Released2022

FormatEpisodic

Duration5 x 50'

Production companyBig Blue Productions

DirectorLourens Blok

DOPAage Hollander

Production designerBen Zuydwijk

Post-productionPlanet X

Shot at ReadySet Studios, Amsterdam

VP/ICVFX supervisorPepijn Schroeijers

VP/ICVFX producerDennis Kleyn

VP/ICVFX artistRené van Zon
Ridder Haspels

VP/ICVFX assistantMarijn Eken

Head of VPNils Pauwels

Rampvlucht / The Crash

ICVFX for high end drama series

In The Crash, a considerable amount of scenes (and screen time) take place in the Dutch parliament as investigations about the cause of the crash and the mysterious cargo inside the plane are an important part of the narrative. The two main spaces where Dutch government resides, the First Chamber (Eerste Kamer, or ‘senate’) and Second Chamber (Tweede Kamer, or ‘house of representatives’) are not accessible to film crews, nor do they look like they used to in the period 1992 – 1998 when the story is set.

As constructing the sets in full was not an option budget-wise, and partly building the sets would mean countless shots would rely on VFX set extensions (not to mention the technicalities of shooting in a chroma key setup), the choice was made to solve these scenes with the use of big L.E.D. screens, a technique these days synonymous with the term ‘virtual production’.

The image on the left contains stills from TV broadcast recordings, showing the parliament as it actually looked in the early 1990s.

The precise term describing our use of this type of virtual production is ‘ICVFX’ which stands for ‘In-Camera Visual Effects’.

The benefit of using ICVFX and creating digital environments of the parliament spaces, was that once these assets are created and optimised for use on the L.E.D. walls, the crew can -within some boundaries- shoot whatever angle they want with runs covering any length, directly live on set and evaluating the in-camera results. The light emitting from the L.E.D. wall helps the integration of fore-mid-and background as the emitted color and brightness of the content being displayed on the wall, actually ‘lights’ the actors and sets in front of it.

Virtual parliament

The decision was made to set up the parliament environments in Unreal Engine, basically creating a full 3D game level for both First and Second Chamber. Assets of the furniture and other objects were modelled based on photo references and archival source footage. The modular character of these environments allowed for quick repetition, followed by some tweaks to add details and randomness.

Virtual environment in Unreal Engine
of the Dutch ‘senate’ (Eerste Kamer)

Virtual environment of the
‘House of Representatives’ (Tweede Kamer)

Why are game engines used?

Game engines are build to display whole 3D worlds for gaming purposes in realtime, as a game can not predict beforehand how players of the game will interact with it. In order to provide this seamless experience, the game engine must be prepared to render this game world in full, 360 degrees and photorealistic appearance (or as photorealistic as possible within the limits of real time computing). These techniques make game engines very useable for film production as well, as the combination of camera angle, camera dynamics and talent moving in front of the screen are not fully predictable. Realtime, continuous updates of the content in the background on the LED wall, ensures that at any given time, the camera angle is matched with the right perspective, parallax and defocus, selling the in-camera result as a seamless result.

ReadySet Studios features a Stype inside-out realtime tracking solution that can measure position, rotation and lens information in realtime and send that data back into Unreal’s virtual camera. That way, the virtual environment displayed on the L.E.D. wall gets updated in realtime, aligned with whichever way the camera and DOP in front of the wall are moving.

Credits