VIRTUAL AVIATOR

Traditional LED virtual production in filmmaking, primarily designed to provide filmmakers with an effective way of blending real-world and digital content in real-time, has focused primarily on generating content for film productions. This project investigated the application of this technology to produce social media content leveraging the personal mobile phones of visitors for content creation, thus expanding the ambit of virtual production beyond its conventional borders.

Virtual Production, traditionally associated with large-scale studios and professional actors, creates vivid and often fantastical environments. Leveraging a co-design process with industry experts, we devised a simplified, user-friendly Virtual Production process. This allowed untrained visitors to enact a flying experience, directed by a crew member, with their performance captured on a separate screen, thus creating a believable illusion of them piloting an aircraft. The project demonstrated a new potential of smartphone filmmaking for community engagement, creative transformation, and transmedia storytelling.

The Avalon Airshow 2023, received over 248,000 visitors across the six days and facilitated significant exposure of this piloting research in virtual production for social media content generation.