MILES PERKINS: Hello, and welcome to Unreal Build: Virtual
Production.
My name is Miles Perkins, Business Development
for Unreal Engine.
And together with my colleagues David Morin,
and Connie Kennedy, who you hear from shortly,
we're responsible for bringing the Unreal Engine
into film and television particularly focused
on virtual production.
My personal background is in visual effects.
Spending the formative years of my career at industrial light
and magic in Lucasfilm.
I was there in the early 90s when computer graphics was just
establishing its foothold in filmmaking.
It was an incredibly exciting time
where we saw an explosion of innovation and technology
and storytelling.
Fast forward to today, where the energy and inspiration
is comparable.
The industry is, again, thinking way outside of the box,
innovating at a rapid pace, driving filmmaking technology
to new heights.
All in service to empowering the filmmaker, something incredibly
exciting to again be a part of.
At Epic Games where more than a games company,
in our ranks or teams of developers,
technicians, artists, many with extensive backgrounds
in film and television.
And also many of whom I've worked with before,
they're Academy, Emmy, BAFTA award winners,
all within our ranks.
The bench of talent is deep and very committed
to empowering the film and television
industry to reach new heights through real time technologies.
Just over a year ago at Siggraph 2019, some of you
attended our last virtual production summit.
There we partnered with Lux Machina, Arie, Profile, Magnum
Opus.
Where we demoed our Unreal LED stage technology,
showcasing among other things in-camera visual effects,
virtual scouting, and multi-user workflows.
It was thrilling to be able to share the new Unreal Engine
capabilities with the community and the potential for real time
technologies in filmmaking at large.
A year later virtual production has absolutely
taken off across all corners of the film and television
industry specifically, with in-camera visual effects.
We're currently tracking well over 100 stages worldwide
ranging from high end feature films
to independent short projects.
Being a part of this growth has been inspiring for us
at Epic because we truly believe in the democratization
of this technology.
We want to break down any barriers between creators
and their ability to create through our educational
initiatives like Unreal fellowship
program, the financial assistance from Epic
MegaGrants, free high quality digital assets
and environments from Quixel, and on the Unreal marketplace.
And dedicated engineering and development resources
to bring new virtual production tools into the engine.
We are working hard to continually invest
in and inspire the larger community.
We believe in this community and we
believe that when you succeed, we all succeed.
To that end, we're very excited to scale up
what has historically been our virtual production summit
into today's Build event.
By moving online we're able to reach thousands
more people from all over the world
and we're thrilled to see how many of you
have tuned in today.
We have a great lineup for you and we
hope you leave feeling inspired and excited about what's
to come.
In today's program, you'll see in-depth customer presentations
covering various approaches to virtual production
from episodic animation, to in camera visual effects,
to Art Direction.
We also have an incredible panel lined up
with studio executives discussing
how virtual production is changing the filmmaking
process at the studio level.
From new creative opportunities from artist,
to budgeting, and staffing.
And we'll close out the day with a sneak peek at some
of the exciting new features coming later this year
an Unreal Engine 4.26.
I'm now going to hand it over to my colleague David Morin
to talk a bit more about the current state of the industry
and to show a short reel.
Thank you all for joining us an Unreal Build Virtual
Production.
DAVID MORIN: Thank you Miles and hi, everyone.
My name is David Morin, I am the Industry Manager
for media and entertainment at Epic Games and the Executive
Director of the Academy Software Foundation,
an industry group dedicated to the development of open source
software in the motion picture industry.
Today we're witnessing a tectonic shift in our film
and television industry.
We're living through a time of great disruption
but also a time of great innovation.
The incredible team of engineers at Epic
have been hard at work developing
Unreal Engine for film and TV.
So that filmmakers like you, can use
all the benefits of computer graphics
yourself and in real time.
As a result, the industry is adopting and working
with Unreal Engine at an increasing rate of speed.
There are no more than 150 confirmed film and television
production that I've used or are currently
using Unreal Engine for virtual production and animation
in all kind of different ways from the art department,
to final pixel.
Today you'll be hearing from a number
of artists and executives who are leading the charge.
Amongst them we're particularly excited to welcome visionary
director Robert Zemeckis and his longtime collaborator Kevin
Bailey.
Robert Zemeckis needs no introduction
as he has done so many movies that are dear
to our hearts whether these perhaps less
or known that he played a crucial role in developing
virtual production in the early days where computers were slow
and visual effects took hours per frame to render.
Together with Robert Zemeckis and Kevin Bailey,
we will go into a wide ranging discussion
about virtual production in their latest
movie, the witches.
As Marlowe mentioned, one of the biggest trend we're seeing
is the adoption of smart LED wall stages
for in-camera visual effects.
This is a worldwide phenomenon now.
After unveiling our own demo stage
at Siggraph just over a year ago,
with our partners Lux Machina, Magno Opus, Quixel, and Arie,
it's been incredibly gratifying to witness
the explosion of LED stages around the world
using Unreal Engine.
New stages pop up once a week now,
not just in Hollywood or London but in locations
everywhere from Canada, Morocco, India, Germany, Argentina,
and more.
To showcase this international creativity and momentum,
we thought we would put together a short sizzle
reel showing a selection of these many LED
stages across the globe.
Let's have a look.
We we're really one of the early adopters for virtual production
here in the Southeast.
And we got excited about the technology
because of the future of what it could be.
[SPEAKING FRENCH]
[SPEAKING GERMAN]
[SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
We're only scraping the surface of what this technology can do.
The benefits are countless.
And the day will finally come when we all will say,
green screen, your services are no longer required.
Orca Studios is a Spanish based company
specializing in [INAUDIBLE] solution for filmmaking.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Isn't that something?
We want to thank all the great companies and individuals
who created those virtual production experiences
and contributed to that reel.
You've heard us say it, your success is our success.
As some of you are scaling up your own production,
building a stage using Unreal for an animation projects
or developing a plug-in.
We want to hear about it and help you achieve your goals.
We encourage you to check our Epic MegaGrants program which
can provide no strings attached financial assistance to content
creators, tool developers, students, and everyone
who's doing amazing things with Unreal Engine.
And if you're looking to learn our Unreal Engine,
we have great programs for you.
And my colleague Connie Kennedy is here
to tell you more about that.
Thank you David.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Connie Kennedy, I'm the head of Epics LA lab.
Part of what we do at the lab is to educate
and empower current industry professionals, as well as
the next generation for Hollywood.
The democratization of technology
has always been a priority for Epic
especially in the case of virtual production.
Sharing knowledge and best practices is crucial.
Our Unreal online learning program offers self
paced courses across different industries
with hands on training.
One of our most exciting new developments
which we created this summer is the Unreal fellowship program
for industry professionals.
This is an application-based program
that gives a full time four-week blend of hands-on learning,
project, work, and networking.
Our goal with this program is to identify and train
key professionals across visual effects and animation
so that they can learn the Unreal Engine
and virtual production workflows on a very deep level,
and bring that knowledge back to their sets
studios and colleagues.
We have been blown away by their response to this program.
We received almost 6,000 applications for just 50 spots.
This shows how much of an appetite
there is for this type of knowledge and skills.
As a result, we're working to scale up our fellowship program
with new students every quarter across a variety
of different regions.
Check out this short reel to hear about the program
directly from some of our fellowship alumni.
KAMY LEACH: Overall, with a whole Unreal Fellowship,
it was just a great experience.
I loved every minute of it.
I loved seeing all the people kind of come together
and the trainers, the mentors, mentees,
advise in such an open and honest way.
ANDRES MARTINEZ: The fellowship was an opportunity for Epic
to present to a series of professionals in the film
industry the capabilities of Unreal
Engine with virtual production.
STEPHEN ROSENBAUM: And what they did
is they exposed us to a six week intensive training program
to discover the advantages of using Unreal
either within their existing workflows, or as an alternative
to creating content.
KAMY LEACH: There were so many people
from all over the visual effects industry
everywhere for preproduction to post-production,
people that have not been behind a camera or on a box
for many years.
ERIC BARBA: It was run as fast as you can,
as long as you can for six weeks.
I didn't want to let anyone down so for me,
it was seven days a week but it was a labor of love.
ALTON GLASS: I could take Sequencer and lean
on my traditional skills as a filmmaker and director
and go in, do my camera placement,
my shot blocking, and my previous storyboards all
inside one tool.
And brought me back home with mind blown.
Honestly it was a testament to the Epic team of instructors
and support that we got after being off the box for 13 years,
that I was able to deliver a piece in six weeks.
I think that says a lot.
JASON BAYEVER: I found the instructors
to be extremely dedicated.
They were available to us at all times,
even after hours you'd still have instructors kind
of popping in and giving us feedback and giving us
help and working with us.
DONNA LANASA: is helping each other,
it was a team that was none of these big heads
or attitudes or anything.
Everyone just helped each other, did the best that they could.
MOOJ SADRI: You're going to get so much more out life
and more out your career by being open to things that you
don't know and not allowing the frustration of not knowing
something consume you.
So just as an exercise for self growth, it was fantastic.
JASON BAYEVER: Using it over the past six weeks
has really deeply impacted me in the fact
that I think this is an amazing package
and it will continue to use it quite a bit.
STEPHEN ROSENBAUM: This is suddenly,
I have keys to Ferrari.
I can see, I'm using it as a tool
to work with the director and the editors
to refine concepts or action, but also to actually finish
work which is something that I didn't think
it was going to be possible.
In addition to the fellowship, we also
recently launched a new free on demand
class called, The Virtual Production
Primer which is available to anyone at any skill level.
This class is about 15 hours of content,
you can access it through the Unreal online learning portal
on the Unreal Engine website.
So without further ado, we have a fantastic program
lined up for you today.
So let's get into it.
Thanks so much for tuning in and be
sure to bookmark uevirtualproduction.com
where you can sign up for the virtual production newsletter,
download white papers, see project highlights,
and stay on top of the latest news
and developments for all things virtual production.