Green Screens, Green Pixels and Green Shooting

Abstract

Sustainability and green producing are in high demand in all sectors of creative industries. Fortunately, this topic is received very well among film students providing an excellent opportunity for upcoming talent willing to apply new methods in creative processes. Virtualisation and Virtual Production in particular are predestined to play an essential role in fulfilling this demand. Factors that can be considered here are travel needs, lighting energy consumption, post-production complexity, energy sources and many more. The pandemic did propel these Virtual Production technologies to common practice, in particular large LED walls for In-Camera VFX (ICVFX). Some reports on the environmental impact of traditional film productions are available [albert 2020] estimating an average CO2 demand of 2840 tonnes for tentpole film productions. However, these tentpole productions did not consider VFX. To date, there is little to no knowledge on the sustainability of Virtual Production and how it compares to traditional offline VFX productions. We take a closer look at two comparable productions, one using traditional offline rendering and post-production, the other using an LED wall and ICVFX. Energy requirements, creative opportunities and scalability are subjects of investigation and further discussion. This abstract is a summary of a self published report on Virtual Production and its opportunities for sustainable film productions 1.