The advantages of virtual production and Blackmagic shape 'Molli and Max in the Future'

The production company The Family (Brooklyn, New York) decided to rely on several solutions for Blackmagic and virtual production techniques for the making of the sci-fi romantic comedy 'Molli and Max in the Future', which recently premiered at the SXSW Film and Television Festival.

The feature film, starring Zosia Mamet and Aristotle Athari, tells the story of a man and a woman whose orbits constantly collide over 12 years, four planets, three dimensions and a sect in space. The creative director of The Family, Steve Dabal, led the virtual production of the feature film when it came to developing the environment of a romance with integrity in a fictional world, for which he worked closely with the director Michael Lukk Litwak and the head of photography and visual effects supervisor Zach Stoltzfus. According to Dabal himself, it was the "virtual production and virtual art department" that "allowed the team to concentrate on the look of the environments and make sure they were suitable for the characters." To tackle the project, all the landscapes and backdrops were generated before filming, so that all the processes on set could be streamlined.

Equipped with DaVinci Resolve Studio, production company The Family achieved a distinctive look and feel in real time on set. "We tried to achieve the final aesthetic by using the visual effects integrated into the cameras, in order to minimize the amount of visual effects required in post-production. A lot of the sequences were in 2D format, which are much less versatile than the 3D backgrounds in Unreal Engine. To ensure that the color matched, we saved the LOG records of the audiovisual surface and then created a LUT in DaVinci Resolve Studio that we could apply to the images, and then adjusted the intensity of the LUT in the studio to achieve the final look," explains Dabal.

Other key equipment for the production of Molli and Max in the Future They were the mixer ATEM Mini, a capture and playback card DeckLink 8K Pro and a monitor SmartScope Duo.

URSA Mini Pro 4.6K and 4.6K G2

The Family team also used cameras Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 4.6K and Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 during a whole year of extensive testing, which helped shape the unique aesthetic of Molli and Max in the Future. Dabal elaborates: "We set up a small stage with an audio-visual surface in Brooklyn, which Michael and Zach visited numerous times throughout the year of preparations. We uploaded content so they could research and tweak the look of the film and test chromatic nuances and different focal lengths to use 2D miniatures as compelling background sequences and define the aesthetics outside the spaceships. For the scenes in Unreal Engine, we created concept sketches that we then replaced with retouched ones, so that on the day of filming Michael, Zach and Gaffer Jesse Moritz would have already seen the visual effects integrated."

The URSA Mini Pro cameras remained on stage throughout the test. Thanks to the accessibility of its interface, anyone who was part of the research and development team could retouch them in order to study how the different light sources would look in relation to how they looked on the audiovisual surface.

There were a few days when Litwak couldn't be on stage, as he was busy with costume issues, so the production company streamed the URSA Mini Pro 4.6K footage with the visual effects integrated through Zoom, using a mixer ATEM Mini. This gave Litwak the opportunity to comment and give his opinion on aesthetics, even from a distance.

All these processes made it possible, in the end, to shape a film with a particular essence that opens the doors to a universe of possibilities for the team of The Family: "Our goal is to work closely with our filmmakers, in order to help their vision and personal style come to life, and Molli and Max in the Future it is the quintessential example of this. Our Blackmagic Design team-based work system gave us the flexibility and breadth to make this amazing universe a reality. I am proud to have worked hand in hand with a cast and a team that placed their trust in us to be part of this project," concludes Dabal.

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