Investing in an LED volume for virtual production can help elevate your organization’s content production to the next level. However, with LED wall sizes spanning from 20 feet in diameter to behemoth 100 foot volumes, choosing the right size can quickly become daunting.
Here at CoPilot Co., we’ve helped design and build custom LED volumes of all sizes for Fortune 500 companies and production studios worldwide, giving us the knowledge and experience to help you make the best decision for your studio or organization. This guide breaks down the basic factors that you’ll need to consider when choosing an LED volume size.
The basic considerations
Space is the name of the game when it comes to choosing the right size. The amount of room you have will determine how wide and tall your LED wall can be. It’ll also determine the amount of shooting space you have (i.e. the distance between your camera and the wall, which impacts the LED wall specifications you should choose, such as pixel pitch).
Simple enough, right? But if you have a huge space, does that mean you should go for a huge wall?
Bigger isn’t always better
Even if you have the space for a giant volume, there are also other factors to consider. For one, do you have the power capacity and budget to operate a huge LED wall? More importantly, will a giant volume be sustainable for your organization?
Take for example William F. White International’s virtual production stage at Canada Motion Picture Park in South Burnaby. Built in partnership with Pixomondo in 2021, it briefly held the Guinness world record for the largest LED wall. The 80 foot volume was used to film Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, but wasn’t sustainable in the long run due to its high operation costs, which made the day rental rate inaccessible for the majority of the production industry. Unfortunately, it ceased operations shortly after.
The problem with giant LED volumes is that only Tier-A, Hollywood productions can afford to film on them, and being reliant on these huge productions is not sustainable for most organizations.
Smaller walls don’t make for smaller problems — only different ones
On the other hand, small LED volumes come with their own set of drawbacks. A small volume will limit the camera movements, focal lengths, and lenses you can use. You may also run out of wall space in some shots and become reliant on virtual set extensions.
Of course, this doesn’t mean smaller volumes are entirely unusable. Sometimes, a smaller volume is the only thing that will fit in your space, and you’ll just have to get creative. Recently, we shot an Alien-inspired virtual production short film on our office’s 20 feet by 10 feet LED wall. Our volume size challenged us to come up with creative solutions to get the shots that we wanted.
While we’re very proud of how our short film serves as a testament to the possibilities of virtual production for indie filmmaking, it’s better to have the flexibility that comes with a larger volume than to be hindered by a smaller wall.
You can watch our short film and the bi-weekly vlogs of how we made it on our YouTube channel.
The Goldilocks range
So with all of that in mind, where’s the sweet spot?
We find that semicircle volumes with a diameter between 30 feet to 50 feet provide the most versatility.
A size within this range will be large enough to allow you to pull back, do wide moving shots, use anamorphic lenses, film with different focal lengths, and more. It’ll also require less power and fewer LED panels, making it more cost-effective, while still being large enough to film both commercial productions and movies.
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At the end of the day, the most important factors to consider are the size of your space, your budget, and your target rental/the kinds of productions you plan to shoot on it.
If you need help choosing the right LED volume size for your studio or organization, shoot us a message here: consulting@copilotco.io
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