Car chase sequences are usually complex to previz in a traditional linear workflow. We wanted a piece to showcase how efficient and creative our Virtual Production tools are to use, where filmmaking feels like gaming.
Wasteland is an internal project that we created to showcase our Virtual Camera and Live Editing capabilities together with Unreal Engine 5 . It's a one and a half minute animated short, directed in-house by our Virtual Production Supervisor.
The short opens on a vast and dusty desert where an off-road truck meets a family station wagon in a post-apocalyptic world. A chase ensues.
Wasteland is made up of 41 shots with diverse camera setups including drone, onboard vehicles, aerial and handheld shots. The 1 min, 30 second story, from concept to final edit including sound design and colour grading, took 3 weeks to complete. The team included 6 VAD artists, on-set included 3 key creatives (editor, director, cinematographer) and 3 UE TDs. The director spent only one day on stage shooting all scenes and one day exploring editorial and completing final edit.
Nothing was hand animated for this project. The cars were set up with the UE5’s CHAOS Vehicles system and the cameras were recorded using our own VCAM solution. The cars were animated in real-time using game controllers live on-set and during takes. Actually 3 cars were used to achieve this; two are visible in the sequence and a third car was set up to hold the VCAM that was used across most shots.
On its own, this is a fully realized project. However, we can take this high-end previz as a prototype, test or pitch for quickly realizing a final vision and by using our tech, we are bridging the gap from previz to final pixel and LED content. This means productions have full data inheritance from the digital assets already in Versatile’s workflow.
