Virtual production
How we shot a rooftop fight scene with virtual production
A helicopter, stunt performers, and a sci-fi action sequence, the kind of thing you expect in a big-budget movie, shot in camera on our LED volume in North Hollywood. No rooftop, no green screen. Made in partnership with MSI.
On our channel: how we built and shot the rooftop sequence on the volume.
A rooftop, without the rooftop
A real rooftop shoot means wind, bad audio, permits, and real danger the moment stunts and action are involved. On our volume, the rooftop is on the wall.
The performers get the height and the city lights without the risk, and we can run the sequence all day in a controlled, comfortable space. Safer for the talent, easier for the crew, and the camera never fights the weather.
How virtual production works
Virtual production uses a game engine to do real-time filmmaking. We build the 3D world, play it back on the LED wall, and put a tracker on the camera so the background moves with every shot, the same parallax you would get on location. A lot of the VFX that normally happens in post happens here, on set.
And unlike green screen, the actors can actually see where they are. A sniper on a rooftop can look out and see the city, and track a helicopter flying past with their own eyes. We can also jump from a snowy street to a desert to a rooftop in minutes, just by swapping the world on the wall.
Selling the illusion
The craft is tying the digital world to the physical one. “Virtual production really excels when you can convince the audience that what they are seeing is real,” our production designer put it, and that comes down to foreground.
Faux concrete columns, pipes, wires, and vents, the things that actually live on a rooftop, sit between the camera and the wall and hide the seam. Lighting is matched to the environment on the screen and cued live, an electrician panning a spotlight as the helicopter passes overhead.
Powered in real time
Real-time only works if the hardware keeps up. MSI sponsored the shoot with a GeForce RTX 4090, which has become the workhorse behind our virtual production pipeline, driving the wall and the engine fast enough to light, block, and shoot without waiting on a render.
MSI featured the collaboration in their own case study on the studio.
- Shot at
- CinePacks Studios, North Hollywood
- Technique
- Real-time virtual production
- The scene
- Sci-fi rooftop fight
- Partner
- MSI
More from the shoot
Behind the scenes on the volume at our North Hollywood studio.
Shoot virtual production with us.
Rooftops, deserts, driving plates, or a world we build for you, all in camera on our LED volume in North Hollywood.