Virtual Production Football Hype Video Trailer Using a 4K Projector

Virtual production has been an amazing tool that's allowed us to not only shoot in areas that have been impractical, but it's also allowed us to continue shooting when the location no longer was available. A great example of that is a recent project we did for the Green Bay Blizzard, their indoor football league that is in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and we've been working with them for many years. Creative Edge Productions has become their main media producing partner and we've done a lot of the main content that they use on a weekly basis for their games. One thing we've been wanting to do with them for a long time is create a really exciting, really amazing hype video. Something that you see at the beginning of the game, something that really gets the crowd, the players, the whole audience just excited to be at the game. We've had one in the past that was okay, but we knew we could do something amazing and it's the Green Bay Blizzard. We want to feature them in a blizzard in a snowy environment. The problem is their season starts right at the end of our winter season and we've been trying to do this video project for four years, no kidding. One eternity later. It started off with we had this great idea, we want to get the players out in the snow and the problem is by the time the players got to town, they were doing practice and they were finally available, snow had melted. And so it's just like, my gosh, we're never going to be able to do this. And then we built our AR wall and we were like, you know what? I think we could do that. The only challenge though is like our AR wall isn't huge. It doesn't allow us to get these really big environments with like a whole group of players. So we would still have to kind of nerf the initial concept. Well, as luck would have it, the Blizzard this year partnered with Michigan Tech for their practice camp. So we packed up and we headed several hours north where it was still nice and snowy. That evening we got the players in. A lot of these guys had never actually been around snow. They were, some of them were new players that had never seen snow before. And we asked them, Hey, come out in two feet deep snow and freeze your butts off. It's fricking freezing in here, Mr. Bigglesworth. But fortunately they were great. They really, really were great to work with. And we got some amazing footage. Of course, a whole bunch of things broke down in the process. When you were shooting on location and we don't have great access to electricity, I use a fog machine where I use basically a bug fogger. And instead of putting the bug juice in there, which would be hazardous, we put mineral oil in it. And it's perfectly safe to use. And it creates a really, really nice dense smoke. Problem was it uses propane and we just could not keep the thing lit over and over. It kept going out. But finally, finally, right at the very end, when it was like we were going to have to maybe scrap the use of smoke, finally got the thing going and we had smoke running. But that wasn't the end of the problem. We also have a snow machine that we've used for many times. We've probably seen some previous videos of our virtual production tests where we've used it right in our studio. Ironically, a lot of our virtual production shoots have used the snow machine. So, huh. But we we got the thing going and we've used it mostly in, you know, above freezing temperatures. Well, I'll tell you this in below zero, it doesn't perform really well. It started getting clogged up and the solution started freezing. So we had to turn it to its highest setting and it started working again. So we weren't able to get like, you know, soft snow. It was dense blowing in your face. That's fine. We wanted the blizzard look, but it was really, really dense. We if we let it run on a player for more than a few seconds, they were just completely covered in suds. So we had to use it strategically. But the effect combining the smoke and the snow was amazing. I also attached an anamorphic adapter to the front of my lens and peppered a few small LED lights in the background. And it gave us those beautiful lens flares. Super cool. Very cinematic. Loved the look. But as I said before, these players are not used to the cold. So I had them for a few seconds each before they were like they were noping out of it. So we tried to get as many shots as we could, but we focused on the wider shots, the shots that we knew we would not be able to get on our AR wall for some detail stuff. We headed back to our studio and we had a full player day where they came in and we shot some really, really cool videos. We used our LED panel wall that you've seen in the background of our Next Wave DVD podcast in certain episodes. We used that. We pulled out all the camera equipment and we just used it as a really, really cool backdrop for the Green Bay Blizzard. Had their colors going. Loved the look. Smoked the heck out of the room. And we had a really cool look with that. Then we headed over to the AR wall. Now for the background, we didn't end up shooting any plates. Probably should have. It's a habit I'm trying to get into, but not something I always remember. But fortunately, we headed over to mid-journey and we prompted just a snowy forest with moonlight. After a few adjustments, we found a perfect image that we liked. We threw it in the background and we knew because of the tightness of these shots, we didn't have to worry about doing it in Unreal Engine. Usually for that parallax effect, we definitely like to see the depth. But with the smoke, with the snow machine going, all the stuff happening in the background, we weren't going to see that lack of parallax too much for these quick shots that we had. And then we were able to hammer out all those detail shots. The close-ups on the player faces. Getting them to hold a specific position that in the freezing cold, they weren't keen on doing. And that finished it. That was the nice cherry on top. The nice bow of all the shots that we wanted. And Sean did an amazing edit and we got such a cool video of that. Now the music is copyrighted, so I can't share it here. We're going to be running a few clips as I wrap up this video, but you'll definitely be able to see the video. I'll have a link at the end of this video linking to the main video. We were incredibly happy with the results and our client was too. In a lot of our virtual production workflow, we use Kessler Crane motion control gear. We actually did a whole video on how to incorporate Kessler Crane gear into your virtual production workflow, which you can check out on their YouTube channel. But they were kind enough to give a discount code. And if you're interested in picking up some of their gear, definitely use the code CREATIVEEDGE to get 10% off your next order. We have loved being able to use our virtual production studio as a great tool in the toolkit for our customers. But Green Bay Blizzard isn't the only one that we've used it with. In fact, we did a recent video for Loop King Laces, designers of these really awesome luxury laces for sneaker heads. And we incorporated a ton of really cool motion control moves, as well as using a variety of digital backdrops, and of course Unreal Engine. And you can check out the entire video right over here.