We talk with Daniel and chat about Vu Studios – a great resource for providing production companies, ad agencies, film producers, and corporate clients all things related to virtual production. As always please bring your questions so that we can learn together.
Panelists
Transcript from Talk
Blake Barnett:
Hello, and welcome to crew talk today. I have Daniel and Alvin from Vu Studios. My name is Blake Barnett. I’m filling in for Sarah Marince today. Daniel and Alvin, can you give us a quick intro?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. My name is Daniel. I am the creative director at our production company diamond view, and I also help work with our technology partners to create some cool new tech and innovations in virtual production. Yeah, so my name is Alvin Teves and I am the VP of research and development here at Vu Studio, and also lead the virtual production department here.
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Blake Barnett:
Cool, cool deal. So for the uninitiated, what is, what exactly is virtual production?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, it’s a really good question cause there’s a lot of different answers to it. You know, there’s a few different types of virtual production. So what we do is called ICV FX and camera visual effects. And so that basically means that we want to try and capture as much content as possible in the camera without having to, you know, replace screen screens and do that kind of stuff in post-production. So you know, we, we still do visual effects if we need someone to, you know, disappear or something like that or something to explode, we can’t actually make someone explode in real life
Blake Barnett:
That’d be bad. Yeah,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, we’re still doing that kind of stuff in post production. But, but basically our goal is just to capture as much as we possibly can in Cameron. Yeah. Yeah, I think so yeah, just to add to Daniel point is the virtual virtual production is actually a bigger a bigger, you know coverage in our, our industry and what we focus more into that is the in camera BX. There’s a, there’s a XR in terms of virtual production where you see the floor and L E D in the floor, and everything is almost like bringing a pre-composed composition in, in the shot. But what we have is a mixture of an actual virtual set as a background and also a practical element in, in this stage. So it’s a mixture that allows us to do that.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. And, and the, the technology behind it is all running off of a game engine called unreal engine. So essentially what happens is we’re tracking our camera’s position in real time in, in physical space, that image is getting sent into a computer and it’s processing the positional data. And then in the fraction of a second, it’s actually rendering a a, a per camera perspective on an L E D wall that, so when your camera moves, the background, Peres, that kind of stuff. So it allows you to take your talent to a location instead of or spring a location to your talent, to your crew instead of taking your talent to the location. So we can shoot in a studio here in Tampa, but we can bring in an environment that is in Alaska or on a different planet, or, you know, something crazy like that. And so that’s kind of the practical application of how we utilize virtual production.
Blake Barnett:
Okay. And you mentioned Orlando, is that where you guys are at now or you’re in Orlando?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
No, we’re actually based out of Tampa. So
Blake Barnett:
I mean, of, you said Tampa. Yeah. I don’t know why I’m thinking of Orlando.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. Yeah. So we’re based out of Tampa, but we are coming to Orlando very soon, actually, so, okay. And we’re, as we speak, building out a facility in Orlando we’re we are gonna have three stages there, one of them is gonna be our biggest stage yet, our biggest first production stage. Exactly. We also have stages in Nashville and in Las Vegas, which we just opened last week.
Blake Barnett:
Nice. So right now you have the three and then you’re opening up a fourth in Orlando. Is, is the plan
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
That’s correct. Yeah.
Blake Barnett:
Cool, cool, good deal. What oh, what, what are some of the practical objects that you typically bring into the studio? Or some examples of some, you know, you, you’re talking about mixing it in with the virtual set and like the practical, what, what are some examples of situations that you normally do?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
A lot, a lot of that. So it will still boil down to the, the concept of the, the project and scope of the project to give an example, let’s say we’re trying to do a sunset scene, cuz that’s one of the, the really good example for it. You could have a sunset for how the, or inside AC, especially in Florida in terms of the, the practical elements for it. You’re gonna have what you normally would see in, in, in that environment. Like the weather we put sand on the floor Palm trees to, to, to add the trick. The trick really is, having as many practical elements as possible. It would, I would say it should be at least 50% of, of the actual production in terms of the design aspect of it. Yeah. Because it helps it bond the virtual element to the real element of it. So if you don’t have any, if you don’t have any practical elements, it just doesn’t work that way. It, it, it doesn’t give you the illusion of, of that perspective
Blake Barnett:
Is the floor led, led screens when you do that? No. No, the floor’s not. Okay. So that’s why, so you, you would just bring sand in, like maybe an umbrella or something and some beach out and then you’d mix it in with yeah. To get the water and the background of the sunset.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. You can go pretty minimal with art and we’ve done that before, but then you can go all out with art as well. We always say that we’ve done our job. If you never even notice the environment. If you see a beach scene like Alvin was talking about taking place and you’re more invested in the drama of the characters’ interaction and that kind of stuff, versus the environment around them, then we’ve done our job. You know, that is something that people don’t always take into consideration. They think, oh, I can, you know, go shoot on a, in a volume and I don’t have to bring any art or lights or anything like that. But the reality is you do need to bring in art any tangible, physical elements that your character is able to interact with is only gonna add more realism and authenticity to your scene.
Blake Barnett:
Okay, cool. And then how does that work with like crew? Do people typically bring in like their own DP’s or is it something where they just bring in their director and like you have a DP that’s used to using, you know, your camera set up and gaffer, well, I don’t even know if you know how the gaffing situation works. ITD be kind of L a D I don’t know how I’m ignorant to, you know, how that works for, you know, virtual stuff.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
That is a really good question. And we get it all the time actually. And so basically there’s a couple different answers to it. And that’s all. Yes. . And so, so basically, you know, we have a production company called diamond view and actually view was kind of birthed out of diamond view. Our production company and view has just kind of grown like crazy, fast, even beyond what diamond view is. But a lot of our work that we do at diamond view is virtual production work. And so we have clients like, you know, Disney NASCAR you know, a bunch of sports, you know, you name it, they hire us to create commercial content for them primarily. And then we’ll do that in virtual production. That’s probably at least here in Tampa where we’re based out of where a diamond view is also based out of probably 50% of the work in our studio here is diamond view projects, but then the other 50% here, and then in all of our other studios as well across the country, that’s primarily other production companies and creative agencies coming in.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So they are typically bringing their own director, their own crew. They’re supporting it with their, with their own you know, traditional pipeline that they would do. There is a little bit of a learning curve though, when they’re coming into a virtual production environment, you know, a lot of these directors and DPSS, haven’t utilized the technology before. And so that’s been a big focus of ours is education. And even, you know, we’ve, we’ve shot with some, or we’ve brought in some very experienced DPS who have been doing this for decades and they get in this environment and it is a little bit, you know, they’re a little bit lost. Yeah. It’s,
Blake Barnett:
It’s different. Yeah, yeah,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it doesn’t take a lot to learn cuz once you, once you understand it, you realize how similar it actually is to being on location , but there’s a learning curve there. And so that’s a big focus of ours right now is education and making, getting, getting people into our studios through workshops and that kind of stuff for more hands-on opportunities. Yeah. And I, I would say that it’s, a lot of you know, education in terms of how to use this tool, basic form. It’s one of the outlets for us to express our creativity and it’s a tool for us to enable those creative things that might not have been possible before. But there is, there’s also a lot of misconceptions around the virtual production that we, we would like to also try to like correct them and make sure that they understand fully how to use this tool.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
There’s some ideas like, oh, then it’s virtual, right? We could switch different environments and like a snap of a finger. Like, no, there’s still it’s you still treat it like an actual production. One of the questions they have is that someone would require some level of planning. And I would say that, the approach in this kind of production is actually the post production or the VFX happening in the front end of it. You kind of need to plan out all your environments. You need to plan out your build out of your treaty elements. There’s a lot of optimization of environments that you pick how it’s gonna portray in the led all, how would you recreate that exact element in, in the practical form? So a lot of preproduction and a lot of education on the client side needs to happen to be able to have a successful virtual production.
Blake Barnett:
Okay. And we already have a couple questions from the audience and anybody out there feel free to ask me anytime we’ll, we’ll jump at ’em. We have the first one here from Doug Morris. Hey, Doug. The question is it sounds like you’re putting together different elements, which seems like it would require some level of planning to what degree do you use storyboards in your pre-production?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Oh, as often as we possibly can, we’re using storyboards you know, sometimes that is dependent on the timeline we’re working with and, and that sort of thing, but it, it is a, just like it would be for an on-location production or traditional shoot. You know, we are wanting to utilize storyboards. We’re referencing all the time we’re we’re building shot lists. It’s a very, very similar pipeline to what we typically do. But like a was saying, it does take more work on the front end, especially since it’s so new and we’re educating a big part of what we’re doing on the front end. Isn’t just preparing environments and, and that sort of thing. It’s also education and helping our clients understand how to utilize the technology. What are the right scenes, use it for what are not the right scenes use it for?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
And so, you know, those, those are some of the things that that, that we’re really big on right now, but, but yeah, storyboards are huge. Planning is absolutely essential. You do have a lot of flexibility, you know, versus production allows create a ton of creative freedom and flexibility, but you have to set yourself up right. To be able to utilize that creative freedom and then knowing, knowing the, the limitation of the tool and what you could do and what it’s good at to use it for also speaking in, in the storyboard aspect of it in terms of pre-production you have the ability to almost kind of like pre visualize what you’re gonna see in terms of environment, because you’re, you have the ability to customize and design the environment part of it in an engine.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So that’s one of the, a lot of the director really love a lot of the, the DP really love because they are able to manipulate the environment in terms of like the look, the, the placement of where they wanna shoot. Do they want this environment, this, this rock to be, you know, place in here and DP do, do you want it to be more of like a moody sunrise or a sunset, or do you want it to be more of like a bright day basin? Yeah. Or do you want your son to be green? Yeah. You know, like you can do all kinds of, really crazy stuff.
Blake Barnett:
So with the storyboard process, do you find that it’s any different than the typical storyboard or like, is there any other nuances for like virtual production regarding the storyboard or is it pretty much the same
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Currently? It’s pretty much the same. However, that the, the tools that we’re really excited about are the pre-visualization tools that are based in unreal engine that can then translate into a practically use for your shoot . And so these are tools we’re working on developing right now, actually to where, you know if, if we’re designing an environment in previs and we’re blocking on a shot in previs and we’re, we’re doing all those kinds of things, then, you know, we’re actually doing double work. If we’re utilizing a previ tool that’s based around unreal engine, and then we’re having to recreate all that in the engine for our shoot . So what we wanna be able to do is have a, a previous solution to where you’re designing your environment and you’re, you’re doing everything for previs and doing essentially a virtual pre light .
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
And then you can take that and you can utilize it on your shoot and all the things that you did in your previs or right there in our stage like here in Tampa or wherever you’re shooting. Yeah. So pretty much your, your storyboard is gonna be the final environment that you’re gonna be utilizing. Yeah. And there’s one of the, one of the things of experiment is using the VR goggled HTC five. So we’re able to hand it to director and actually able to, to ENGO, you know, engulf theself involve him, he himself into it, and then explore where he actually need to shoot in a VR aspect of it, which is a very immersive and totally new way to, to do it. It’s very creative. Yeah. Yeah. We’re really not too far off from a world where, you know, we do all of our previs on a computer or NBR, and then we get walk on a set. We the director has an iPad or with all of the different shots that were storyboarded from the pre previs and they all right. Shot two a, they tap it and then it pulls it up on the environment in the volume. So those are some of the kind kind of things that we’re, we’re really excited about.
Blake Barnett:
That’s really cool. We got another question, actually, a couple more questions from radiance digital, you’re asking what, what is the size of your studio? And we should probably put up your website address too, so they could just use studios.com.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. I’ll put it in here,
Blake Barnett:
But yeah, they’re asking what the size of your studio is, and, and maybe they’re different at each location. I’m not,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, yeah. They are a little bit different. So our campus stage, correct me if I’m wrong. I think you probably no better than I am, but our campus stage is a hundred foot diameter or a hundred foot length stage and then 50 diameter, 50 diameter. Yeah. And our it’s how, how high this is 17, 17 feet. Yeah. 70 feet. Yeah. Our natural stage is about 120 feet long and it is 20 feet, high, 20 feet high. Yeah. The, the, the one in Nashville is quite different and we were able to create a new design for it. So instead of a volume, it is so it’s looks like a traditional C volume shape, but we actually extended another wall. So it’s like a J shape,
Blake Barnett:
So. Okay. So you have one long, one longer wall kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. What that allows us to do is to have some walking shots along the, you know, the flat wall and just give us more landscape do utilize.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Next question from Eli’s show any tips on combining unreal lighting and IL lighting on the stage,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Is that IRL real light in real life, in
Blake Barnett:
Real, in real life lighting. Yeah.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So, yeah, so that’s definitely the tips for that we utilize a lot of I would call smart lighting this days. Like it’s just crazy that you could like update your firmer on the light now. But yeah, we use a lot of DMX lighting as well to be able to control it and, and dialed in the look for it. One of the advice that I always tell gaffer and VP is the L E D technology is still RGB in terms of diodes. So you are only getting three color spectrum from the wall, right? so you wanna actually use the wall as an ambient lighting to then to create the ambient in your practical set, but utilize your key lighting for, for example, like a sky panel to match the wall color color the color use, use your practical lights to, to match the color of the wall instead of like using the wall to match your, your key light, because you want to have enough spectrum to actually match this Skype panel.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So with this Skype panel, you would have all the spectrum to match whatever the color of the wall is. So, yeah, it is similar to kind of the same situation we were talking about with art to where some people may come into a, a virtual production studio and say, oh, I don’t even have to like, cuz I can just put lights up on the screen. And it does a really good job of ambient lighting. We do do a lot of stuff where we put up massive, like 20 foot white cards essentially act as like a giant bounce. It’s pretty, pretty crazy, but Alvin’s absolutely right. That quality of light isn’t the same. And so when we encourage DPSS to come in and gaffers to come in and light this exactly like you would, if you were on location, you know, , use the same principles that you would on location.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
The biggest difference thing that we need to take into consideration though, is controlling spill cause if we’re spilling onto the screen, what it does, is it it actually kind of like lights up the black portions of the screen lift it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then what, what tends to happen is if you get spill, it’s one of the, the biggest giveaways. If we’re ever watching something with virtual production, it’s like, oh, they didn’t like this properly because the black levels on the, the screen whatever’s on the screen won’t match the black levels of your talent or whatever’s physical practical. So yeah. Use use a lot of advice that I tell to TV uses false color specifically, especially to judge your black levels of the, the virtual wall and then your black levels on your practical. So with false color, you’re gonna be able to dial them and to actually see if you’re close to both of them. And I think that’s, once you get it in the same color, in the false color, you should, should be good.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. You mentioned there’s a little bit of a learning curve for the DP’s. It sounds like there’s a little, the same learning curve for like a gaffer, you know, going in there to kind of dialing in the, you know, how is how he normally does his lighting or her lighting. So yeah, that’s that sounds about right. And do you do outside gaffers typically go in there or is that something that you normally handle internally? You’re saying just spring your lights, like normal.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We, we get gaffers who have been doing this for, you know, 30 years, 40 years. We just had a shoot in our Vegas stage and the gaffers we brought up there, we were kind of joking like, oh, they’re all grandpas. And it was
Blake Barnett:
Kinda funny. Yeah.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
You know, they had been doing this for years. This is their first time on a virtual stage. And they were like, their eyes were like blown,
Blake Barnett:
Probably shocked a little bit. This is kinda shocked. And this is like mixing the old and the new and there’s like, I’ve never, this is, this is magic. What is going on here?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. I was like, that’s a 20 by and you just did it in five seconds. it’s like for, for a 20 by 20, it’ll take you how many people? Oh yeah. I mean, I mean, for, for creative purpose, you know, it always boils down to how it looks in camera and the final output, but all those suggestion that I mentioned is to, to be aware of, you know, that, that know the tools more, if you could totally totally use the wall to just light your scene, but it limits you later in post to be able to call it correct. And, you know, push boundaries in terms of like tolerance, if you wanna push it this way, then, you know, knowing that at least logging into the project, you know, is a good thing to have.
Blake Barnett:
Okay. And I’m gonna take a few steps back. You mentioned diamond diamond view earlier as your production company. Can you give us the kinda, just like background history, how, you know, how view studio started and just like a little history of, you know, mixing diamond view as well?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, so like a said diamond, view’s been around for over 15 years now and, you know, Alvin and I haven’t been with the company for that long. A’s been here quite a while, longer than I have, but, you know diamond view started kind of right before the recession back in 2008. And, you know, that was a big proving point for the company to really get as scrappy as possible and down and dirty and, you know, figure out how to make video content and ultimately make money in the middle of a recession. And so our CEO, Tim Moore, he, he started the company. He started as most people in our industry get into this making wedding videos. Then he, some music videos and nonprofit stuff, car commercials, and then, you know, eventually works his way up to, you know, doing national commercials and that kind of stuff.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
But but it was all burst out of, you know, that kind of scrappy attitude of how can I make my current situation, an ad, an advantage, you know, and so he did that back during the recession and then fast forward now to I guess it was 2020 when the pandemic hit , you know, Donald York production company was, was doing more work than we ever had before traveling all over the world busier than ever. And we had a bunch of projects on the books, pandemic hit and all those projects they felt like, yeah, yeah. So we didn’t have anywhere coming in and, you know, we had a lot of employees, we had almost 30 employees on staff that we wanted to make sure we didn’t have to lose anyone during that time. And so, yeah, no, it was really good.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. Yeah. Tim made a commitment. We’re not gonna we’re not gonna fire anyone or lay anyone off or anything like that. And so that that’s what happened. And then but it was out of that, that this virtual production idea was birth and Alvin actually was kind of the pioneer event. So let him take that well, so yeah, so doing that before that I’ll just going back a little bit. We we’ve been doing a lot of sports career projections. Yeah. Rear projection. Okay. And using it as a, you know, background, you know, but only now looking at it was like makes sense in how he ended up here. So there’s always, I always like wanted to have an idea cuz we always use projector as a background. It’s like, Hey Tim, what are we gonna use? An L E D you know, to use as a background?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Cause I could just, me as AV, that’s like, oh, that’s amazing. I could actually create a cube or anything. And I could just throw in and blend, you know, premiere and actually not worry about bleeding lights in, in projector screen. Cause we have to push the projector all the way back and like, yeah. And then we’ve been doing that for quite some times. And then like Daniel was saying during the, the pandemic, I’m like we all got, you know, working from home and I’m like, Tim, not really sure what to do as a DP working from home and you know, so
Blake Barnett:
Like
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Figure out how am I gonna shoot or not? And I started learning you know, treaty and you know, it’s always something that I wanna do. I bought some treaty printer and you know, I’m messing with Maya and, and roll engine and this new thing comes out from the, you know the Mandalorian and then they showcased ability of it. I was like, that’s it, that’s what I’m looking at. Exactly what I’m talking about. So like started learning it. I like, Hey Tim. I mean, let’s just strike like buy, like, you know, like panel and then let’s started small. So I was I was on my computer for, you know, we’re slowly slow back working in the studio again, but I would be on my computer. I brought my own computer and start running on real engine from, and production’s still slow at that time. , it’s, it’s backing up. So from like 9:00 AM to like 5:00 PM still like trying to learn real engine, we have this wall like tiny wall to, to learn it. And then I remember the time when
Blake Barnett:
You, when you say tiny wall, what size wall about this is like, yeah,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
- The first one we got was 20 feet. 20 feet. Yeah. 20 feet, 20 feet long. Yeah.
Blake Barnett:
It’s not, it’s not tiny. I mean it’s, it’s pretty cool. It’s still pretty cool.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Oh yeah. Yeah. We were like,
Blake Barnett:
Wow,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
This is amazing. And even to give a little context to that diamond view, I had saved up a bunch of money to purchase an old cigar factory here in Tampa that we were gonna renovate and turn into like a co-working studio space kind of. Oh
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
And so it was we were ready to go with that literally, ready to sign the papers when the pandemic hit and like, oh, that’s probably not such a good business. It did give us the funds necessary to invest in some of this virtual production tech. Yeah. When it became available. So,
Blake Barnett:
So it sounds like you, you build it and they will come. So it sounds like I don’t, I mean, that’s kinda what it sounds like you, like, you started it, did it and you, when you built it, you started getting a lot more of that kind of work. And so that that’s really cool. I mean, that’s, it’s really interesting work. I, I know when I go to the very various industry expos, like NA or Sy gear, man looking at all those led screens and virtual backgrounds. It’s so cool.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. And it was really cool cuz you know, we had never seen virtual production in real life. We had only seen it behind the scenes at Mandalorian and that kind of stuff. . And so I remember Alvin and I and Alvin said he was at the studio from nine to five working on this. He was probably there from five to nine,
Blake Barnett:
Like sleeping there to wake up and they’re just like, I’m gonna figure this out unreal engine. Yeah.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So, we had a shoot and it was for a medical company that you know, they provide services to different hospitals and dentists and that kind of stuff. And we were talking to them about the projects and they, they, all of the scenes would’ve to take place inside of a hospital. And because we were still in the middle of a pandemic that just wasn’t an option. And so we’re like, well, what if we tried virtual production for this? And so Alvin found this hospital map that had like 20 different rooms. We barely know how to do it, trying to push it. Yeah. If only the client knew, you know
Blake Barnett:
Yeah, yeah. Behind the scenes on that, they’re like, oh gosh, we put our faith in these guys.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. But it was cool because we actually were able to take the client through all these different environments and showed them like, okay, here’s what the lobby looks like. Here’s what the dentist office looks like. Here’s what the bed office looks like. And they were able to see all of that. And so that was kind of like our first virtual, like tech kind of thing. And then we, we pulled up the, there was, I remember the first time we ever had unreal engine working on the LEDs with the camera tracking and everything. And we looked at it through the camera and we saw we’re like, holy crap. Like actually
Blake Barnett:
That, that looks good. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
It was like, yeah. It was like, like a light bulb moment, goosebumps all around looking back at that project now it’s like, oh yeah, that was it’s a little rough.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Improve the concept, but it proved the concept for us. And so we got us really excited and that’s when we knew we had to go all in and Alvin just pulled something up here. I think he’s
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. Do you wanna share your screen
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Share? Yeah, I was gonna share this this video that we did I would say this this is probably the video that stamps it that when we said like, okay, this, that convince everyone in our company and in the beginning, it’s just me and Daniel. It was like, oh, Hey, let’s just push this. And that’s we have a client for that hospital. But when we did this video is when, you know, I think it stamps it and everybody saw it. And pretty much love it. So mean what, what you’ll notice about this too, is, is all the art. And so kind of like we were talking about earlier, it’s full of art, but this is on our small little 20 foot wall.
Blake Barnett:
Oh, that’s cool.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. Maybe by this point we had, because we did the little extended little bit, little bit more, but but yeah, so these are all unreal environments. Some of the shots are actually plates, but it, it really proved it for us like, oh wow. We can we can actually,
Blake Barnett:
This is like a music video project. It’s kind of it doesn’t on here. We don’t get a good connection. So it does not play clean, but it looks like a music video is that
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
It is a music video. Yeah. And we we’ll send you this link to oh yeah,
Blake Barnett:
Yeah, yeah. And so all these are just templates and unreal engine. You didn’t have to really create anything. They had these kind of, you just have to customize a little bit for your needs or
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. Yeah. We had to create at least most of the environments here, we not from scratch, but we have something as a base we look for things similar that we would like, let’s say that that forest, the, the forest scene, like, okay, that’s something that we could make it night scene. It was originally a day scene and then we could make it night scene and then, and then tweak it to the collar and tweak it to the props and added some rain effect to it and also practical rain effect and also a bunch of like plants in the studio.
Blake Barnett:
Okay. So you did. Okay. So you had some practical like plants and like you actually, you know, made, made a little bit of rain in the studio,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
The link in the chat. Yeah. Yeah. We did. We had, you know, practical, snow, practical rain you know, a bunch of sand plants, you name it. So it was the art department really killed it on this one, but Alvin just dropped the link in there, so cool. Want, they can go watch it in full resolution. Yeah, it looks like a, it looks like a, like a nursery at some point a plants nursery at some point at the studio, because when you walk in, there’s like a bunch of like potted plants, you know, but we never actually really show the floor for that scene, but that’s the beauty of it. It just, you know, it’s like the problem solving, how can we, you know, trick it, you
Blake Barnett:
Know? Yeah. No, it, it looked really good. I mean, it looked like you’re there. Like I didn’t, I wasn’t like she’s not there. I wasn’t thinking in my head, I was like, wow. They went to the jungle, you know, that’s cool.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
And the beauty of it too is, you know, there was what five different environments in one day, you know? Yeah. You know, imagine doing that in in real life, on location.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. That’d be, that’d be a nightmare to do that, to have to go to those locations. There’d be multiple day shoot. And you know, for each, you know, it’s hard to find a state or city that, that has kind of proximity to have all those different variants to,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
I really think that’s what one, one of the biggest advantage of it. It allows us, a lot of our ideas are being shut down because of, you know, logistic the cost. And you know, what happened to those ideas are just like, you know, never happened, but with the virtual production, it allows you to create those and bring them to life, you know,
Blake Barnett:
So, oh, that’s cool. So is, is Diamond View Studio still a thing? Or did you guys just kind of switch off and out your Vu Studios?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
No diamond view is still rocking. It’s
Blake Barnett:
It’s still rocking. Okay.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. I actually, I actually still have a diamond view job diamond. I’m near my diamond view hat right now, actually. Okay. So yeah, I’m the career director over there at diamond view as well as here at view, but but yeah, our team has been killing it there. We actually have sheets going on right now. We have a virtual shoot happening in our Nashville stage. That diamond view is doing production for, and then we also have an on location shoot happening out in California right now as well. That a different crew is doing. And so it’s a, it’s a, it’s a busy week for us. It’s getting busy. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good.
Blake Barnett:
nice. Where in California, are you guys? That’s where I’m at. I’m in California.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Okay. Yeah. up in Redding.
Blake Barnett:
Okay. Okay. Ready? Gotcha. Cool. good deal. Let me see what other questions. I don’t see anything from the audience we have. What were some of the first known issues? What were some problems that you guys ran into?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So many, there’s still so many,
Blake Barnett:
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So many. And so to the, to the, to the computer, to the, you know, it’s a lot of like computer parts that you have to put together because this elite volume are, are hungry in, in resolution and in processing power in Vegas, our stage there is running in six cluster nodes. So that’s, each computer has a 6,000 graphics card and also a trade ripper, 30 to coreper. So a lot of figuring it out in which a system would work, that’s just a computer. And then you have that real side of it which is, you know, you could learn it for so long and still not know the entire engine. And then also other aspects like tracking camera track a lot of problems in that as well. Cause I think what it is, is, is we’re trying to put together this virtual production that’s being inherited in a lot of different different industries.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Like the led is mainly for like a show industries, you know, event industries. The engine is game industries and, and the tracking is for, you know, I mean that’s like broadcast broadcast, and now you’re trying to mush it down in this, create a new industry , it’s not really made for it. So there’s a lot of problems that would provide in there and then also come up. But those are the things that, you know, we’re happy that we found, you know, that’s, you know, we, we now learn from it and we could share it to the people that, you know, Hey, avoid this. And this is the tricks and stuff that you should look into and, you know, to, to share it. Yeah. And that’s been, our strategy really is bringing all those pieces together and making it easy to use because for your standard filmmaker, it’s, it’s not an easy tool to utilize.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
And so our goal is that a director can bring her crew into the studio. They can you know, walk in, flip on the lights. Our team is there to support them. And, you know, they’re able to execute whatever their creative vision is and and have it be as seamless as possible. And, you know, we, we’re still working at a lot of kinks and there’s a lot of different little things like Alvin was talking about that you know, our kind of workarounds that we’re having to figure out even right now, supply chain is an issue. You know, all those different parts are coming from different parts of the world, different suppliers. And so, you know, we are facing bottlenecks there, but really at the end of the day we have this, this vision to just make this more accessible and easier for people to utilize.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So you know, and it it’s already getting there. , you think when you think about when we first opened up our our first studio here in Tampa our, our big one, not that small one that we were showing you that we were at at the time, we were the only studio virtual production studio that we knew of that was available to the public at that size. You know, now there’s dozens of them all over the world. And there’s more popping up every day and we’re really excited to be a part of that journey and, and have a role to play it.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. I’m, I’m excited. It’s cool. Go ahead. I didn’t mean to cut you off Evan.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
No, I was just gonna share that it’s still, you know, it’s still hard to learn it. And I think that’s one of the things that we want to bring instead of, you know, not everyone has access to lady volumes and not everyone, you know, to be able to learn the workflow. You need to be on PR to, to have led volume. So we wanna lower that barrier of entry to be able to, to, to share this, to, to ex explain it and share the process and also share the volume to everyone, to have ability to shoot on one and to make, you know, to make the easier the progress, the learning progress is easier. So they don’t have to go through all the stuff that we have to learn.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, yeah. And, and right now I think it’s good that we’re right in front of it. And we could almost kind of create our own workflow. Every studio, every virtual production, has it’s kind of like a free for all. Now. It’s like, you create your own way of doing it and we’ll create our way of doing it. But what we want to focus too, as we create, is how can we, you know, bring this to a lot of people to have access to, you know, to, to bring down the level of barrier eventually. And one of the issues that we first encounter is talent people that knows how to do virtual production that knows in rural engine and rural engine, a lot of an rural engine developer are game developer are coders. They, they like to be alone and then code and create games as well. But you mix them with production environment, which is very stressful. They don’t really very differently, you know, they don’t really,
Blake Barnett:
So that
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Pattern they are, yeah. They don’t know what a stinger is. They dunno how to
Blake Barnett:
Succeed. So with that, with that said, when when you go to, I mean, traditionally when you go to rent a traditional studio, psych wall, you’re, it’s pretty much unmanned. Like you bring in your own gear, like for us, we’ll bring in our own gear and we’ll set everything out. There’s no one there helping us that would think that yours needs to have some sort of support. Like you need the least one person there operating, like I don’t, how does that work? What kind of crew is there? That’s the bare minimum? Like if, you know, if they kinda know what they’re doing, what’s the bare minimum staff that you normally have when someone rent your studio.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So I would say at least for the, it is a rural engine. So you would need at least the virtual production supervisor and a stage operator, which would handle translating, moving the stage maybe depends on the scale of the production that stage operate or would also modify your engine environment would also prep your engine environment. But on a bigger scale, we have at least five people here on, on, on staff that could support whether that’s lighting, whether that’s environment, stage control and, and prepping for the next scene, you know? So it, it varies. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, just like practically speaking, if you are someone who comes to us to, to book one of our studios, it’ll always come with like stage operator, an ICV FX supervisor, but also each of our studios has a, like a studio manager, producer kind of person who helps translate, facilitate, you know all of the different requests, the needs that a client may have. So,
Blake Barnett:
Okay. We have some questions for the audience and we have three of them that I see. First, first, I’m not sure if I’m gonna get this name. Right. Laia it’s her, him, or her question? I’m not sure. Is it hard to rent the spaces if you have a series? So I’m, I’m assuming it’s like, if you have like a show series oh, kind of availability. Maybe I it’s what I’m guessing the question is
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
No, not at all. I mean, as long as the, the schedules aligned, you know, we, we have shot for series before. And you know, it’s it’s typically, I think, I don’t think we really get too often booked for longer than a week at a time, like a production aren’t typically booked for longer than a week, but, you know, if, if we need to facilitate something for longer than that, we’re absolutely able and willing to. It’s just a matter of finding that availability on the calendar. The benefit is we do have multiple studios around the country. And so you know, we’re able to you know, make something work if it doesn’t work out here in Tampa chances are it’ll work on one of our other stages. So
Blake Barnett:
Okay. I’m gonna skip you guys question and go to the radiance digital question and it was more about costs. So what are the costs of, let’s say doing a five day shoot on a virtual set, and it says these follow up, just trying to compare location costs for virtual production part of a, of a cost benefit.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Okay. Yeah. Good question. So the prices there’s a very wide range. It depends on what stage you’re renting, that kind of thing. You know, it can be anywhere from $5,000 a day, all the way up to $50,000 per day, depending on what the scope, the needs of yeah. The
Blake Barnett:
Scope scope. Yeah.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
And the stage that you’re utilizing, cause we do still have smaller stages. And then we have some of our bigger stages like, and I we’re talking about Omar in Nashville and, and Vegas, but you know, the, the cost of the studio is one thing, but then, you know, you have, you do have to consider cost of art and that sort of aspect as well. So if you have a exterior sheet you’re doing, that’s gonna require a lot of art. That’s a, that’s something you’re gonna need to take into consideration of how, how much our, our do you have allocated in your budget for art? You know, we have found that virtual production is not a cost saving measure for some of our clients. For example, you know, that same client that has the doctor’s office that, you know, now we can go shoot in a doctor’s office.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
It’s actually gonna probably be, especially if it’s a local regional kind of situation. It’s actually probably gonna be a lot cheaper for us to go, just shoot in their doctor’s office, do a quickly little scene there as opposed to building a fully virtual environment, running it through that, pre-production testing it, optimizing it, and then bringing it you know, bringing it into the volume and shooting it. So, so, you know, for that type of situation, retro production might not be the right solution , but where we are saving a lot of money is for the productions that are doing, you know, multiple locations per day, multiple like remote locations per day, especially because, you know, we can do multiple locations in a single day. Whereas, you know, traditionally you would have to have at least one day dedicated to a remote location plus travel, all that kind of stuff.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
, we’re saving a lot of money for people who wanna be able to shoot one scene for a long time, that they typically would have a lot of control over on location, like a all day gold knower kind of thing. And so we’re that, that those are the kind of situations where we really are saving money and it’s just a cool creative tool as well. So, you know, people some of our clients are utilizing it just for that. And I would actually say that’s probably the majority of, of the people who come to us or just cuz they want that complete creative control. to be able to, you know, we, we did a, a shot or a spot for Neman Marcus a couple months ago and they were doing a Christmas campaign and they had New York city street snowing, all that stuff we shot at in Tampa. And it’s like
Blake Barnett:
Where, where it never snows.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so then just thinking through the logistics of like, man, if they would’ve had the shoots on the street, they would’ve had to block traffic, they would’ve block pedestrians, do all this crazy stuff, but you know, for this, it was, you know, just coming to the studio. I think it was a two day shoot. They shot a bunch of scenes, choreographed dancers, like all this crazy stuff and yeah, it was a big win. So yeah, it’s pretty,
Blake Barnett:
What’s the best, what’s the best route to get a quote from you guys say if like you mentioned, you know, 5,000 to 50,000 plus art, is there a good email address or contact or a person that they should reach out to, to get more information or to dial, to dial it in a bit for the numbers?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. I’ll put both mine and Alvin’s emails in this. If anyone has questions about anything, we are always happy to answer. But if specifically sales our website view studio.com, there’s contact form out there. You can learn more about us there, but there’s also a contact form you can fill out. And our sales team is is great at you know, helping figure out what’s gonna be the best solution for your production and you know, finding the right space and all that stuff. So I’ll send our emails through here
Blake Barnett:
Real quick. Perfect. And then I’m gonna revisit Eli’s question. Did we skip them early on, did you guys experiment with camera tracking on real time rendering with a green screen instead of LEDs?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
No. So like the camera tracking, when we start dealing with virtual production is still new to us. We like, we never done any green screen tracking let alone done engine for it. So the entire process for us is, is literally a roller coaster of learning as we go in also trying to figure out how to do this. And, and, and we’re lucky to have enough, like a partner, like most, you know, one of it early on, we, we partner with them and, and use them as our camera tracking. And it’s pretty much been the best solution for us. Yeah. And, and, and that kind of goes back to the difference between what we’re doing with XR versus ICV FX. So we really are trying to capture as much as possible on the sensor and, and, you know, the file that our editor gets one, because, you know, being in a virtual production studio and shooting without a green screen, it, it, for the talent, for the crew, it’s a significantly better experience because there’s no imagining that’s having to happen for the world around you.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
The happy accidents where you turn the camera a little bit, it’s like, Ooh, I like that. You know, you
Blake Barnett:
That’s good.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
You know, so, so all those things are, are really big advantages, but also it’s speed and post. So this isn’t necessarily a requirement of every client. You know, we still have many different for clients who have longer timelines for posts, but there, there are situations where it’s like, Hey, we gotta get edit tomorrow. we actually had a situ this is the crazy story we love to tell this one. It was it was I’m confirm, oh, wrestle mania was in town here in Tampa. And we had a person who they, they came and they checked out the studio. Yeah, yeah. Vince McMan. He came and he checked out the studio and, you know, we did like a little demo for him and stuff. He is, oh yeah, this is cool. And then he left him and his team left and then about five hours later, they called and they said, Hey, we have bad money in town.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
And we shot a, a spot with him on green screen. And it looks like trash. So we come to the studio tomorrow morning, and this is, is, this is probably like five o’clock that that day. And we’re like, oh yeah. I mean, we could probably make that work. But we didn’t get a confirmation. Hmm. And then it rolls around and it’s midnight. And my phone rings and it’s someone from WWE E and we can’t get a hold of Tim who’s. Our, Tim is our, our CEO, our boss, and we can’t get a hold of him. Our, can we do this? And we’re like, yeah, we’re doing it. And so I, I called Alvin, we showed up at the studio at like four or five in the morning four. Yes. And what we had to do is they had shot a couple scenes on location over in like Wyoming or something.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
And then they shot the rest on green screen and the green screen stuff just did not look good. And so what we had to do early in the morning is Alvin downloaded all these assets and that matched the stuff they shot on location. And then we did a scene with, with bad bunny and triple H in this, in this environment we shot it. It took maybe 20 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. They rolled, they rolled in at 10:00 AM. It took maybe 20 minutes to shoot. We, we wrapped it up and then it was it aired nationally that night. And so, yeah.
Blake Barnett:
How long was the, how long was the prep work for you guys though? You said like from five o’clock, till 10 o’clock, was it like a five hour prep?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Doing the environment, given the, you know, the, the environment that we’re trying to match is you know, simple enough to do it. And and we were, you know, manage to, to get a copy of like the actual files that we’re trying to match as well. So that gives us a lot of direction and you know, luckily to have an assets also in the marketplace to find like, that’s a good thing about is like, you try to ski through environments. It’s like, this could work, maybe. All right, let’s, let’s buy this. Okay. This one could work. You start to skim through all of those environments. and, and assess it. Okay. This can work. Let’s could, we’ll just need a little bit of massage and the correct textures, the correct lighting we could you know, we could make it work and match that. So that’s exactly what happened. We have a matching, you know, environment that just need a little tweaks. We just bought some plants that could match that environment and some roads and put it in there. And then that became the background for it. Yeah. And that was the rare, rare exception where we did not have any physical art. Yes. Cause it was not,
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So yeah, everything was virtual for that one, but it, it turned out pretty good. Yeah. We did have fore talent foreground, so that was nice to be able to play off of, but oh, given the, the scene is like the, the, the premises, like they in the middle of the road out of nowhere. Yeah. So it’s like a, a flats of landscape. So there’s not really, not a lot for us to, to play around in terms of prompts. Yeah. But as you do virtual production, you learn a lot of districts like devil field is your enemy, your friend, sorry, your best friend. So you manage to use a little bit of depth feel to, to blend the background into that, and then using a tighter lens to make it more realistic and, and compressed from the background to, you know, where the talents positioning. So
Blake Barnett:
yeah, you had, I was impressed when you said you answered your phone at midnight. I was like, wow. I impressive.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
You know, what’s crazy is I was literally laying in bed about to go
Blake Barnett:
To sleep.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
I was literally moments away from putting do not disturb mode on my phone when my phone rang. Yeah. So it was, it was literally just dumb luck
Blake Barnett:
yeah, yeah, sure. It happens. Yeah. I mean, I, mine goes off at like 10 it’s, like do not disturb after 10, my phone. Yeah. But that’s just me. Okay. We have another follow up question from where is it? Laia was basically asking if you have a favorite lens you like to use, I believe. Do you have a favorite? I, I don’t know if to mean it’s situational, but
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, personally I like certify in the full brain format in, in the volume, I would say yes as well in the volume scenario, because it close up enough to get some close up, but it’s wide enough to not show as much of the ceiling part of the, you know, environment of the, the volume, but also not to show much of the, of the floor of it. But in terms of what is the best lens, preferably if I would choose something for the volume, I love shooting anamorphics in the volume, like really helps to blend in the, the image, the practical elements and the virtual, I guess it’s something to do with how it stretches the, the image afterwards. It just doesn’t, you know, it, it just locks it like it’s more organic. I would say the, the more character you can have in the lens, , honestly, we have this level of lens that we’ll throw on every now and then it’s like this super old lens , but it just adds an extra level of character. And again, it’s just another layer of, of, like I was saying, it’s like this organic feeling that it, it makes you forget about the environment and focus more on the story that you’re telling. So,
Blake Barnett:
Cool. More questions here from the audience Corbin is asking, have you guys upgraded to UE5, any benefits, any benefits to that versus UE4?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Not yet. We’re beta testing. A lot of it it comes to the point similar,
Blake Barnett:
I guess it’s Unreal Engine 5 versus engine 4. That’s what gotcha. Gotcha.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
And then they just released the annual engine five in this recently and, and we’re still, we are still utilizing 4.27. And for the reason, because of the stability of it when it comes to production, we don’t want to use general engine five yet because a lot of the plugins are not ready, the futures and, and, and the things that they have in enroll engine five is really, really exciting. And the Nite, the lumen all of those lighting is really benefiting the virtual production side, but it’s not yet ready to, to be utilized in terms of stability. The, the plugin that we we need for those to tracking for the most is a lot of them are still trying it on, testing it out. I would say not until probably 5.2 of the engine is when it would probably release a lot of like virtual production tools for it and plugins and stability. Yeah.
Blake Barnett:
Okay. Kelly Myers is asking what brand, and I’m not sure if she’s referring to the brand of lenses, like as a follow up from let’s question. That’s the only thing I could think of what she’s referring to.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Hmm. For the brands for the Loma that we have is a 50 AIC Lomo from single Russian lens from the eighties. And in terms of the certified mill the one that we have in house that I’ve always used to cooks. Yeah.
Blake Barnett:
Okay. Sounds good. And then the next question is from radiance digital, and it’s a long one. How many people do you provide for you know, virtual production? Do we have to bring, and we kind of talked about this a little bit. Do we have to bring into unreal artists, technicians, et cetera, or do we just hire art talent? Gaffers is D O P and it’s just, and there’s specific cameras that work the best. I know DPS that have their preferred lenses and cameras.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. So that is a really good question. So let me just look at this real quick. So we can do as much, or as little as, as needed by the client. So there are some clients where we handle every piece of the process. So they come to us with an idea. We can provide a director, a DP, we can, we can handle all the production, we can do the environment, design, all that kind of stuff fully turnkey production. And then we have clients that come in and they maybe have their own unreal engine developer designer. They, they actually, you know, a good example of this is Disney they, that the first time they shot with us, they had already had a it was for their cruise ship. They were, they built a new cruise ship just in.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. Yeah. And so they already had this big treaty model of the cruise ship that someone from the mill had made for a different project. They’re like, oh, we’ll just use that. And so we did have to optimize it and everything, but yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, just to give a little context on that. So they, they have the treaty rendering of the ship. Right. But they don’t have the ship yet. They’re still building it, so we want to create a commercial for it. And they, when we’ve brought in the treaty asset of the ship, it has every little pieces to the bolts, to the, you know, to the faucet sinks and to the wires of the lights. So we have to optimize a lot of the, the pieces and remove a lot of necessary stuff to make it. And yeah. So those are the challenges that you have to encounter at some point.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah. Yeah. That was a big learning lesson for sure. But, but yeah, so, you know, people can bring in their, their own environments. But we also work, like we mentioned earlier with a lot of different directors and DPS production companies typically are bringing in their own DPS and directors, but we can, if they’re coming from out of town, we can help source local support as well. If they, if they have their, their key players and they just need some like G E support, that kind of stuff. So, you know, we’re, we’re happy to help as much, or as little as our client wants us to.
Blake Barnett:
What cameras do you typically, or what cameras do you have at the studio and what do you typically use? You’re doing it and if you’re doing it inhouse. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
We have from Sony cameras down to seven hundreds and to Sony FS7 to up to RED Epic we have three of them. We have Dedos as well. and then we have the Alexa mini as well to, to, to choose from. We pretty much tried every camera that we had for the volume, as long as it’s a cinema camera that you have ability to dialed in your shutter speed. And sometimes because different cameras would have like different response to the frequency of the, the, the L E D. But as long as you’re able to dialed in you should be good. So we pretty much trying
Blake Barnett:
Camera what’s, what’s been your preference. Like, what camera would you use when you’re shooting? Like what typically most DPSS would have a preference? What, what’s yours?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
We, we love shooting with the Sony Venice, and then also with Alexa, March foreman camera.
Blake Barnett:
Well, the Sony Venice that’s expensive. Yeah. I would probably want, yeah, we can’t afford that one. Okay. So that’s your preference is the Sony Venice. Okay. What was your next step down again?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
So Alexa, and then anything pretty much full frame. You want to use the full camera to take advantage of the depo field. Okay. Cause it’ll be your best friend at some point.
Blake Barnett:
Okay. They said Z Venice. Nice. I
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
We’re closely partnered with Sony and so we’ve gotten some, some pretty nice access to the Venice 2. They’ve they’ve brought it out a few times and let us test out a few sheets. So big fans of Sony.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. We have not had a chance to test out that camera. But we’d love to it’s about time to wrap up. I don’t know. I don’t see any other questions. I think we’re good on, on that. What’s do you have do you have your email addresses ready to reach out to you? Do you have any social media accounts that you’d want to throw out there or other ways to look at some of your work?
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Yeah, so this is our I’ll put my personal one here. And then his personal, I, I’m gonna look up what our studio is, cuz I do not remember off the top of my head. Alright. So this is so Vu.network. That’s our Instagram, so we’re very active on Instagram. We also have presence on LinkedIn, Facebook Twitter, but Instagram is, is probably where you’ll, where you’ll see the most action from us.
Blake Barnett:
Okay, perfect. Well, that’s all we have today. I, I, I appreciate both of you guys coming on today and tell us more about virtual production. It’s really cool. I’m looking forward to seeing even more in the future with that said, I’ll close out with, if you guys, any, anybody out there that’s a production company or crew or talent, you know, please add yourself as a resource. We’re really trying to get the best of the best, you know, on our site so we can refer out and refer to each other, like a peer to peer network. That’s it. I appreciate it guys.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Awesome. Thanks Blake. Thanks guys. Thanks for having us.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
Any questions? You got our emails. You have us on Instagram, so please reach out.
Blake Barnett:
Perfect. Thanks guys. Have a good one.
Daniel Mallek & Alvin Teves:
You too!
Shoots.Video:
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