HIGH: Virtual Production on an Indie Film Budget

One of the things we learned is how early you need to bring in your Virtual Art Department (VAD) and how early you need a really experienced virtual production producer. Not just a producer but someone who has experience with virtual production. They can tell you no. They can tell you what's possible and what's not possible within your timeframe within your budget.

You can't start like unearthing those issues until you really get into the VAD process. So to have someone who can tell you early on about the technical aspects is so incredibly helpful so you don't waste time with these pie-in-the-sky ideas.

Virtual production is a tool that even though we were able to do this, we were still limited. We still had limitations as indie filmmakers with a small budget relatively. We were still limited as far as what we actually could do.

So at that point, it meant that we had to go back to the drawing board.

We had to think of like, "Okay, what are some other options that we have that we would still be able to tell the story we wanna tell and get the best of what we can get?"

Basic previsualization (previs), that's not wasted time because even if you end up having to pause for a year to raise money to shoot the thing all of that work, it's work that you're gonna have to do anyway. So you've already started.

So even if you have to pause to raise more funds, that portion doesn't cost a ton toget started with. And it's so instrumental. Like that initial storyboarding on paper, basic storyboarding, and then building your basic assets and your basic stage in Unreal, that doesn't have to cost a gazillion dollars.

And if you're good with computers, you might be able to do it yourself even.