Brownian Motion has honed a seamless end-to-end workflow for virtual production content from set capture, through offline to final pixel delivery.
“We specialise in no-compromise plate capture and delivery. Why wouldn’t you want to use the same cameras as the rest of your shoot just because it’s going on a screen?” says self-titled Head Honcho, Jeff Brown of Brownian Motion.
The last few years have seen an increase in virtual production and the need for LED volume content. Positioning themselves at the forefront of developments in that field, Brownian Motion have developed an under-one-roof solution for multi-camera plate acquisition and post delivery. Covering both stunt chase sequences and generic driving for plates, they offer high-end camera solutions using all the major camera brands.
As a rental company they been involved in multi-camera setups as far back as 2010, shooting for green screen composite workflows predating the use of volume screens. Around 2017 they decided to design and build multiple array configurations to remove the need to custom-build from scratch for each and every array shoot.
It was an example of the innovation the company had always shown – a “build it and they will come” approach. They built it and went on to service Hobbs & Shaw in the UK and US.
“We were seeking to provide an off-the-shelf service for shoots, to take the uncertainty out of the process,” says Deane De-Beger, Head of Talking at Brownian. “We wanted to make an array an off-the-shelf piece of rentable equipment complete with everything needed including crew. It turned out to be a good idea.”
In 2019 that idea saw the company offering multi-camera array services for Black Widow, Fast & Furious 9: The Fast Saga, Fantastic Beasts, Cruella, and Eternals, to name a few.
“When it came to shooting content for virtual production delivery, we’d find we would be having the same sort of conversations with DPs and VFX departments on a regular basis. So we built up a selection of rig configurations, using all the major favourite high-end cameras complete with all the necessary lenses and accessories. We probably have somewhere in the region of 70-odd setups now, so it’s now just a matter of picking the one needed, and if we don’t have it already we make it.”
CREATION AND INNOVATION
The COVID pandemic in 2020 provided a valuable research and development window for the company, a surprising silver lining to the cloud of that time. It saw the arrival of the Brownian Stitchbox: a proprietary hardware and software live-stitching dailies system for on-set use – with accurate clip naming and timecode. It was used on Jurassic World: Dominion for the first time in the August of that year.
“Our experience on films and dramas in 2018 and 2019 led us to pursue a way of bringing live monitoring and playback to arrays. We’d found that because of the numbers of cameras in use we’d often be shooting blind, and the workflow to get selected shots to the volume screen was slow and laborious. Stitchbox was an effort to solve both of those problems. It bought live-stitched video transmission using a single feed on set, and at the same time recorded edit-ready proxy files,” says Jeff Brown.
The Brownian Stitchbox removes a whole post-production loop, and the inherent cost that entails. It allows selects to be made for both VFX workflows and virtual production delivery, direct from the files created on set. It has become an integral part of the VFX pipeline on the numerous films and dramas Brownian Motion have serviced including: Jurassic World: Dominion, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Fast X, Heart of Stone, Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Little Mermaid, Secret Invasion, Argylle, Kraven the Hunter, Moon Knight, The Old Guard 2, Wonka, and Paddington in Peru, to name a few.
“Once productions saw the benefits of the way we were working, by providing a full wet hire service with all the necessary equipment and trying it into the workflow requirements of VFX, it rapidly became the norm,” says Deane De-Beger. “But the one thing we kept being asked for was stitching final quality deliverables.”
A STITCH IN TIME
The intention was always to offer a complete end-to-end virtual production service, so in 2021 Brownian Motion rolled out the final piece of the workflow puzzle. Working with VFX and editorial departments, the team takes an EDL from the Stitchbox offline files and fine stitch full resolution files delivered to the specification of the volume stage being used, anywhere in the world. Closing the loop from lens to volume screen offers a seamless under-one-roof process for virtual production content delivery.
“We are on the ground shooting the content and our crews know exactly what needs to be done to ensure the best quality result for the screen because we know exactly what process it will go through and how it will be delivered. We have full oversight and control of every step of the process – there is no uncertainty or time spent lining up multiple vendors. Stitchbox ties it all together. We’ve done the hard bit to simplify the process,” says Jeff Brown.
Some of the projects which they have provided this service for include: The Peripheral (Amazon), The Union (Netflix), Luther: The Fallen Sun (Netflix), Hijack (Apple), Culprits (Disney) and recently Back in Action (Netflix).
“For a lot of shoots we have facilitated it’s been the first experience of virtual production for many in production and post. We get involved at the start and offer advice on everything from the choice of vehicle, the shoot logistics and post production process,” says Deane De-Beger.
“I think that ability to encompass the whole process from shoot to delivery is what makes what we offer a complete and reassuring service,” adds Jeff Brown.
Solving the problems of multi-camera setups for virtual production delivery and streamlining the process remains the focus of the company. At Cine Gear LA 2023, they unveiled a new stabilised platform, the ReACTIVE, a joint venture with Motion Impossible. Designed specifically for large payloads and low parallax, it is a six degrees of freedom, Z-axis compensating stabiliser built from the ground up for no-compromise 360-degree capture. They also just announced a new custom Prodigy Rain Deflector, the “Out Of Space”, through a team-up with Bright Tangerine to minimise lens parallax inherent with existing mattebox solutions.
“We have to think of everything. We are solving the problems faced by this new area of virtual production capture because no one has done it yet,” says Deane De-Beger.
“Things are going to change rapidly in the way we acquire filmed entertainment, just like it always has,” says Jeff Brown. “That challenge gets us up in the morning and we aim to be at the forefront of that change. We’re just getting warmed up.”
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This article is sponsored by Brownian Motion
