Byron Q., Writer/Director: It just came out a month ago or a couple months ago
and that really brought it up to the next level.
Film Courage: First off, can you clarify LED walls versus green screen?
Byron: LED wall is an actual LED panel so you're a TV screen think of a TV screen
so the image is on the screen right but the green screen is just a green paint
and what so with the green screen you're doing VFX after you filmed
then you're putting something to replace that green but with the LED wall you're filming
everything in camera so whatever you film you're taking that footage and that's your final picture.
Film Courage: Which do you prefer using?
Byron: LED wall but I haven't done it yet but I think I would like it because there's a lot
of benefits to LED wall if you can get the wall because it's quite expensive compared to green
screen but if you can get the LED wall what you're getting is you have the light coming from the
actual LED wall itself which gives it much more of a realistic lighting effect with green screen you
have to put a light over there and recreate the light that would be coming from that direction.
Another thing is reflections so with the green screen you're not going to get that but with LED
wall you can see reflections of whatever image scenery so that creates another more realistic
image but also for actors they're now immersed in the environment so they can act
as if they're actually wherever whereas with green screen it's harder for an actor
and so with a green screen a lot of that's done on the timeline the editing timeline you're you're
adding the yeah afterwards post production you're going to add that the effects in there
but with LED as a director too you can already see exactly what this is going to look you don't
need the visual effects artist to tell you oh see this image we're going to put this there
and then we're going to put this thing there you can see exactly what that's going to look along
with the lighting and everything how many virtual production studios have you visited
I've visited maybe three yeah three studios yeah so not that many here in the LA area
or something there's there's a lot in in LA I think we have the most in the world right now
don't quote me on that okay all right
and what is Unreal Engine unreal engine is a game engine that was created by epic games originally
for video games to create video games but now in recent years they've started using it for film
and TV because the the 3D rendering has caught on to be very photorealistic but at the same
time you could do it in real time you can move things around and change lighting in real time
instead of having to wait for a render which back in the days would take many hours or days
to render out a sequence have you used Unreal Engine with any of your productions so
for my new project Killing of a Machine this is the first time I'm using Unreal Engine
for a project but I did spend about eight months learning Unreal Engine with a school called CGPro
and yeah they've been great the main instructor there Ed
Dawson he was the VFX supervisor for The Lion King and The Jungle Book and yeah through them
as well as other online tutorials and resources I was able to learn how to use the software
and I created my my own environment my own level and that's where my story takes place
and so did you take classes at an actual classroom or this was all online oh it's all virtual all
virtual okay and and so do you have to have a special computer just for that is it taking up
too much yeah you do need a very powerful computer PC get a PC and the graphics card needs to be
pretty powerful and yeah I mean I don't know that much about computers so I basically went
to this custom computer company puget systems and I was I need something for Unreal Engine
just whatever you guys build just make sure it works for that program and they were able to
create a really powerful system and so is it a regular timeline Final Cut Pro or Adobe and but
it's different because it's different interfaces there's a lot more going on but similar there is a
timeline aspect to it but there's much more to the software because you're dealing with 3D objects
so you're dropping 3D objects in and moving things around but there is a timeline aspect as well
and are you saving these projects on the computer or in the cloud on the computer okay so you have
to have a lot of space it sounds do these projects wow yeah so you said it was a nine month course
no I I've just been doing my own studying for about nine months but for this class it
was only a two month course and so with your short film you're going to do the entire film
with Unreal Engine is that right so you can do a animation with everything in unreal so that would
just be a cgi movie but for mine I'm creating the background and the world in Unreal Engine but I'm
going to be filming it on a actual LED volume with live actors so you put the live actor in a costume
in front of the wall but on the wall it's going to be the actual environment that I've created
and you show some of that on your YouTube channel correct a little bit of
yeah a little bit my earlier prototype design but now my previz [previsualization] is a lot better
and that's what's great about Unreal Engine even if you're not filming
something on an LED wall for a filmmaker you can create previz within the engine and bring in
actors mannequins and and plan out your shots so that when you get on set you already can
see exactly what your film is going to look because a lot of indie filmmakers especially
you don't have the luxury of getting on set and going oh let's try that shot or
let's try this oh what move that light over there let's try a different thing
you have to just go go go but if you try out all your variations beforehand then when you get on
set you're you already know which shot looks cool how to do the sequence so it gives you much more
planning and control so you're using you're going to use sort of a manipulated background with the
LED panel but then live actors who will be there at the same time that you're filming yeah from
mine yep interesting wow and then the LED panel is it many many feet or is it several panels put
together it's a huge panel or a huge wall so they come in different sizes but each panel is like
a square piece so but they'll put all these little panels together the wall is pretty huge
I don't know exactly how tall probably 20 yeah 15 feet thing
so you have to book time to to you have to block it out and have a production schedule
in order to use the yeah it's any stage you would just book it by a day yeah it's a day rate
wow that's really cool how much has this changed your life this Unreal Engine and this virtual
production oh it definitely changed it in a different direction a much more exciting direction
i mean I pretty much once I found out about it I was okay I gotta learn this so
I mean I dumped all my money into the computer and taking classes and but it gave me
a new outlook in terms of how I can tell my stories because for example this short
film I wrote this script maybe two years ago and thinking I'll never be able to make it because it
takes place in the arctic and their spaceships and whatever and the effects itself would cost
so much money but now I can make it because I learned how to do the VFX myself and it really
wasn't that difficult to learn and that's what's so great about Unreal Engine is you don't really
need to be a VFX artist to understand how to use it because a lot of the assets are pre-created
already so you're just pulling in assets and customizing it and changing it and then you
already have your world you're not really building it from scratch is it compatible with a mac
yeah you can use it with mac but we most people don't recommend doing that because there's some
things with mac that I guess it can't really process I'm not 100 sure how that works but
yeah a lot of people have some issues with macs I ask what does it cost to use this technology
well the software itself is free you just have to have a really sick computer
yeah I think that's probably the biggest barrier is the computer my computer
cost almost four thousand
but to rent the LED stages they're quite expensive right now but they're starting to come down and
you can maybe find a smaller stage that maybe has a smaller LED panel and you could do a hybrid you
can shoot some green screen the wide shots and then go to the LED for your medium and close shots
so there's always ways to work around it and depending on your budget you can probably
negotiate with some of the studios as well because right now it's so new that a lot of these studios
they want to make content to show other filmmakers hey you can do this this is what it looks because
a lot of people don't really know about this yet they still think oh it's going to look fake or
something but if the studios can prove that on an indie budget you can make something realistic
that would get more business for them so they're actually willing to really negotiate and work
with you if you have a cool project if you were to use Unreal Engine let's say for Las
Vegas scenes let's suppose there were scenes that you just really couldn't get you needed a
certain permits or it wouldn't be safe would you actually film the background and then upload that
to Unreal Engine and then have that as part of the LED panel or you're creating it
graphically I think I would probably create it yeah because you can already get pre-existing
perfectly modeled Vegas scenes and you would just drop it into your level
and move things around a little bit change the lighting and then just have that there
yeah because if you go and film then you don't have the dynamic ability to move
the angles or unless you would have to film every single angle that just wouldn't wouldn't
be practical but if you have the environment you can go in that scene and get any angle you
want put the actor anywhere you want change the lighting however you want you can even change
what's in the background move things around so it has its own templates for different whether you're
in France or Vegas or I know you had one where you were in the forest I think yeah yeah channel
that looked really so on epic games they have a marketplace where they have a lot of these levels
and things are already pre-made and there's people making their own assets and just selling them
I mean a lot of it is for free actually on Quixel you can download all these really high detailed
3D assets for free but there's also people who are selling them for 20 bucks 30 bucks stuff
so people you said make their own assets their own graphics whatever interesting
that's fascinating do you think it's affordable for most independent filmmakers I think right now
there's a little bit of a barrier because of the computer issue but I think it's going to change
and as the LED panels get cheaper you're going to see the studio rates go down lower as well
so it's definitely affordable for indie filmmakers and there's different levels of it as well there's
people using a projector a home projector to do the same type of workflow or you can even use
a TV it's pretty interesting what some of these people are doing if you go on YouTube you'll
see people doing their own hacks of how they can do it in their home studio they can do it
yeah interesting so they have their own let's say big screen TV and they have some type of
image in the background wouldn't it reflect wouldn't wouldn't you see certain are there
ways around that where you just have to get the lighting right the lighting that's on the TV
but yeah there's ways to do it I've seen it with the projector it actually looked pretty good
how soon do you think you'll see Youtubers vloggers with this technology in their bedrooms
and they're they're vlogging and they're somewhere in the Sahara desert I think there's already
people doing that so it's already here this technology has only been used for last three years
but with Unreal Engine 5 it just came out a month ago or a couple months ago and that really brought
it up to the next level there's a few features in there where just the realism of the the characters
it's next level and there's a thing called meta humans and now they just release this thing where
you can scan anything but probably you want to scan your own face and make yourself into
a meta-human the meta-human just means that it has a complex skeleton system and they have a bunch of
pre-made character faces that you can manipulate but now you can bring in your own assets and make
it into a metahuman wow so we're definitely going to be seeing a lot of very interesting things
soon yeah what if you're sleeping and the metahuman comes out of your PC
there's a movie and attacks you yeah and there you go.