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Inside Coffeezilla's '$10,000,000' Virtual Production Studio

Inside Coffeezilla's '$10,000,000' Virtual Production Studio

Joey Daoud
January 16, 2024

Coffeezilla is a YouTuber and investigative journalist with over 3 million subscribers. He covers and debunks scams - mostly crypto scams.

But what makes his videos unique is the virtual world he’s created where the videos take place. He jokingly calls it ‘the 10 million dollar studio,’ a cyberpunk, film noir style city with his own detective’s office.

In this episode of VP Land, Coffeezilla breaks down the thought process behind the creation of his virtual world, the tools and gear he’s using, and how he manages to pull off creating these elaborate videos with a tiny team.

YouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Overcast

Key Takeaways

Lean Team: Coffeezilla keeps his operation lean with only 3 people, himself, his 3D artist/animator, and a video editor.
Blender and Render: He didn’t have systems powerful enough to run Unreal without lag, so all of the sets are built in Blender and rendered out as looping videos. The looping videos run for his real-time capture shots.
Aximmetry, his keyer of choice: He originally keyed in post but wanted faster results. He found Aximmetry had the best keyer, even better than Ultimatte.
ICVFX vs Post: All of Coffeezilla’s shots where he’s sitting at his desk, speaking to the camera are final pixel, using the Blender video renders of the room and composited in real-time in Aximmetry.
The more advanced VFX shots, such as conversations with his robot bartender or where the camera is moving are composited later. He uses a Mo-Sys StarTracker for camera tracking.
A lot of this has to do with the small team - there aren’t enough people to build an environment ahead of time. Plus, he needs the flexibility to change something later in post instead of committing in production.
Little Tricks: The noir window blind lighting - Aputure’s gobo cutout. The matching light in the virtual environment sells the effect. And the coffee steam - looping steam added in post (after trying multiple practical effects).