Amazon Prime and streaming companies bet on virtual sets to reduce costs

Amazon has used for the first time the Churubusco virtual studio, operated by the production company Simply, for the filming of the series Every minute countswhich will show the dramatic hours experienced in the 1985 earthquake in the country. The production will be available on the Prime Video platform on November 8.

The production decided to use the virtual set because “building a devastated city”, the buildings and the location of sets implied an “excessive budget and a waste of material.”
Since last year, James Farrel, director of international original content at Amazon Studios, told Expansión that this production “we thought about recording in the Amazon studio in Los Angeles to see the 360-degree setting, but we realized that it was too much.” expensive to take people there all the time.”

Then the virtual set arrived at the Churubusco studios, which was built in May 2023, giving way to the company’s plans to make expenses more efficient. With this scenario, it was only necessary to build two 1.24 meter models of the collapsed buildings that would be placed behind the virtual screen with the background of the city of that time.

“We had thought about virtual screens, but the reality is that no one had used them in Mexico. But we found the one in Churubusco and as we progressed we realized that it was much cheaper, but also of all the possibilities that this type of tool gives you to tell a story,” said Jorge Michel Grau, showrunner of the project.

Currently, large audiovisual studios are at a point where consumers demand greater content for streaming, but this has implied large investments for companies, so they are now looking for options to balance visual quality with capital investments.

Company data indicates that they have made significant investments in the country, since since 2018 they have worked with more than 20 local production companies, which has generated more than 6,000 direct and indirect jobs with the production of more than 50 local original titles.

The virtual set

The Churubusco virtual set is made up of 800 LEDs measuring 50×50 centimeters, creating a screen 10 meters long, 15 meters wide and 6 meters high. Much of the technology used in this virtual set comes from the Unreal Engine from the video game company Epic Game.

Virtual production combines traditional techniques with digital tools to generate a realistic audiovisual project. Unlike conventional physical productions, the virtual set no longer requires building multiple sets, generating a lower environmental impact, or facing adverse weather conditions, by working in a studio designed to suit the project, where an LED-type screen shows the environment.

This filmmaking method combines computer-generated imagery (CGI) and augmented reality to create environments, characters and effects that are projected in real time on screens placed directly on the film set. This allows replacing, in most cases, the construction of physical sets or the use of real locations, thereby saving studios money and time. And even have the possibility of editing a scene in real time.

Virtual sets allow large studios to easily access a vast range of settings that might traditionally represent expenses such as travel, permits for access such as historical monuments, special effects such as explosions and lighting. And on the other hand, only pre-production needs to be involved, that is, being clear about the images that will be projected on the virtual set during filming. The virtual set even detects by default the type of lighting that a scene and movement require.

This type of technology has been used by large studios such as Disney to record projects such as Star Wars’ The Mandalorian.

“This technology gives many possibilities for productions in terms of efficiencies because imagine the time involved in changing locations or lighting, now everything is just a click away, added to the time and expense involved in being on stages in other countries and here you can change them. or bring them with just one click,” explained Mónica Reina, founder of Simply.

This technology is a worldwide trend that has not only aroused the interest of large film studios, but also of other industries such as advertising, the media, government, and even independent producers, seeing in this type of set a possibility of generating projects quickly but especially economically.

In Mexico, Churubusco’s virtual set has recorded at least 20 projects such as commercials for the automotive company Jac, government advertising for Banobras, and even the second presidential debate. To them have been added the projects of the streaming platforms, which were not detailed.

“Many believe that technologies are going to end jobs but in reality I think that is not the case. Virtual sets open the opportunity to democratize the development of audiovisual projects to all people and with the quality of a large studio and I believe that this is the true value and use of technologies: that we can all access them,” said Rune Hansen. , Co-Founder and CTO of Simply.