BERT POT NSC
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTOGRAPHER

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VIRTUAL SCENERY CINEMA

A new take on rear projection. ​

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'Virtual Scenery Cinema' is an ongoing project of myself and  John Thorborg to shoot complicated and expensive scenes under controlled, creative and affordable circumstances. We approach rear projection on a LED screen from a cinematographer’s point of view creating the best photo-realistic backdrop possible using the tools of a cinematographer.  VFX is only used to change the background for the story that is told in front of the Led-screen.

In our project, Unreal Engine is not (yet) involved to keep things affordable and easy to incorporate in your production.

We are not a studio that is 'ready and set to go'. We are two independent creatives and we know where to rent our equipment and studio to get things going customized to the needs of a project.

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Introduction

Some 10 years ago I started using rear-projection to shoot extensive car-scenes under controlled circumstances in a studio for the movie 'TBS'. Since we were pleased by the results and audience, other directors and cameramen thought the 'reality' of the scene's was very convincing, I stayed on this path for quite a while. I kept shooting car-scene's with rear-projection in a studio, making efforts to optimize the workprocess and make the quality of the images that I shoot even better.

I used this small-budget technique of shooting carscenes for several projects including the feature films

'Bloed, Zweet en Tranen', 'Hemel op Aarde' and three seasons of the series 'Hollands Hoop'.
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In close collaboration with colorist John Thorborg and gaffer Uwe Kuipers I decided to take the rear-projection a 'big' step further.

In 2015 I shot the television-series 'Trollie' and we created an outside world with snowcovered mountains in a studio. We projected landscapes (moving images and photographs) on an 8x20 meter canvas with foreground art-direction and special-effects such as fog, falling snow and wind.
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In 2018 director Lodewijk Crijns offered me his beautiful script 'Bumperkleef' to shoot.

Half of his film would takes place on the road in a car. The story concentrats on a man, his wife and their two daughters traveling in their car to visit the grandparents. In the story there is heavy traffic on the highway, there are car chases, near collisions and dangerous driving. We talked a lot about how to overcome a lot of potential problems like safety of the actors and crew and the discomfort of directing scenes in the car on moving and noisy vehicles. We also had to work around a tight budget.

We decided on shooting with LED-volumes for a background to give us more creative freedom. By doing so we were probably the first in Europe to make use of LED-volumes so extensively throughout one film.

We also created a 270° camera-rig to shoot the action that later became our playback on the screen in the studio as a backdrop for the scenes inside the car.

Since we did not use greenscreen we had dirty windows and reflections of the actors in the car-window.  We were able to shot a lot of takes by simply 'rewind' and push the 'play' button. Everyone was comfortable and safe in the 'fast driving scenes'

We finished 'Bumperkleef' on time, on budget and with most visual-effects done in the camera!
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If you have any plans of using rear-projecting for your production, make sure you contact me through this website.

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