Driving Plates
Fast, stitchless moving backgrounds, captured to your picture vehicle's exact specs and delivered stage-ready.
Fast, stitchless moving backgrounds, captured to your picture vehicle's exact specs and delivered stage-ready.
Driving, Reimagined
Synapse's driving plate acquisition provides fast, high-fidelity moving backgrounds that are seamless, stitchless, and crafted to the client's exact picture vehicle specs. Coupled with our unique LED volume design, Synapse Capture's plates offer unparalleled moving environments that envelop vehicles on stage, wrapping the sheet metal in dynamic, moving reflections, with the freedom to move the camera freely.
Small Flaws = Big Problems
We've seen countless traditionally acquired driving plates arrive on our stage with the same problems: stitching seams and warping, camera shake, noise and grain, exposure shifts between cameras, and the wrong camera height for the picture vehicle. On a laptop they may pass. On a 62-foot-wide, 22-foot-tall LED volume, every flaw is magnified, and most can't be fixed. Synapse Capture eliminates those weak points before the footage reaches the stage.
No Seams. No Shake.
Our stitchless capture uses a custom two-camera system built for the geometry of our stages. One lens covers the volume's full field of view, with a front-facing plate and a rear plate, both at the height your on-screen vehicle needs. Three methods of stabilization, low-grain cameras, no rolling-shutter skew. We deploy anywhere with a small team, or run fully self-contained with our own vehicle, driver, operator, permits and crew.
Production Efficiencies
Plates captured correctly from the start mean your production never has to slow down for the process. Because we've optimized the capture workflow down to two cameras, we can capture, process and often have plates running on our LED wall by the next day, which dramatically changes production schedules. A process that is both bespoke and nimble, delivering plates that are photoreal, stable, seamless and extremely clean, means you're capturing the highest-quality imagery in camera, with nothing left to fix in post.
See For Yourself.
Stitchless plates, matched to the picture vehicle and running on the wall. Watch the reflections travel across the sheet metal while the camera moves freely.
Stitchless driving plates captured for the LED volume, matched to the picture vehicle and on the wall by the next day.
Driving plates,Car process,Stitchless capture,Next-day delivery
Stitchless moving plates.
The next evolution of car process
The problem with traditional plates
One-lens capture, full field of view
A process that keeps pace with production
Proof in motion
Book Driving Plates
Talk to us about your next car process shoot. We'll handle capture, processing and stage delivery, start to finish.
Book a driving plate shoot
Driving plates are moving background footage captured on real roads and played back on an LED volume for car process work. Synapse's driving plates are crafted specifically for LED volumes: captured stitchless, stabilized, matched to the picture vehicle, graded and formatted for the wall, and delivered stage-ready, often by the next business day.
What makes a good driving plate for an LED volume?
Virtual production car process lives or dies by the quality of its source material. When a plate is captured on location and played back on an LED volume, it becomes the world the actor inhabits: the direction of travel, the light source, the enveloping reflections on the sheet metal, the reactive surface. A plate that looks passable on a laptop monitor can become a liability on a 22-foot-tall LED wall.
The common failure modes are predictable: camera shake and stabilization problems, noise and grain, lens flares, stitching artifacts from multi-camera rigs, inconsistent grain or exposure drift between cameras in an array, and a capture perspective that doesn't match the picture vehicle. Any one of these can add days of reprocessing before the plate is usable, and several of them can't be fixed at all.
Driving plates must be artifact-free: no stitch warping, no shake, no grain. The plate that arrives is the plate that goes on the wall.
A capture rig built around the LED volume
Our capture rig is purpose-built around our LED stage geometry: a nearly 240°, enveloping half dome. One lens for each camera-facing direction covers the full field of view the volume needs, removing stitching as a time delay, a point of failure and a source of artifacts.
Each plate, forward or rear facing, supports multiple angles of coverage on stage: straight-on, profiles, three-quarter angles and French overs. Without a multi-camera array limiting how low the rig can sit or how it can be stabilized, our capture vehicle uses three separate methods of stabilization to keep jolts and high-frequency shake down. Plates are captured with the actors' sightlines in mind: the perspective of an actor driving a Miata isn't captured from the height of a monster truck.
Our reconfigurable LED wild walls add interactive lighting and line-of-sight reference for the talent in the vehicle, and can be used on their own for a smaller driving insert setup.
Driving plate capture specifications
- Stitchless dual-plate 220° process: front- and rear-facing perspectives
- Single-lens capture per plate: full stage field of view, no stitching
- Low-noise cameras with global shutters: minimal grain, no rolling-shutter skew
- Three methods of stabilization: vibration and shake eliminated
- Adjustable camera height: 10 inches to 10 feet in seconds, matched to the picture vehicle
- Same-day dailies: uploaded for client clip selection and approvals
- Stage-ready delivery: processing often complete by the next day
- Rapid global deployment: a small team, anywhere
- A growing plate library: a wide range of environments and times of day
Stitchless driving plates: no seams, warps or stacked flares
Traditional driving plates usually come from multi-camera arrays that need upwards of a dozen cameras to cover a 360° perspective. A dozen cameras produce a dozen files that have to be downloaded, transcoded, colored and stitched into one large playback clip. Every camera, file, processing step and stitch costs time and money, and the stitching itself is never perfect.
Differences in taking perspective cause parallax and warping, and a dozen lenses can introduce a dozen lens flares. Multiple flares can make the final stitch unusable as a car process background.
Synapse's driving plate process captures the full driving environment without stitch artifacts: no warps, no visible transition lines, no flares stacked across different cameras' perspectives. Because the plate is stitchless and mapped to the geometry of the LED volume, reflections track seamlessly across the car and windshield, and the chrome, glass and paint are wrapped in the dynamic tones and motion they would get driving on a real location.
Why next-day plate delivery matters
Plates captured correctly from the start mean production doesn't slow down for the process. Because the workflow is optimized for two cameras rather than a large multi-camera array, we can capture, process and have dailies up for client selection the same or next day, and our plates are often running on the LED wall the following day.
Our plate capture team and vehicle can shoot alongside main production or operate as a self-contained unit with its own vehicle, driver, operator, permits and crew. The system can deploy anywhere in the world with a small team, using local vendors for the base vehicle and standard rigging hardware.