Kasblah

If you look at early film and television it’s primarily studio-based. Secondary shots were captured on location but primary shots with actors were mainly filmed in a controlled studio environment, with a combination of props, staging, projections, etc used to recreate the exterior location. Early audiences were ok with this but today we scoff at the sometimes crude look of these productions.

Over time directors also took their productions outside, facilitated by innovations in technology. More flexible equipment with higher reliability allowed productions to move outside the studio while still maintaining a large degree of control of the process. Audiences also became accustomed to believing what they saw on the screen. Clearly if the location was fantastical (say the planet Pandora ) this doesn’t apply, but if the character is walking down the street of a typical US neighborhood you kind of expect they filmed in some typical US neighborhood… or…?

Enter technology again. For years our visits to places like the planet Pandora have been made possible by big budgets and pioneering visual trickery on a large scale: greenscreens, motion tracking, and CG all have played parts. But this technology has now trickled down to a level where it’s being used to replace the mundane. Enter Ugly Betty, a sitcom about a New York network assistant. I’ve never actually watched the show but apparently they prefer to film it in California because it’s cheaper. Watch the clip below:

The producers of this video market their services as a “Virtual Backlot”. This is an interesting name because the backlot was (and still is) the halfway-house for productions, a controlled outside environment in the backyard of the studio. But the backlot is a physical structure and it cannot be reconstructed for every production, and it is limited in size/scale/scope. The “Virtual Backlot” however opens up the world, the production can travel to any location immediately, and multiple productions can share the same studio because a new backlot can be “loaded up” at any time. The cost savings are substantial, and the technology will only get better, more carefully matching the athmosphere of the original location with the “set”.

So it appears everything we see on television or film anymore, no matter how normal or mundane, is potentially shot in a big green studio somewhere. The production industry is coming full circle, on-location realism is now available in the controlled environment of the studio.

I’ve had a PVR for almost 2 years now and after mostly sitting idle, taping a rare late night movie (which we still haven’t watched), it’s all if sudden being used all the time! What happened? For one we are parents now, and bedtime is not what it used to be anymore,