this studio near Paris reinvents visual effects and puts the famous Hollywood “green screen” out of context

Would the “green background” have lived? This technique, which has become customary in Hollywood, which consists of filming actors in front of the green to then add images digitally, is now in competition with filming in front of sets projected directly on video. One of the three studios in the world where this is offered is located in France, near Paris.

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It’s a big studio in a hangar, like the Plaine Saint-Denis has dozens of them. The only difference in size, in every sense of the word, is this gigantic LED screen, itself made up of dozens of monitors.

It makes it possible to project in high definition, on the set around the actors, a previously chosen setting: a beach, a forest, the desert, a western saloon, space, a tunnel, in 2D or in 3D. Bruno Corsini, technical director of the company Plateau Virtuel, who gives us the visit. “The idea from the start for us is that people do not understand that we are filming a screen. Work the light as much as possible so that the decor projected on the screens is as realistic as possible. , and that the foreground – that is to say what happens between the camera and the screen – is also as realistic as possible, so that we can no longer understand what is true and what is is not”he assures.

“Our only limit is reality, which we cannot replace. But we can bring many solutions to things that seem impossible, like going to the Moon or Mars.”

Bruno Corsini

at franceinfo

Amazing result

Without going into too sharp and technical details, know that it is a system of “tracker”, follower in French, fixed on the camera which makes it possible to make evolve/move the actors in three dimensions in a decoration which itself modifies in according to their movements, as for this campaign of the ESA, the European space agency, in space.

The illusion is perfect, the result stunning, and avoids the heaviness or defects of the green screen, especially in terms of light and exposure. “We couldn’t, for example, shoot a sequence on a green screen with a character in light-reflecting armor, because we had to re-embed everything afterwards.says Bruno Corsini. Same thing with the windows of a car, or the reflection in glasses: there was a lot of work a posteriori”.

“Most of the actors were also fed up with not knowing where they were in relation to the set.”

Bruno Corsini

at franceinfo

And the technical director to blow: “With this technology, directors and cinematographers can see live everything that is going to be in the camera.”

The service remains for the moment a bit expensive and still in development, but many clips, advertisements or institutional films – such as for the European Space Agency – have already been shot here, no doubt waiting for the cinema to take hold of them.