The Visual Effects Society (VES), the visual effects industry’s professional global honorary society, recently published The VES Handbook of Virtual Production. The comprehensive guide compiles the latest industry-standard technologies, techniques and workflows and features real-world expertise gleaned from 82 experts in areas including VR, AR, MR, and XR.
In this panel, four virtual production experts introduce and explain several chapters with real-life production examples - focusing on the principles, workflows, advantages and disadvantages of virtual production and budgeting.
Christina works as General Manager at TRIXTER. TRIXTER is one of the leading VFX studios in Europe. With her team, Christina works primarily for international clients, as well as large scale streaming vendors. In her position, Christina is responsible for the day-to-day business across all ongoing and potential new productions from acquisition to final delivery. As technology in the film and especially post-production industry continues to evolve at an ever increasing speed, and audience watching habits change as well, the use of the most current technology is absolutely essential in order to be at the highest industry standard not only budget-wise but creatively as well. At TRIXTER, Christina and her team are evaluating these latest technologies and their tailored application to each project.
Before coming back to TRIXTER, Christina was Managing Director at Dark Bay – Europe’s largest virtual production stage. In this role, she oversaw the daily productions and supported and consulted shows from the scriptwriting process to the final image in all virtual production-related topics. The volume, one of the world’s largest LED-installations, was used, among others, for the filming of the Netflix series “1899”.
With a background in VFX and XR, she previously also worked on movies like “The Marvels”, “I am Groot, “Family Plan”, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”, “Black Widow”, “Loki Season 1 +2” and “Foundation S:2”, just to name a few.
Nils Pauwels is Partner and Director of Virtual Production at ReadySet Studios, with 18 years of expertise in film, broadcast, AV, and Virtual Production. He is an ICVFX specialist, and well-versed in immersive technologies. Pauwels coordinates ICVFX shoots offering technical guidance from creative content to lighting technology. He spearheads the development and implementation of new technology while managing daily business operations. Prior to co-founding ReadySet Studios, he was working on LED-stages worldwide
He also made significant contributions to the creation, design, and construction of stages at Dark-Bay in Studio Babelsberg and the largest LED volume in Europe at the Cinecittà Studios in Rome.
After nearly a decade working as a VFX artist and XR developer, Tobias joined Framestore in November 2020 to assist the main creatives of the Netflix show 1899 with virtual scouting in VR during pre-production and working as a technical artist in the virtual art department. During production, he was part of the on-set "brainbar" team in the Virtual Production Studio, responsible for lighting and content adjustments. After 1899 wrapped principal photography, he joined the studio operator DarkBay in Potsdam/Babelsberg as Creative Tech Lead before joining the Berlin-based animation studio Woodblock as Head of XR & Realtime until March 2024. He now works as an independent Creative Technologist focusing on the intersections between VFX, XR, and Virtual Production.