About Small and Clever Productions
Small and Clever is a TV production company based in Cardiff. It produces programmes for television and radio. Most recently, it has used virtual production and related technology to improve its outputs.
We made a six-part series called Age of Outrage. It's a sketch show on BBC that takes a look at modern life. We taught ourselves how to use Unreal Engine for virtual production so that we could use virtual sets in a green screen studio, rather than having to use lots of different physical locations. Our schedule had us shooting up to five sketches some days, which meant four or five locations. Normally, you wouldn't be able to do this because of all the travel involved to get between locations, but in the studio the set can change at the click of a button.
Virtual production expands the possibilities of green screen
Thanks to more recent developments, you now have the option of connecting your physical camera to the virtual set. As you move the physical camera, the set moves with it in perspective. You can see the movements live, too, so actors standing in the green screen room can see themselves in the virtual set on a monitor. When you move the camera, the way it moves around the scene feels like you're actually in the virtual place.
Whenever I got a Clwstwr newsletter about other people’s projects, I felt I was missing out
When I found out about another funding round opening, I thought that I should apply as it was something I’d wanted to be a part of for a while. It seemed like an opportunity to develop and improve our virtual production techniques, and, in the longer term, might allow us to provide some sort of service or share our research with others who can benefit.
We received £30,000 in Clwstwr funding to allow us to continue on our path
We wanted to spend some time away from the pressure of actually making a programme to improve our techniques and learn more about the technology. This area is so fast-paced and always changing; even in the five months we were researching and developing, new software and developments were released by the big players in virtual production tools. It was a good time to be doing it.
We already had a green screen studio, based in Chapter Arts Centre, that we’d set up for Age of Outrage. The main financial outlays we wanted to cover were the costs of keeping that studio going while we were doing the R&D and the cost of employing the two colleagues I was working with on virtual production.
We broke our project down into three aims that ran alongside each other
Firstly, we wanted to improve the way everything looked, using improved lighting techniques and better 'keying' to make the real images sit better within the virtual set. By tweaking these areas, we hoped to improve the realism.
Secondly, we wanted to improve the tracking system that we had, i.e. how the real camera movements are mirrored by a virtual camera moving within the virtual set. The more the real and virtual sets 'stick', the more believable the illusion.
Thirdly, we wanted to improve the output of the virtual sets to make them look more realistic or photo-real. With some productions, the output is so good that you'd be hard pushed to tell whether the set was real or virtual. We wanted to see if we could get closer to that.
It's such a big field, yet there aren't many experts around who we could ask for help
We decided to teach ourselves how to do the things that would allow us to reach these three objectives we’d set out. This involved a combination of researching techniques, experimenting with different ways of using the technology, changing things on the physical and virtual set and reviewing the quality of the outputs.
We'd often go down rabbit holes with the research. For example, we thought we'd found a solution to improve the tracking of the camera, so we tested that method for a week or so. In the end, we found that it didn't actually work. It wasn't a wasted week, though; it simply forced us to go back to where we started and think again. Most of my working life, I've been producing content to tight deadlines, so it was really nice to have space to try things out and experiment.
We really enjoyed moving with the fast-paced nature of virtual production
Epic Games, who make Unreal Engine, could be called a disruptive company - similar to how Uber or online estate agents have changed the model of their areas of business. Their software is free to use, even if you use it on a TV programme. Third parties offer software for things like lens calibration, for instance, which helps to ensure your physical lens matches the lens in the Unreal machine. However, it’s often the case that Epic Games will release their own free version of the third party software a little while after the third party version. This actually happened while we were working on the project, which was great for us! We had the time to spend a few weeks learning how to use the new software, trying to figure out something that’s so new there weren't even YouTube how-to tutorials or review guides online.
We documented our experiences so that other people could benefit from our findings
We made a video that explained the technical side of our production and our process around virtual production in our studio. There's a real community out there for this sort of thing. Some of the people who’ve watched the video left us comments to say that it was really helpful to see what we did and how. We’ve learnt a lot of our skills from YouTube tutorials over the years, so it's nice to give something back by passing our knowledge on.
Our Clwstwr project has allowed us to feel more confident when sharing our work
We've gained a lot of knowledge, and we're looking forward to putting it to good use on our next television commission. We also feel we have the level of expertise to set up a virtual studio facility that other production companies could use, which is something we’ve pondered about for a while.
Along with this, we’ve shared a demo of our work with the University of South Wales. They were really interested in what they saw, and there's a good chance we'll work together in the future on virtual production. The confidence boost we gained through our Clwstwr project made this possible.
Virtual production in the TV industry is a real buzzword at the moment. Everyone is very excited about it, but it's something that needs experts because it's so technical. Luckily, we're the experts now, so we could help other people do it.