Talk:StageCraft

Should be an article

There should be an article for Industrial Light & Magic's "StageCraft" LED wall visual effects system, utilized in The Mandalorian, subsequent Marvel and Star Wars titles, and others. Disney is building these in LA, London, and Australia where they are producing films. It's a good bet that this technology will continue becoming more widespread. This is akin to CAPS, RenderMan, motion control cameras and the Dykstraflex, etc.

I started redlinking to this article, however it was instantly reverted because that's how Wikipedia works now, evidently. But this really should be an article. It's rather notable. Jbbdude (talk) 00:12, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

It is confusing. I read about something called "The Volume" (proper) being used on a particular film, and only with additional research was able to find this article.

I can't help wondering why they chose such a generic, hard-to-search word as "volume" (common, no article) for this technology's name. And what does it even mean—a "volume" of LED pixels? No explanation here, or elsewhere that I can find.

Whatever it means, I can only assume "volume" refers to the general concept of a high-res LED backdrop in lieu of green screen (which, to add to the confusion, WP still refers to as "chroma key"—a term I've never heard anyone use in my 50+ years around show people). Is this true? If so, it may be useful to clarify it in the article. Or better yet, make this page a trademark-specific stub with a link to a more general article—e.g. "Volume (video technology)", so people will have a clue which "volume" it refers to. 🤷🏽‍♂️ – AndyFielding (talk) 08:29, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Okay, having said that, I've now realized this page's leading link points to On-set virtual production, a general page about the technology—but where the term "volume" is nowhere to be found. Does this make sense? Certainly "volume" (lower case) isn't a TM... If it refers to an installation of the technology, shouldn't that be explained there, as that's what people are apparently calling them? – AndyFielding (talk) 08:34, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

The article is completely missing the point of StageCraft

The article is completely missing the point. StageCraft's true value has been explained in numerous videos online and it was also demonstrated in person at D23 2024 (which I attended this year).

Video walls have been around for a while, such as the huge one used on Oblivion (2013). The problem with those walls is that it's easy to tell they are there (that one is merely looking at an image displayed on a video wall as distinguished from the subject of the image itself), because of how parallax doesn't change automatically when one moves relative to the wall.

The point of StageCraft is that small cameras on top of the video wall track the movement of the movie camera in real time. For the portion of the wall captured in camera, the video wall creates a window in which parallax is adjusted in real time with the movie camera's movements. Only that window is adjusted in real time and moves with the camera, rather than the entire wall. Having the entire wall move would be too disconcerting and nausea-inducing for the actors on the set, especially with fast camera movements. Rather, the rest of the video wall outside of the camera view remains static and is used to provide ambient lighting and reflections.

For most shots, the astonishing illusion of reality created by a real-time parallax simulation in a window for the portion of the background captured in camera is good enough to hide the fact that the background is a video wall. It breaks down again for shots where the camera gets too close to the wall. Again the graphics are too distorted and the individual pixels are again visible. For those shots, the window can be converted to a green screen, while the rest of the video wall continues to project ambient lighting, and then the close-up shots are cleaned up in post-production.

The other problem with StageCraft is that any shot which pans too high may capture the upper edge of the wall or the cameras parked up there to see what the movie camera is pointing at. Those shots also have to be cleaned up in post.

At some point when I have the time, I will dig up the sources for this and add this to the article. But anyone else is welcome to add that information if they have the sources at hand. Coolcaesar (talk) 15:21, 1 November 2024 (UTC)