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The Joy of Virtual Sets

The USS Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation had its famous holodeck, where the giant starship's crew could escape from the routine of shipboard life for a few hours by relaxing inside a computer-generated virtual world. While technology hasn't progressed that far (fortunately, we do have three centuries to get there!), using virtual sets for a video production can seem almost like the next best thing, transforming a garage, basement or other relatively cramped shooting location into an expansive alternative location, if not universe.

Virtual sets provide several advantages for video production on a budget and with limited shooting schedule. Not only do you not have to build (or travel to) numerous locations, but also the production is cheaper and quicker.

Of course, producers use virtual sets on projects with giant budgets as well. George Lucas's Star Wars prequels and films such as Sin City, 300 and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow all feature vast arrays of actors and extras surrounded by ginormous virtual sets. This is in part to avoid the expense of physically building those complex settings in real life. Increasingly, virtual sets are in use for live productions, as we'll discuss further into this article.

But odds are that your productions are a bit simpler than these shoots. This is particularly true if you build the shoot around a fairly short TV commercial or online YouTube-style clip.

Unlike a real set or location, where the entire set needs to have even and careful lighting, you need a minimum of lights for virtual sets: you need to light only the talent and the green (sometimes blue) chromakey backdrop. For those Star Wars-sized virtual sets, that still may be a lot of lighting. But for many applications, the talent can remain in one or two basic positions (sitting, standing, occasionally walking into or out of a shot). Lights can often remain in one location on a single set, even though the finished product will end up looking as if you shot your the talent from numerous camera angles on multiple …