The Helicopter Heist has been the biggest virtual production challenge I have been involved in. Trying to tie 3 sets and one location to a one take episode using LED screens was both fun and difficult.

We pulled it off by starting with detailed previz with the help of the teams at Copenhagen Rig and our VP partner FilmGeXR. Director Daniel Espinoza and DOP Juan Sarimiento embraced the new technology and under supervision of Peter Hjorth we found the places to make the invisible cuts while also deciding for the best VP screen coverage possible. This resulted in a massive 65x7m LED screen build surrounding our roof top set built in Budapest, plus a large horizontal screen giving us the possibility to look down into the 5 storey atrium.

The VFX team at Hitch VFX supplied the large background stitch for the rooftop view and ran the Unreal Engine setup for the atrium. Hitch also carried out all VFX on the episode to make all cuts invisible, an incredible job that set a new standard for ontake scenes.

After the rooftop shoot we reconfigurated the LED screen for a helicopter setup to complete the shoot of the scene.

We got very good help from Storyline, Copenhagen VFX and Surpreeze to be able to finalize the overall VFX tasks in time for the series.

Netflix did a really nice behind the scenes video, explaining a lot of our challenges and decisions during the production. Watch a snippet here and the full 30min on the platform.