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A bleeding-edge cloud-based creative-first international
Virtual Production hub with superfast, secure remote distributed performance
The company
Final Pixel is a global creative studio specializing in
end-to-end virtual production for film, TV, and advertising. Their methodology
of blending realistic 3D worlds with real-world sets to create photoreal,
cinematic environments filmed in real-time. Final Pixel’s team spans continents
and time zones. Through Final Pixel Academy, they are training and upskilling
the next generation of virtual production artists, technicians, producers, and
directors in the latest technology that is constantly evolving and rapidly
changing.
First to market cloud-based virtual production
One of the virtues of virtual production is the inherent
flexibility for producers to base projects in any location. Final Pixel takes
this to its logical next stage, which is VP-as-a-service.
“Since conception, every single shoot that Final Pixel has
done has always pushed the boundaries of testing new hardware, new software,
and new ways of doing things – that’s where LucidLink comes in,” says
Dominic Maher, Technical Artist, Final Pixel.
Established in late 2020, Final Pixel is a fully remote
creative-led virtual production house that services film, TV, and advertising
productions end-to-end. It does not have any on-premise
facilities. Instead, Final Pixel is completely remote and brings virtual
production to their customers. Using cloud-based tools and in-house expertise
Final Pixel provides everything from project management including bespoke
Volume stage builds, to Virtual Art Departments (VAD), and production
execution.
Final Pixel Executive Producer, Monica Hinden says, “Final
Pixel’s approach is first and foremost from the producer’s viewpoint. We speak
their language and realize the true potential of this convergence of production
and technology. Since remote work is now a mainstay for most companies, the
benefits are significant, and it feels like an extremely exciting time in the
industry, reminiscent of the early days of film.”
It is an approach that has already attracted a slate of
projects to shoot with Final Pixel, including ABC, Discovery, Scripps, and
Shutterstock. Final Pixel’s mission is to develop virtual production solutions
for clients who don’t have blockbuster budgets. For example, Scripps and Discovery used
Final Pixel for their TV upfronts for their primary media sales event in the US
taking advantage of their affordable virtual production solution.
“From day one, we set up as a remote collaborative creative
company,” says Maher. “Our founders are based in LA, New York, and London, and
we scale to 20 or 200 artists and production talent depending on the scale of
the project. Our vision was always to work with the best freelance talent from
all over the world and connect them remotely.”
“The potential for our clients to save money, time, and
effort, and also improve their creative scope, is huge,” says Maher.
Connecting to LucidLink
At that very start, Final Pixel used zip files to shuttle
media between creative teams internally but knew that they needed cloud storage
long term.
In 2021, Final Pixel began investigating solutions for cloud
storage with a set of criteria. The solution had to be simple to use,
transparent to users, super fast and secure.
Maher says, “We researched online and talked to several
vendors, and LucidLink kept coming up time and time again. We had questions
about how it would work, but there was only one way to find out.”
The team took it upon themselves to test a proof of concept
with LucidLink.
“We set it up ourselves. It was straightforward to do just
from the LucidLink website. The questions we wanted to address were
things like do we need a VPN or a separate application, and would it fit with
the compliance protocols of our clients.
Maher adds, “LucidLink is a file stream protocol built on S3
object storage – but object storage doesn’t traditionally lend itself to this
type of purpose. LucidLink is able to work some magic where it
converts data on the fly into a usable file system. Once we got our heads
around that and began experimenting with it, we thought this was almost too
good to be true.
“There’s simply no comparison in terms of cost between using
physical servers versus a cloud NAS solution like LucidLink, but LucidLink also
has the performance of a full cloud NAS solution with the cost of object
storage. That combination is a no-brainer.”
The end goal is to make the process of admin activity so
simple that Final Pixel’s artists can do what they do best: create sumptuous 3D
environments.
Iterating the creative in the virtual environment
VFX costs on a high-budget sci-fi or fantasy film can be as
high as 20 percent of the total film budget, but shooting against an LED wall
significantly reduces overheads for compositing and rotoscoping. That’s because
VP flips the traditional linear process of making movies on its head.
With traditional VFX, if you want to make a change at any
point, you have to go all the way back to that point and take the shot through
the pipeline again. With game engines, all the individual aspects of a linear
pipe are put into one environment to co-exist simultaneously. Potentially you
have production design, lighting, layout modeling and animation all happening
at the same time in one environment.
Maher says, “VP is very iterative in the sense that instead
of working on shots sequentially, you do lots of different things in parallel
and maybe sometimes out of sequence. LucidLink fits into that perfectly because
the whole process is so transparent. We’re all working remotely from assets
stored in the cloud, but with LucidLink it’s like there is a drive attached to
your machine.”
This pooling of resources allows for greater creative
freedom through more rapid iteration and feedback by seeing the results before
principal photography. Final Pixel’s work ranges from creating internal
presentations with massive video files to creating final pixel assets at every
stage from pre-viz to post.
“LucidLink is the primary way we share all of our files,”
says Maher.
Final Pixel’s core software is Unreal Engine. Teams of
animators, VFX artists, and virtual art department designers also use staple
video editing, compositing, 3D animation, and motion graphics tools like Nuke, 3DS
Max, and Maya to build digital assets.
“The vast majority are working at home from either their own
workstations or with Final Pixel hardware and directly from LucidLink,” Maher
explains. “We’ve had them install the client. We’ve documented that process
internally. Everyone is able to get on fine with that. They keep the files on
LucidLink, they stream files to their workstation and send it back directly to
LucidLink. Everyone has access to the same files and pool of storage.
“Simplicity and performance is what we need when we want to
spin up a project for clients,” he adds. “We want to onboard them quickly, and
with LucidLink you just add a virtual drive to your desktop. That was super
attractive. The UI is extremely intuitive. Anyone with permissions can upload a
file to the LucidLink drive and replicate it to everyone else in seconds.
Compliant with studio security protocols
One of the factors driving Final Pixel’s adoption of
LucidLink was the need to secure content. “Keeping data off local machines was
a key consideration for us. We’ve done our due diligence and know our files are
encrypted in transit by LucidLink from user machines to S3 storage.
“If we were to download data to our machines and keep it
there it is a much, much riskier proposition but with LucidLink, that problem
is solved. With LucidLink, data is being streamed in such a way that just a
little window of data reaches the machine. No data is stored locally for any
length of time, so from a security perspective, we felt much, much more
comfortable.”
Results
LucidLink is now core to all virtual production solutions at
Final Pixel. “It is,” says Maher, “an enabling technology integral to our
workflows. It is the backbone of everything that we do collaboratively.”
He continues, “Being able to spin up virtual workstations in
the cloud has only recently become a viable option for the industry. That
methodology has been used for years in the banking industry, for example, but
using remote desktops to handle the payload of assets that we need for film and
TV requires grunt horsepower from a computer, plus it needs to be extremely
responsive, and that’s only possible now.”
Cloud technology has not only reached a point of maturity,
but the cost of ingress and egress in and out of a public cloud like AWS or Azure is
now feasible. Many more creative production companies will launch using
virtualized machines, interconnected cloud services, and geographically
distributed teams instead of renting premises and populating dedicated suites
with hardware. Final Pixel is ahead of the curve.
About Virtual Production
Virtual Production (VP) is the hottest new methodology in
content creation. At its core is a real-time games engine and the
representation of 3D worlds on a giant LED wall to create the illusion of a
real environment.
In this sense, VP is an extension of classic filmmaking
techniques like front and rear projection or green screen in which actors are
filmed against artificial backdrops for cost efficiency and greater control.
What is radically different with virtual production is the introduction of an
interactive light source that enables the cinematographer to capture final
frames in-camera.
Filmmakers are adopting the technique because it enables,
among other things, the lead creatives to iterate decisions in pre-production
and on set, taking the guesswork out of post-production. It also enables actors
to respond to real environments improving their performance. This process can
also save considerable time and money by not flying crew to multiple locations.
The pandemic has accelerated adoption since production personnel, creatives,
and on-screen talent can operate safely, often working remotely from the set.
Dozens of studios have launched worldwide to cater for
virtual production, but none are doing so in quite the ground-breaking manner
as Final Pixel.
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