Starting September 9th of 2025, the first experimental virtual production class for VFX had an official start - I, along with other 16 students, was selected to create a short 20-frame movie, using Unreal Engine and LED volume stage provided by SCAD. After landing on our idea, I was chosen to be a VFX - Lead- Producer and a project manager. In this blog, I will record my experience in pre-production, production, and post, under the curation of professor Diriwaechter.
September 11th was the day when we officially started pre-production with developing the story, script, aesthetic and production design research. We are honored to work with one of the production design classes under the guidance of Tyler Schank - the opportunity allowed us to have actual props build for this specific class. Original idea that we democratically selected, which I was a collaborator of, only suggested the making of the rail track and the chandelier - but we decided to go wider.
The original setting was inspired by several works of art which included major historical events: Metro 2033, Chernobyl, fallout, s.t.a.l.k.e.r, and Bioshock. We wanted to focus on the aesthetic of the world rather than action or dialogue. Both dialogue and action are pretty limited by the XR stage possibilities: sound is bouncing of the walls, while action could be forbidden due to fragile equipment.
SO, when our idea was selected, the class suggested to add a train as a production design perk. At the point of me writing it, we are still deciding on the physical‘s part necessary. I am Mostly against it with flexibility to build only a small part of the train physically. We are scarily time-limited and budget-limited. I am worried for the production design people’s sanity if we decide to build it.
the original props Included several kind of post-apocalyptic attire and equipment, like Geiger counter or gas mask. We are still keeping the overall wardrobe distressed, but we should collaborate with our costume designer to make sure the costume works with the timeline, setting and environment.
I think the most important physical build of this production is a rail track. I don’t think it’s a train, and a chandelier is there mostly for aesthetic and fun rather than actual practicality. Rail track is essential for actor’s interaction, so we plan to build it alongside the platform.
On September 12th, we met with production design class to officially pitch our idea and listen to their suggestions. Gladly, the pitch was accepted, and after an hour we saw several sketches or railroad station. Their ideation helped to flush our the idea even further.
One of the major highlights of the second week was meeting with one of our mentors Felix Jorge. On September 16th, we met over zoom, pitched our idea to him and took his notes into the consideration regarding the workflow and collaboration with production designers as VFX people. Some people from our production design class were on the meeting as well - they shared their notes, their demands, and what direction they would like to take with the building of physical set.
One of the main results from this meeting was disregarding the idea of building a physical compartment of the train completely. I agree on that - we did not have it on the original idea, and the budget is not broad enough to spread it evenly between so many physical assets. We landed on only doing the rail track, the columns, and the platform via prod.
Now, the biggest concern we had is to finalize our script. But the tricky part is that we did not posses a scriptwriter - we were never written a script before, and this was the day when we found out that our story development went different direction for each individual. We ended up inviting Katie Capps - an amazing scriptwriter, who helped with our rough draft in 1 day!
PS: Don’t mind my face, I was listening very closely…
On the next meeting, September 18th, we needed to prepare the soil for finalizing the script to hang it over to production design people the very following day, on Friday - it is an essential for them to do good work. I was not on the story team, but as an emergency, I pulled to the meeting once (around midnight) to help the team finalize it on the following day and hang it over for production design critique and discussion. Still, we needed intervention from professor’s side to re-evaluate it, and our final script only had 80% occupancy, Still, thanks to Professor D, we did good job and by Saturday the 20th the script passed With flying colors.
Need to mention: I, as a lead producer, established scheduled meetings every Wednesday at 5pm and every Saturday at 8pm. In this case, since I unfortunately cannot attend prod. Design classes due to having a class the same time they do, I meet them twice a week to clarify the workload and discuss the production. So with that, Production design started to work as soon as they received our script, and by our next meeting we received several developed sketches, ideations and drawings.
While we continue to work on production design clarity, our main actors were casted thanks to Amber and TOdd, our director and co-director. During the meeting on September 23rd, our main goals were to start unreal blockout, continue working on a shot list, and clean up the storyboards by the end of the week. Also, I made sure to establish a photogrammetry list to pass on to the production design team, so we can get models and textures out of them when they finish building them - hopefully, by October 14th.
On September 25th it felt like a regular, really fun class session, getting our work done and picking up on more tasks. Me and Robin, one of our tech leads, created 2 kinds of spreadsheets, where we assign jobs to people and side quests, if they feel like doing them. For example, Owen is doing VR and creating our website; Shane is responsible for bts; Amber is doing documentary and etc.
Over the Saturday after that, Prod updated me on their art department developments, so we became aware of the color scheme, columns design, costume design, and rail track technology.
One of the most fun side quests I did for this class so far was establishing a sound design team. We do not need the sound as a final submission requirement, but we do want a candy as a final for this project, so we decided to work in post a little more after quarter ends - till December 1st. it is on volunteer-only basis, but I will continue working on the final and coordination the in-class team and out-of-class team, since sound design people are also sourced from outside.
Our sound design will consist of 2 or 3 people, and their main goal will be doing music’s composing work and incorporating recorded sound from the stage. We decided to hide the mic in the clothes or mask of a male actor, so they can record minor noises and mix it in post.
<— My genuine reaction after locking the sound team
Officially, our sound time will include Facundo Sasson, Miles Hyatt and Shane Reuter - first two will be responsible for post sound, and Shane will help us record sound on the day of. We assembled the sound reference folder for the post production part, had a meeting, and locking the equipment right now as we speak!
One of the headliners of these past two weeks was our first pre-load test, which took place on the October 9th. This was our first opportunity to see our environment on the stage before we take next steps into flushing out the workload.
Our environment needed some refinement, but overall, our session was fun and very promising. We had major refinements done, lighting changes, modeling changes, and set dressing updates. Our team set up a new worksheet, and we agreed to meet on the following Saturday to finish up major refinements and finalizing the train model, the rubble, the prop design and the greens.
Most of this, of course, needed more refinements in the future - again. But we are not giving up! We are working during all weekends to polish our environment and get it ready for our final test load, on Tuesday the 21st, before our final shoot later that week.
Besides securing the people for set and organizing the VFX workflow, I do my best to make sure my team is well-communicated with production design and respected individually. So I take my time to occasionally text everyone and check on their work.
On October 23rd, we had our preload test. That Thursday, we were supposed to look for the crucial mistakes, optimization possibilities, lighting situations and environment details. It was our last train to jump in for fixing everything before our official shoot on upcoming Friday. We’ve been on the XR stage from 9 AM till 5 PM, figuring out the ways we can improve our work.
The preload test went amazing. It was our first opportunity to see how our virtual environment works with the physical set. There was a first ever time seeing everything coming together and understanding the ways we can work on both sets - virtual and physical - combined. The production design did amazing job creating the set for us and it came so well we were happily shocked. Honestly, we did not expect such a good turnout of the events - even though we stayed positive during the preproduction, we were very worried it was not going to come together at the end.
The picture on the left was one of our first ever color test with the costume designer. Again, we did have a costume designer, and all our costumes were created by hand with accessories as well. I wanted to make sure the dress of the main hero Rada can look unrealistic since she is, technically, an imagination caused by hallucinogens.
One of the most prominent issues we run into is the Unstable frame per second rate. It’s good to have a 24FPS for a project, but the problem was that our FPS at 18, 17 or even 16 - this is not workable and not allowed at all. Thanks to one of our tech leads Danci, we optimized pretty much everything we could possibly optimize and created the environment that accomplishes 24FPS criteria. Another issue we ran into is that most of the optimization problems were caused by lightning, and the lightning is crucial in the scene. Without the believable virtual lighting we could not work with practical light at all.
Shadows were also part of the problem. Occasionally, some parts of our scene would become pitch black and, moving forward to our Friday shoot, we had situations when we needed to produce the lighting solution under the crunch of two minutes.
On October 24th, we had our first day of shooting. Everything went completely fine. We were done at 5 PM after starting at 9 AM. We were running into so many lighting problems, but our physical set blended naturally with our virtual set and then we had really great outcome. Thanks to our mentor Eve Roth, we were able to shoot everything on time and roll into the next shooting date on Monday.
During the shooting on Friday and the preload on Thursday, we had a lot of visitors coming into the XR stage since these dates are usually tied with a film festival at Savannah. A lot of people were coming in and being interested in our project. At the same time, we found out that this set, virtual and physical, is going to be used for SCAD days from now on.
On Monday 27th, we officially wrapped! We didn’t stay as long as we stayed previously, and we only wrapped at 2 PM. Honestly, the final shooting day was really chill and really fun. We had our local jokes put on the XR stage before we disabled the environment. I got to be the focus puller!
Right now, as of November 13th, we are in our post production stage. Even though our quarter is coming to an end, we are still working on our product. We’re hoping to get final cut done by the beginning of December, and I’m going to keep this journal updated.
Officially this project is not over. But the quarter has come to an end. Right now, I am organizing the coordination between the sound design team and the post team, while our post part of the class is working on polishing the Final Cut. In pre-conclusion - this class was one of the things I ever had in this school. Without the amazing team and the strong professor, the final would not be as successful.
Xoxo,
Violetta
