[MUSIC PLAYING]
This season, in season five, Franklin
is living the high life.
And, you know, we talk about the penthouse, for instance.
JOHN LABRUCHERIE: This year, I brought in a company called
Orbital Studios in order to make these stage sets
like this one right here look like a location.
TOMÁS VOTH: John told me, I think
if we're going to do this, we should do it with a LED screen.
And I said, well, that's going to be a big LED screen.
Because the whole point of being in a penthouse
is to have the view, right?
So I designed the set, in a sense,
so that from any angle, any angle in the apartment,
you have a really nice view outside.
And then we had a 65 foot LED screen to create the view.
Because the view is as important as what's in the apartment.
LED screens-- first of all, they used to suck.
They've actually reduced the pixel now
to the point where it actually is getting
to be much more realistic.
We had to roll the dice because it was-- early on,
we didn't have any experience with this new company.
But we said we're just going to do it, and we did.
AJ WEDDING: I'm AJ Wedding.
I'm the co-founder of Orbital Studios.
This started in my garage about a little over a year ago.
I fell in love with virtual production.
Virtual production obviously started in the sci-fi realm.
You know, these are worlds you can't go to,
so we have to create them.
But it's also great for these more terrestrial things.
One of the things that we did with working
with these producers of "Snowfall"
is pushing the technology to fit the workflow of television.
Making backgrounds happen faster, higher
quality, more realistic, and on their time and on their budget.
And I know that they've been able to reduce their times
that they're out on location by at least a third this season.
And I think in a lot of cases, studios are using green screen.
And they're not getting the quality that they
want out of the final product.
And this allows them to see the final product right
from the start and make those adjustments that they
want before it's in the camp.
And everybody on "Snowfall" has been so collaborative and so
awesome with this process.
MAN: Roll the plate.
And camera.
Action.
CHRISTIAN HERRERA: Forget about green screen.
I don't want to look for a green screen ever again, you know?
This is something that is an eye opening.
All the car stuff, for example-- like driving at night.
Oh my god.
It's like, can it get any better?
Right?
Like, we didn't have to go outside
to shoot driving around.
We're just on the stage.
It is amazing how you can use some of these plates
that you are using on the LEDs to actually
light some of your sets.
I remember working with AJ, looking for plates,
looking for like colors, what you will work better on the LED
wall that I can actually emulate some of that with my lighting.
AJ WEDDING: Franklin's penthouse was definitely the big ticket
item for this season.
I mean, it's a 12K image on one screen
and a 4K image on two other screens.
It required a lot of paint work to get
rid of non-period buildings, non-period vehicles,
anything that would stand out as not being in the 1980s.
Yeah, so we shot these plates with four Sony VENICEs
all next to each other.
So we have a true 12K image.
As well as the side plates as well, which--
one's not on yet, but this guy is.
And the best thing about it is you get all of that real life
reflection, right?
All of these glass surfaces, you're seeing reflections in.
If you open the doors, you're seeing interesting reflections.
And it's all stuff that, you know, the DPs all want.
JOHN LABRUCHERIE: Literally Damson--
we're shooting directly behind him looking at the wall.
And like, a little airplane will fly by on the screen.
And there's, like, smog in the air and traffic
running down the streets.
Without Orbital, we wouldn't have
been able to accomplish this.
That penthouse would have had to have been on the 25th floor
of a building in Westwood, which I don't know that we
could have accomplished during this time
of filmmaking with COVID.
DAMSON IDRIS: "Snowfall" shouldn't have given me
the opportunity to work with LED because I'm
officially a bougie actor now.
No more green screen.
I'm putting it in my contract.
It just makes everything so real.
Just the way they're able to manipulate the time of the day,
the way the city of LA breathes, the lights--
as an actor, it makes it real.
DEVYN TYLER: this beautiful scene
with Franklin and Veronique where
they're sitting on the couch having dinner,
and there's this beautiful sunset.
It's really just filled with these pinks and these oranges.
And it's all on these LED lights.
It feels really present and in your face,
and I've not experienced anything like that.
But I really-- I think it's quite fun.
City, skylines, and the lights and things--
it's really, really incredible.
CARTER HUDSON: We did a big scene with Teddy and Franklin
in his apartment.
This place--
CARTER HUDSON: And then we shot the scene at sunset.
And you walk in, and it's like, it's lit up, you know?
And it's hard not to look at.
And so-- because you can't not.
I mean, it's just like, look.
It's so-- it just grabs your eye.
So he and I are just kind of like watching the sunset.
It's like he's living in his penthouse
with an LED screen view, and I'm still in the dusty warehouse.
We don't need an LED screen in there.