This Will Floor You
A few weeks ago we had a call from a producer shooting a project for a very well known client in the video game industry.
They loved our stage, loved our Unreal Engine virtual set technology, and were ready to move forward with a week-long booking. There's no doubt that I love bookings of that length, but when I heard the details of their shoot, I didn't think that they'd need more than a couple of days. So I asked why they'd need us for so long.
The producer thought they'd need one tech/rehearsal day, two days to install a floor, and one day to remove the floor.
Wait a second -- install a floor. The client was sure that the spectacular floors she had seen in other productions filmed here were spectacular, expensive, and labor-intensive real floors.
Nope! All the floors we film on don't really exist -- they are virtual -- and therefore have zero materials cost, zero labor costs, and zero rental days for installation and removal, and will take up zero space in the landfill when you dispose of them. And as the producer rightly pointed out -- our floors are spectacular, complete with reflections, shadows, and custom motifs.
They're also often better than a real floor a producer would install, unless that producer's budget and time were unlimited. Check out the images of some of our virtual floors.
You'll notice that the gorgeous colorful floor in our Celebrity Ping Pong set is not only beautiful and expensive-looking, but we designed it with the motif of a ping-pong paddle built right in. This would be difficult, and cost lots of money (more than most budgets would allow) -- if it were real.
Unreal Engine Celebrity Ping Pong Set on the L.A. Castle Studios stage.
Or look at this incredible floor for an Alicia Keys shoot. Not only is it striking, but it changes throughout the song as more images of faces are added. This incredible effect would be almost impossible in the real world.
Alicia Keys at L.A. Castle Studios
And look at the beautiful wood floor of our basketball gymnasium virtual set, which we recently used in a music video from a famous artist. The size alone of this floor -- if it were real -- would make it very, very expensive.
Unreal Engine basketball virtual set on the L.A. Castle Studios stage.
Now back to the original project I mentioned. It was initially scheduled for five days. We shot it last week in only two days, and the producer was thrilled. Not only was her floor and the rest of her set stunning, and exactly as she envisioned, she saved the cost of a floor, and just as importantly, saved three days of studio rental.
So please keep in mind, even though your viewers won't know or care that you didn't spend millions on set construction, even your floors will be better with our technology, and you won't spend a dime to build them -- or remove them.
