The Volume: The new way of making movies

 

                                                  On set of The Mandalorian

Since the immergence of cinema, films have always tried to push the boundaries of human imagination. Year to year, decade to decade, filmmakers have been developing technology and tricks that can enable them to tell the grandest and most expensive stories they can. With the development of complex Visual Effects to aid Special Effects, scenes that would have been otherwise impossible or expensive to shoot have become easy. This has enabled movies like Avatar, Alien, Ready Player One and so forth to made easier than they would been centuries ago. However, a new piece of cutting edge technology is now taking the film industry by storm. Giving creators more control than they ever had on their vision. “The Volume”, an invention that has slowly started to replace green screens.

The Volume, a combination of physical set, 20-foot high LED panels, and digital elements, has increasingly been used in film and tv production in recent times.

Formally known as stagecraft, this set is a little like the projected backgrounds filmmakers have been using since the silent era. The difference however is that it’s smart. It harnesses a real-time engine (usual Unreal engine), responding to the movement of the on-set camera by adjusting the perspective, lighting and other elements within the panels. This sophisticated system provides much more realistic lighting than previous-generation green screens.

LED screes have been used to produce blockbuster movies and series like The Batman, the live adaptation of the lion and The Mandalorian.