BMW i5: Director Zach Jopling on His First VP Shoot

A Conversation on VP, BMW, and What Jopling Learned

Synapse Virtual Production's chief innovation officer and resident cinematographer Christopher Probst, ASC sat down with director/DP Zach Jopling to discuss his recent experience shooting his first virtual production commercial for BMW's i5 featuring Jay Shetty. The duo covered a lot of VP ground, both artistic and technical, examining the process, the details of the shoot, and what Jopling learned along the way.

Environments and Partnership

Christopher Probst, ASC: Perhaps you could begin by talking about your experience working with Synapse's VAD team and the flexibility of creating your own custom environments.

Zach Jopling: That was the number one reason why we went with Synapse for the project. Every aspect was fully integrated: the VAD team, the VP supervision and the support every step of the way. You were all able to offer a great amount of confidence in each phase of the process that other VP companies we approached simply couldn't.

Being able to tell us exactly what something was going to cost and give us a realistic picture as to what we could expect was crucial, not just from a timeline perspective, but also what could practically run on the volume on the actual production day. Synapse were able to keep us on task, which a lot of other virtual production companies weren't willing or able to do.

Synapse really showed us the way and kept us on time and budget and gave us the most value on screen at the end of the day.

Lighting and Panel Quality

CP: As a cinematographer, one aspect of VP I especially appreciate is the ability to control time of day, having authorship over the placement of the sun.

ZJ: Absolutely. Controlling the time of day may seem mundane, but it's so valuable because you could waste half a day just waiting for a sunset that may never happen. I was also super surprised by the amount of light that the screens actually gave off. It's something you really can't comprehend until you're actually there on the volume.

CP: What about the quality of that light?

ZJ: One aspect I did not fully account for going in was the CRI of the panels. With the panels on that stage, it was kind of an issue. Sometimes it was fine for the car to have a bit of a color cast, but for skin tones it was actually terrible. It became a secondary color correction pass in post just to make sure Jay looked healthy and not skewed toward magenta or green.

CP: This is why for our stage at LA Center, we are building a downstage brow, a long overhead strip of RGBW panels angled to provide three-quarter frontal/top light to help create better skin tones. The panels are still driven by the environmental content, but they also mix in a white diode source to emit a continuous spectrum of light that renders better skin tones.

Moiré, Reflections, and Stage Size

ZJ: Things that Synapse has already solved for, like the gaps in the ceiling. That was something I was constantly having to deal with on the BMW shoot, it really slowed us down.

CP: Your situation was exacerbated by the size of that stage. With the Synapse stage at LA Center, by having a seamless marrying of the ceiling and walls, you can have perfect reflections with no gaps and no tracking cameras in shot to paint out.

ZJ: I was having to deal with a lot of moiré issues as well. The car was often on the same curved plane as the screen at certain points. You couldn't really escape it. I feel like we did a pretty good job getting around it by using vintage Canon K-35 lenses, they're pretty soft and helped minimize moiré.

CP: Our panels' pixel pitch is 2.3mm, compared to what most stages are using, which is almost 2.9mm. With virtual production, every millimeter above 2mm creates an almost exponential increase in the propensity to encounter moiré. That factor alone can make or break the success of a VP shoot.

Unreal, Pre-Production, and What's Next

CP: For you as a director, thinking ahead, when pitching jobs for virtual production you can really start to use Unreal as part of your deck building and pre-viz process. Our CCO Rich Lee recently did a VP shoot for Lexus and created all of the storyboards in Unreal. Those assets then ported directly into the physical production.

ZJ: Okay, I just downloaded Unreal Engine, so that'll be a thing I'll be learning! And I'm definitely letting people know that I did this BMW spot. I will be name-dropping Synapse as the production partner they need, because you have the studio, the ability to develop the assets, and can execute each step of the production.