What is virtual production – and what does it mean for video game marketing?

Keywords Studios' Engage Solutions team sat down with Big Farmer and Maverick Media to discuss virtual production and its importance to current and future video game marketing strategies.

Date Published: 23/08/2024

When making and marketing video games, the production process is often both complex and costly.

Every cinematic scene must be storyboarded, artworked and animated. Every movement needs to be mapped, choreographed or mo-capped. And every live-action trailer has to be meticulously planned and shot on location. But virtual production has the potential to make the entire process more flexible and intuitive, enabling studios to unlock new creative possibilities and better visualise their ideas.

At Keywords Studios’ Big Farmer and Maverick Media, our teams are already using virtual production to make video game marketing more diverse, adaptable and cost-effective. Below, we take a deep dive into virtual production, exploring the benefits and applications; the specialist software and skills required; and what might come next for Keywords.

What is virtual production?

Virtual production blends game development with filmmaking, using Unreal Engine to enhance the production process. The term can encompass a full stack of production techniques, including previsualisation, action sequencing, tech visualisation and more. But most commonly, ‘virtual production’ is used to refer to on-set virtual production, or in-camera VFX, in which action is filmed live against a colossal photorealistic background.

“Virtual production is where you essentially virtualise a set in a real space,” says Seamus Masterson, Executive Creative Director at Maverick. “Environments created in or using Unreal are displayed on an LED screen called a Volume, which can be flat or 360 degree.” Environments and special effects can be adjusted in real-time and action is filmed live against the volume, with actors able to see and interact with the set and visual effects.

How is virtual production used in video game marketing?

Virtual production replaces on-location sets and green screens. So for video game marketers, it has a valuable role to play in live-action trailer production; rather than scouting and travelling to multiple locations to film, studios can create adaptable, realistic environments entirely in Unreal.

“A great example of this is a Christmas spot we recently filmed for a client,” says Seamus. “It required a classic North American-style snowy environment, but we were filming in the late summer time. So, our options were to find a location and dress it into a precise, snowy environment at great expense – or use virtual production. We ended up building the environment virtually, which allowed more time for film prep and enabled us to complete filming in just eight hours.”

Marketers can also incorporate visual effects directly into the environment, which formerly would have been added in post-production, and swap between multiple locations without leaving the studio. “In a recent shoot, we were able to do smoke effects, some time-of-day changes, external scenes and inside scenes, all using the same set, all using the same team, in two days,” says Ben Lavery, Studio Head at Big Farmer. “Usually, a project like this would have required a lot of post-production. travelling, and VFX.”

What are the benefits of virtual production for video game marketers?

For marketers, filming using virtual production:

Can be more time and cost-efficient
Offers endless creative possibilities, and
Leads to greater authenticity and diversity

Find time and cost efficiencies

“If you don’t have to travel halfway around the world to get a shot, that time and resource can be either saved or go towards making the final product better.” says Seamus, “With virtual production we’re able to film in-studio as opposed to, say, onsite in Tokyo or London or Rio. It can be a much more time-effective and cost efficient process.”

While virtual production still costs – it requires specialist expertise and complex 3D modelling and rendering – the ability to film any location in one place is one of its biggest advantages. It reduces the time and expense of travelling, both to scout for locations and film, and allows multiple locations to be shot in quick succession. “You can easily spin through five locations in one day with virtual production,” says Devon Pearce, Group Commercial Director at Big Farmer. “There’s no way that you could move an entire film set and crew and actors and everything so quickly to so many different physical locations.”

But it’s not just the negligible travel time that makes virtual production more efficient. The sophisticated technology and pre-production visual effects reduce the post-production budget too. Seamus says: “The connection of the set to the camera means that when you move the camera, the set will move correctly in the background – just as if you were physically there. With a flat old-fashioned matte painting or a green screen, you would have to precisely CG this movement as part of post-production, often at great expense. This is all done automatically with virtual production.”

Unlock endless creative possibilities

In TV and movies, virtual production has become increasingly prevalent in fantasy and sci-fi, genres that depend heavily on green screens and post-production VFX. Disney’s The Mandalorian famously used this technique; the popular show was filmed against a 21ft by 75ft volume that transported cast and crew into immersive 3D environments. Every following Star Wars live-action TV show has also been filmed using virtual production, alongside mainstream series including Fallout, Doctor Who and House of the Dragon and blockbuster movies like Barbie, Poor Things and The Batman. It’s because virtual production makes anything possible.

By building environments in Unreal, video game marketers can create absolutely anything they can imagine. It could be an intricate fantasy landscape, which would otherwise require extensive and costly set builds to get right. Or it might be something more familiar, adapted to the exact demands of the brief and client. “You either make environments from scratch digitally and then film something in LED volume, or you find a location that perfectly matches what you’re looking for,” says Devon. “Theoretically, if the location exists, and you can get there, that’s the quicker option for getting what you want. However, you can’t change a mountain range or the layout of a city in real life, but you can do that extremely quickly with a digital environment. We can build exactly what the client wants. And if they want to change something while we’re filming, we can do that immediately.”

The endless potential of virtual environments ultimately unlocks new possibilities for clients. It enables marketers to present more creative ideas that might not have been feasible with traditional production techniques, and reallocate budgets accordingly. Seamus agrees: “Perhaps most importantly, with virtual production we now have the ability to offer more ambitious and complex solutions for clients in ways that are much more amenable and appropriate to clients’ resources and timescales - which is especially important in such a demanding and competitive industry."

Create more diverse and authentic content

Video games are global – and it’s no longer confined to consoles. That means players are more diverse and widespread than ever before, and it’s essential they see themselves in the marketing for their favourite games. With traditional production techniques, that wasn’t always simple. Virtual production makes it easier.

“Virtual production makes the world smaller for us to navigate. Creatively, it removes a lot of barriers, which in turn allows us to explore a more diverse representation in our content,” says Seamus. “We can represent not just different people but different places, cultures, and atmospheres, allowing us to create global content that’s noticeably more inclusive in an affordable and efficient way.”

That lends greater authenticity and relatability to marketing content. And the nature of virtual production elevates this even further; by enabling the cast and crew to ‘work in context’, rather than having to imagine environments and effects that are usually added in post-production, it becomes ‘easier to deliver convincing performances’, leading to more compelling and authentic-feeling trailers.

Creative Production: Connect with Your Audience

For over a decade, Keywords Studios has been creating experiences that enable genuine connections with video game audiences.

What specialist skills and tools are required for virtual production?

Virtual production relies on a specialist blend of technical video game development skill with traditional production expertise. Art and development teams will need to be adept with 3D modelling tools, which are used to create the assets, and real-time engines like Unreal, where all the assets are brought together and the environment is realised.

“To create the LED volume backgrounds we use many disciplines, such as environment art and all of the physics and lighting considerations that come with these kinds of scenes,” says Ben. “We can also script sequences in Unreal so that in-camera VFX and animated events can be triggered again and again, for perfect scene repetition on a live action shoot. And we don’t have any training to do. We can already combine Keywords’ live action trailer making expertise with technical art production and the virtual art department. It’s all there and ready to go.”

Keywords’ specialised studios and global network mean that everything required for virtual production shoots can be done in-house: “Whether a client simply wants us to create an environment for them and plug in as part of the process working with multiple production companies, or they want us to take on the entire lifecycle of the project from scripting, through animation, live shoot, post and delivery, we can do all of that internally at Keywords,” says Devon. “Most companies only offer one part of the process, but we’re fortunate to use our ecosystem to be able to do it all in house!”

What’s next for virtual production at Keywords Studios?

At Maverick Media, the team is looking to pool expertise and boost efficiency. “Our next aim at Maverick is to collaborate more with brands across the Keywords Studios group. There are obvious synergies with Big Farmer in terms of creating backgrounds, for example,” says Seamus. “We’d like to get to a place where we have a library of assets that we can repurpose where necessary too, such as virtual sets that can be redressed from project to project. That would reduce bespoke work and increase cost-efficiency for the client.”

For Big Farmer, it’s about growing understanding – particularly outside of the video game sector. “A little bit of education is needed about virtual production shoots. I think that’s where the games industry is going to help, by providing general education and expectation management on cost, timeline and flexibility with the wider entertainment industry,” says Devon. “That creates opportunities for us too, positioning us as an expert partner to create virtual production environments.”