A Flicker of Process: How Virtual Production Brings Clarity, Confidence, and Cost-Savings to Any Set
- Carlos Fueyo
- 7 days ago
- 8 min read
How a modest-budget spot for Veterans Affairs proved that real collaboration, smart planning, and virtual production can lead to smoother shoots and creative freedom, even under pressure.
You can see the project here
How We Wrapped a VP Commercial 4 Hours Early (and Why That Matters)
Virtual production isn’t just for blockbuster films. When done right, it can be one of the most effective and collaborative tools in any production, even on a commercial shoot with a tight timeline and modest budget.
In this article, I want to emphasize the strategies and decisions that led to the successful shoot of A Flicker of Time, a spot for Veterans Affairs directed by Andy Valentine and shot by Oren Soffer. From the first ask by The AV CREW and Disguise, to the final frame captured on an LED volume, we built this process through openness, collaboration, and clear communication. No gimmicks. No magic tools. No silver bullets. Just a team that trusted the process and each other.
Virtual Production Isn’t Plug-and-Play. It’s planning and people.
Virtual production has become part of everyday production vocabulary. It often gets treated like a mature, predictable solution, something you can drop into a workflow and expect perfect results. But unlike VFX, which is a post process, virtual production lives in pre-production and production. And when the camera rolls, there’s no room for delay.
Every project brings unique challenges. There’s little padding for errors and flexibility and results are always expected. You are working up against real shoot days, crew schedules, and deliverables. That’s exactly why the planning phase needs to be airtight.
A Flicker of Time was a mid-level budget commercial with little room for mistakes and a fast turnaround. Three weeks of prep and one day to shoot it with Andrew Amato producing the virtual production and assembling this great team.
playard studios are an absolute game-changers in visual effects & virtual production. Their technical expertise, artistic vision, and problem-solving skills transformed our project, elevating the storytelling in ways we never thought possible. If you want cutting-edge innovation, precision, and a true creative partner, they are the best in the business. Andy Valentine - Director
Start with a Clear Vision. Build a Real Plan.
This project kicked off with a very clear creative direction from director Andy Valentine. He came in with an approved script and solid storyboards that already carried the tone and emotional intention of the piece. That gave me a longer runway to plan and set the structure for a collaborative process.
Within the first 24 hours, I laid out a strategy for digital set builds, tasked the team, and created a three-week production timeline with multiple interactive review sessions built in. The spot called for six environments, five of which would be virtual. These included a backyard, an Afghan battle location, an office, a community center, and the Grand Canyon. The only physical set would be a bedroom for which we used a flyaway wall to provide content on the its window.
From a cinematography standpoint, Oren Soffer came in just as prepared. He had experience with virtual production - having been the DP for The Creator - knew the camera body and lenses he would use and already had a concept for a revolving camera move. With those elements in place, we could immediately begin building first-pass environments and launching our collaborative sessions.
Previz That Moves the Camera and the Story
The camera move for this spot was a revolving 180-degree shot that transitioned from one environment to the next. It demanded precision, not just in choreography, but in timing, lighting, blocking, and how each set transitioned into the next. We couldn't afford to wait until shoot day to figure that out.
Early in the process, we worked with Andy and Oren to draft a previz animatic that mapped everything out. It showed the practical builds, talent placement, lighting rigs, track type, distance, camera height, and even the exact orientation of the LED volume in relation to the set. This previz wasn’t just a visual guide. It was the shoot before the shoot.
Because we already had the environments built inside the virtual art department, previz wasn’t some extra step. It was integrated directly into our process. That allowed us to move between scene layout and camera planning in real time, without having to wait on other departments or slow things down.
This is where real-time filmmaking makes all the difference. We gave the director and DP the space to shoot the entire sequence multiple times before the physical cameras ever rolled. By the time the crew stepped onto set, the creative decisions were locked in, the transitions were seamless, and there was freedom to focus on performance and subtle moments instead of scrambling through logistics. It was so great to be part of these calls, in which both creatives were able to play and experiment without constraints.
Designing for Seamlessness, Shooting for Truth
Each set came with its own unique needs and amount of physical build. That gave us a wide range of digital-to-practical integration examples all inside a single spot.
The backyard had the most involved physical build. It wasn’t massive, but enough to allow a convincing transition from real to digital. In the review sessions, we worked with the production designer to get very specific about landscaping, props, and placement. The result was a perfect match between real and virtual. After some minor color tweaks on set, it was nearly impossible to tell where the wall began and the real set ended.
The war zone required depth. We created a stretch of Afghan desert, populated it with distant mountains, village structures, vehicles, and subtle smoke columns. Oren lit the entire thing digitally, including virtual stand-ins and the real-world build. This let him plan all his practical lighting in advance and make sure everything matched once we were physically on set.
And then came the Grand Canyon. The virtual environment looked great, but Oren saw a way to take it further. He wanted to see the sun in the frame, as a real light source. So we popped out a panel in the LED wall where the digital sun disk was and ran a practical light through it. Simple. Effective. A perfect example of what happens when you prep well but stay flexible.
Because I was also the VFX supervisor on the project, I already knew that the transitions and cleanup work would land in post. That’s why I was completely comfortable placing a practical light right in the middle of the shot. We designed it with full awareness of what would need to be handled later, and that allowed us to focus on getting the best image possible in-camera without being limited by fear of cleanup.
Don’t Wait for Problems. Solve Them in Real Time.
Nothing about this workflow is bulletproof. You are working at the edge of what the tools can do. Unreal can crash. Files can lag. FPS can drop unexpectedly.
That’s why one of the most important decisions on this project was testing in an LED volume early. We had access to Disguise’s stage, which gave us a smaller, controlled space to test performance, color, interactivity, and flexibility long before the pre-light. This is rarely done. Most productions wait until the day before the shoot, which is too late to make real fixes. That’s a huge risk, and one that I now push hard to avoid on every project.
Even with that prep, we hit a snag. On the day we shot the Community Center scene, Carlos Pérez, our real-time artist and operator, noticed that frame rate had dipped below our 30fps target. It wasn’t obvious to the eye, but it was enough to risk stuttering in playback. He brought it up right away.
We reviewed the footage. It looked good. But sure enough, there was a subtle hitch in the background. After I reviewed with Andy and Oren the call was made to reshoot. That meant rebuilding the set, redoing the scene, and checking everything again. It wasn’t ideal, but it saved the spot. Ignoring it would have meant fixing it in post, which likely would have required a full background replacement at much higher cost.
This is where many productions fall short. The idea that you can always fix it later must always be the last resort. Virtual production happens in real time, and problems must be handled right then and there. Confronting the roadblocks head on and finding solution in real time is an integral part of the production process and to me one of the main differences from working on VFX and post.
Even then we walked away with a shoot that from the raw camera footage was already 98% done and still managed to wrap 4 hours early.
As a cinematographer working in the virtual production space, I’m only as good as the VFX team and VAD, Carlos and his team provided second-to-none experience and hands-on expertise that lead to an incredibly smooth and successful collaboration and execution of the project, and an end result we are all immensely proud of! Oren Soffer - Director of Photography
Bridging Real-Time and Traditional VFX
Early in the bidding process I brought on a trusted VFX partner. I knew there would be a handful of shots that would need traditional visual effects. Transitions, clean-up, and some particle and debris work were expected for A Flicker of Time. We also had a second commercial for the same campaign, shot entirely on location, that would rely even more heavily on VFX.
I was very lucky to have the team at NEXODUS supporting both spots. For the second commercial, we used real-time filmmaking tools to create three key background moments: a hotel lobby and a mountain landscape. Instead of waiting weeks for matte paintings and endless rounds of notes in post, I built the real-time scenes that we could iterate on immediately and get approvals quickly as production was wrapping.
Even more importantly, the director was able to art direct those backgrounds directly, with the client involved, in real time. What could have been weeks of back and forth was reduced to a couple of days. It’s a great example of how real-time and traditional VFX can live together and create a faster, more collaborative process.
This Is Why Virtual Production Matters
A Flicker of Time showed what can happen when a team embraces the process of virtual production. It became a core part of the production process and helped everyone from the director to the gaffer prepare and collaborate more effectively.
The biggest challenge with this approach is convincing producers and clients of the value. It’s an upfront cost. One that didn’t exist a few years ago. And because it can help things to runs so smoothly on set, it can be easy to overlook how much time and money was actually saved.
But the result speaks for itself. On this shoot, everyone knew what they were doing. Set transitions were fast. Talent blocking was efficient. Lighting setups were already dialed in. And principal photography wrapped four hours ahead of schedule.
Think about what four hours means on a shoot day. Fewer overtime charges. More time to experiment. A calmer, more focused crew. That kind of margin isn’t just about saving money. It’s about creating space for better work.
You can check out some great behind the scenes at MEPTIK / Disguise site.
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