We learned last fall that Star Trek: Discovery would be starting to use new virtual sets for Season 4 production and beyond, and today our first look at their cutting-edge digital construction arrived!
Like popular Disney+ shows The Mandalorian and Loki, the Star Trek: Discovery production team began using virtual sets this year — where high-quality digital environments could be coupled with in-studio set construction, reducing the need for sometimes-imperfect greenscreen graphics work and costly location shoots… especially in the time of COVID where filming conditions still need to be tightly controlled.
Specialty magazine American Cinematographer today debuted a feature piece on the growing use of this technology in the television industry, and included Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 in its coverage.
Noting that the technology is also being shared with the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, production team — which like Discovery, films in the Toronto area — the stage at Pixomondo’s facilities in that city contain a 270-degree, 70-foot by 30-foot horseshoe-shaped LED ‘volume’ which is connected to high-end computer systems to display real-time animation live during filming.
From American Cinematographer’s article:
“In the Covid era, being able to shoot large-scale locations without having to leave the stage is a huge benefit,” says Jason Zimmerman, lead visual-effects supervisor for both Star Trek series. “The LED wall is fantastic for creating environments, and on Star Trek, of course, traveling to different worlds is something we’re very interested in doing.”
“We’re using Roe’s Black Pearl BP2 2.8mm LED panels for the wall and the Carbon series CB5 5.77mm panels for the ceiling,” says Mahmoud Rahnama, head of studio/VFX supervisor at Pixomondo Toronto. “The ceiling is fully customizable, so we can either take panels out and hang practical lights over the volume, or just use the ceiling’s LEDs for lighting. We have more than 60 OptiTrack motion-capture cameras with the ability to track two cameras — [which are] on Technocranes, Steadicams, dollies and the like — simultaneously.”
Zimmerman notes, “A lot of shows are looking at this as an opportunity to advance filmmaking. Getting something in-camera on the day is so much better than greenscreen in many ways. One major difference [in terms of workflow] is that the production-design and art departments are a lot more involved much earlier in the process, because they have to get assets ready to be photographed instead of waiting until after the shoot.”
Pixomondo has also shared some looks at its virtual stage setup on the company’s Instagram:
The production team for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been filming location coverage of the southwest United States for its first season, as the New Mexico Film Office announced this week that the show’s been visiting its state recently for visual effects reasons — likely for use in the background design for an upcoming Season 1 episode, to avoid having to pack up cast and crew to leave Toronto.
(As for Star Trek: Picard, that films in California and would not be using the Pixomondo stages; we haven’t heard any news on that show using this virtual set tool for Season 2.)
We’ll see more of this technology used in the coming years, no doubt, as it becomes a more widespread tool of television and film production — but for now, we’ll have to wait and see how it’s used in Discovery Season 4 (debuting later in 2021) and Strange New Worlds Season 1 (coming in 2022).