Role: Junior Disguise Media Server Programmer
Clients: High Res x Treasure Entertainment
Shot: June 2024
Released: May 2026
I really enjoyed being involved in the virtual production elements of the Power Ballad film. I worked heavily on the pre-production and setup, but the production clashed with a season of Name That Tune. Ultimately, the shoot was operated on site by Andy Coates while I worked in NTT. I worked alongside Chris Simcock from Sensel Studio during the previs and build phase before we handed the project over.
This was the first large-scale circular LED volume I had worked on. I had previously worked on large LED environments, but this was my first near-360° volume. It was a 5-metre-high LED wall designed to accommodate the wide range of vehicles used throughout filming.
One of the biggest challenges was the content itself. The project used a mixture of newly captured driving plates and older library content. The custom plates looked fantastic and filled the volume well, although they were often considerably wider than required. The older material presented a different challenge. In some cases, the content did not provide enough vertical resolution to fill the height of the wall.
We ended up having to run an inner and outer frustum workflow. This allowed us to scale content across the volume for reflections and environmental lighting, while maintaining correctly scaled imagery within the camera frustum for the final shot. It was a practical solution that helped bridge the gap between different content sources while preserving image quality.
The ceiling content also required some creative solutions. Not all of the plates aligned perfectly between the wall and ceiling sections. We used a combination of feathering, manual alignment and creative adjustments to create smoother transitions across the volume.
A significant amount of preparation went into the project before we got to site. I was involved from the early stages, including plate selection, liaising with production, previs sessions, project builds with Chris, and multiple rounds of content quality checks. Once the project was handed over to Andy, further QC and refinements were carried out on site before shooting began.
The production also made use of Livegrade, which was an interesting workflow to be part of and added another layer to the collaboration between departments.
I was disappointed to miss most of the shoot itself, however, it was still rewarding to be involved from the beginning and see the work successfully handed over. It was also a valuable opportunity to learn from both Chris and Andy and gain experience on another type of large volume project.
