreciative of how smoothly the shoot went, and I believe that’s thanks to SP,” concludes Mora. “SP just keeps the production rolling.”
See inside the production of Fallout in our production story.
This feature was first published in the August 2024 issue of Definition.
