Text/Big Entertainer
After the shooting of a series is complete or even broadcast, is it possible to see the content derived from the classic scenes in the play?
Of course, it is possible, but in reality, it is not easy, after all, in addition to the famous scenes of the Qing Palace that can be used repeatedly like Hengdian, many other film and television shooting scenes are actually disposable, and they are dismantled when they are used up, so if you want to reproduce it, you need to pay the construction cost again.
Today, streaming platforms across the globe are trying to cleverly solve this problem with virtual production technology.
Recently, iQIYI has taken the lead in digitizing the "bad well" scene built in last year's hit "Wind Rises Luoyang" episode, and then took the lead in its latest 4K film-and-television virtual production test film "The Rise of bad wells" and the "Heart" MV featuring virtual idols.
"Mind" MV
In the past two years, virtual production has made rapid progress in the film and television industry, before the industry's amazing "Mandalorian" used Stagecraft for virtual production and rapid iteration, and now iQIYI has run through the whole process of "real-life scanning - asset reconstruction - virtual shooting - refined library - multi-service reuse", with the help of virtual production, streaming media platforms have really begun to integrate technology into content creation. While further realizing the industrialization of film and television, it also gave birth to an opportunity: with the skillful use of "digital assets", a key step into the meta-universe is also ushered in.
Quickly reproduce the "bad well" and make a small test knife virtually
After the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, Hollywood's traditional production process has been greatly impacted. But almost at the same time, virtual production through Disney+ produced "Mandalorian" quickly attracted industry attention, and gradually became the "new weapon" of streaming platforms.
iQiyi, which is good at capturing cutting-edge technology, not only quickly mastered this "weapon", but also recently completed a "real combat exercise". In March 2021, iQIYI's self-produced drama "Wind Rises Luoyang" was still being filmed, and the virtual production team conducted a fine and complete laser 3D scan of the "bad well" scene built by the real scene, completing a 1:1 digital scene restoration.
It is based on this set of high-precision digital assets (digital assets), iQIYI then filmed a 4K film-and-television virtual production test film "The Rise of bad wells" in a self-built virtual production studio, and a pure virtual shooting animation test film "Heart" MV based on virtual idol capture technology.
"The Rise of the Bad Well"
At this step, iQIYI has truly entered the substantive stage of opening up the boundaries of the virtual world and the real world through technology accumulation and internal integration. Whether from virtual to real, or from real to virtual, technology is committed to helping users achieve more realistic experiences, and virtual production becomes a connector for the physical and digital worlds to meet. It lets the director work on a "virtual" stage, but can view the virtual environment and characters, whether the latter is a live actor or a virtual idol.
"The Rise of the Bad Well" is the first product of this attempt. Producer Zhu Liang explained that the most important significance of this set of test films is that, starting from the essential needs of iQIYI's self-made content production, try to run through the process of "real scene scanning - asset reconstruction - virtual shooting - refined storage - multi-service reuse", and pave the way for iQIYI's virtual production with "digital assets" as the core.
Zhu Liang's team performed a fine and complete laser 3D scan of the "bad well" scene built in the real scene of the "Wind Rises Luoyang" episode, and then carried out a 1:1 digital scene restoration. Entering the shooting stage, they optimized the details and shooting fluency in the real-time rendering engine, used the display of the LED screen and XWonder's ability to expand the scene, built a part of the physical foreground, and used the combination of live performance and virtual scene to complete the shooting of a complete narrative paragraph and real-time special effects production.
Digital restoration of the "bad well" scene
In the past year or so, iQIYI has quickly established its own set of virtual production chains. At the end of 2020, iQIYI built a 1,000-square-meter virtual production studio in Dachang Film and Television Town, equipped with a full set of first-class hardware equipment for virtual production. Based on this set of virtual production infrastructure, on March 26 and 27 last year, iQIYI launched the world's first film-and-television LED realistic virtual production XR live concert for THE9, which supported the core of the whole concert, which is based on high-definition LED screens and real-time rendering scenes.
Since then, iQiyi has even used this set of capabilities to open a virtual conference with a "meta-cosmic sense" for its new VR hardware product "Adventure VR3".
This time, "The Rise of bad wells" was launched, which expanded the application scenarios and capability boundaries of iQIYI technology one step further.
With technical service content, "Virtual Film and Television City" is coming
It is often said that film and television creation is "the art of regret", largely due to the cost constraints of repeated shooting.
A Deloitte study on virtual production last year showed that it is normal for high-budget projects to need reshoots, and the cost of reshooting may account for 5 to 20% of the final shooting cost, and some projects are even higher.
Traditionally, a one-way march from pre-production to filming to post-production has led to "everything is in post" inertial thinking, such as destructive or repetitive VFX workloads, and extremely costly reshoots. The most recent example comes from "Justice League", where Warner invested 70 million in a reshoot budget for the cut.
Stills from Justice League
Virtual production gives creators the opportunity to "look back" and at the same time make a big splash in their creations: from the pre-production stage, the VFX process can prepare digital assets in advance to assist creative planning and shooting, which helps to continue to polish the style and feel of the film throughout the shooting process. It can be said that virtual production is a continuation of traditional film and television production, and it is a major weapon for studios to boldly experiment and control shooting time and capital costs at the same time.
According to iQIYI's internal calculations, the application of the digital assets of "Wind Rises Luoyang" has significantly reduced production costs, such as the production of this sample has saved 30% of production costs compared with the past.
For the film and television industry, which has always sought to reduce production costs as much as possible, the widespread investment in virtual production is also based on very realistic cost and production efficiency considerations. At present, although the upfront investment cost of building scenarios and software is still not low, the marginal cost of these hardware devices will become lower and lower, and the efficiency of the subsequent improvement will be higher and higher.
Once the virtual production is on the right track, the LED-based film and television production base can be normalized, it will also reduce the shooting risk of many platforms and related companies, and the production cycle and cost can be controlled. In the future, virtual sheds are foreseeable to become standard for streaming media platforms.
Virtual production process
iQiyi, which has taken a step ahead, may be able to directly create its own "virtual film and television city".
The traditional film and television city does have a wealth of scenes, but even so, offline reconstruction is also facing many constraints, and the cost of various temporary scenes is obviously not low. Zhu Liang said that the high-precision digital retention and reuse of the real scenes of the series is the starting point of iQIYI's "virtual film and television city", through multiple reuses, it can greatly reduce the marginal cost of scene construction, and at the same time produce the possibility of unlimited "double", which can be reused into more content products, such as cloud performances, games, VR, script killing, meta-universe, etc., to improve the quality, reduce costs and increase efficiency of iQIYI's "one fish and more eat" content strategy, and create a new model of healthy, long-term and rich returns for cooperative ecological partners.
Because scenes are digitized, everything becomes a digital model, and machine learning can even simulate snow scenes in a place where it is impossible to snow, or manually control sunrise and sunset. What's more, the set team only needs a computer to switch to different scenes in an instant.
XWonder completes the off-screen extension and AR foreground overlay
Some players once joked that after playing Assassin's Creed, even if they had never been to Paris, they could master the local street layout, which was because the game highly restored the cityscape of Paris. Therefore, in the future, it is very likely that even Kanjing can be online, and the scenes you want can be directly selected in the asset library and achieved global shooting in the "virtual studio". This will quickly increase the efficiency of content production and the freedom of creation.
More boldly conceived, this virtual production system can not only integrate live-action film and animation, broaden the style of content output, and even have the opportunity to combine with the game industry and the current hot "meta-universe" - virtual production is naturally suitable for the production of content immersed in the senses. From the perspective of technology accumulation and content experimentation, iQiyi is obviously fully prepared in the face of the upcoming narrative reform.