What Virtual Production Taught Me About Technology and Human Craft

07 Sep 2026

6 Min Read

Yusuke Kakizawa (Student Writer)

IN THIS ARTICLE

As someone who works with video production regularly, I already knew the basic idea of virtual production before stepping onto the set. Even so, I was sceptical. How realistic could footage combining live action with a three-dimensional environment look, and would it be convincing enough for a real project?

For this project, I worked in a green-screen virtual-production studio at the VORTEX Lab at Taylor’s University. Once filming began, I could see the live subject and virtual background together on a monitor. That first combined image changed my question. Instead of wondering only whether the result could look real, I started thinking about what we needed to adjust to make it feel real. The technology made the result visible sooner, but it did not make the work automatic. Lighting still required the most careful adjustment.

A multiview monitor showing the green-screen preview beside the composited programme output of a presenter in a virtual outdoor scene

Seeing the Composite Changed My Expectations

The part that excited me most was the live compositing workflow using Unreal Engine and Reality Hub. During filming, we could see a combined image on the monitor rather than waiting until a later edit to judge how the subject and the digital environment worked together.

That visibility gave us something concrete to respond to. When the position of a person and a three-dimensional object conflicted, we could see the problem and discuss an adjustment while we were still on set. It made the process feel less like guessing what might work later and more like shaping the image together in the moment.

I was familiar with filming in a studio, including choices around camera position and directing performers. The control room was much less familiar. The assets, data and node-based systems on screen looked different from the production tools I usually encountered in Digital Media Production classes. At first, I could not follow everything the 3D contributors were doing. Seeing the composite helped to give both sides of the team a shared reference point.

Real-Time Choices Expanded the Set

The flexibility of the virtual environment became clearer during testing. We experimented with repositioning subjects and 3D objects, placing presentation slides within the digital space and fine-tuning the virtual lighting. Because we could review the combined image as we worked, we could assess some changes during production instead of discovering every issue afterwards.

The backgrounds included settings such as outer space and a cyberpunk city. Compared with organising an outdoor shoot around a physical location and changing weather, working with prepared digital assets gave us greater control over the environment we were trying to create. It did not remove planning, equipment choices or lighting work; it changed where some of those decisions happened and made certain creative options easier to test.

This was the point at which virtual production stopped feeling to me like a tool used only to make editing easier. It offered another way to develop the visual world of a project. The possibility was not simply that we could change more things, but that we could see some of those choices together and decide whether they supported the story.

A Convincing Image Still Depended on Craft

The most time-consuming part of my experience was adjusting the physical lights so that the subject and the virtual background belonged in the same image. If the direction, colour or intensity of the light on the person did not match the digital scene, the gap between the two became obvious. Real-time viewing made that mismatch easier to notice, but a person still had to judge what looked wrong and decide how to correct it.

The same relationship between technology and existing craft appeared when the team adjusted the virtual camera. I took part in a discussion about camera angle, focal length and frame size, using terms that felt familiar from working with physical cameras. That meant the production students could bring their camera and lens knowledge into the conversation. We could suggest that an angle felt more natural or that a different focal length or frame size might help the subject blend more convincingly with the background.

I had originally expected the unfamiliar technology to create a barrier. Instead, the camera knowledge we already had became a way into the process. The tools were different, but decisions about perspective, focus, framing and realism still needed production judgement. For me, this was one of the clearest lessons from the set: new technology can expand what a team can do without making established craft irrelevant.

A crew member in the control room pointing at a multiview monitor showing the green-screen preview alongside the composited virtual set

Collaboration Changed How I Think About Technology

Working alongside people with different specialisms became the most valuable part of the experience. In the studio, the filming process felt familiar to the Digital Media Production students. In the control room, the 3D systems initially felt like a different world. The project became easier to understand as we kept talking, comparing what each group could see and applying our different skills to the same image.

That exchange also affected the storytelling. As I remember it, the script was read and adjusted several times on set after we saw the combined footage and heard how the lines were delivered. I could see that the live image gave the team new information to respond to. Rather than treating the first plan as untouchable, people could discuss whether a change would communicate the intended message more clearly.

The activity also made me think more broadly about AI and automated media tools. Generative AI was not part of the shooting workflow, although ChatGPT was used in a limited way to rephrase parts of the script. My wider reflection is about what can be lost when efficiency becomes the only goal. On this set, people brought different skills, ideas and judgements to the same production. We could disagree, notice an unexpected problem or make a creative adjustment that was not in the first plan. Communication was not an obstacle to the technology; it was how we made use of what the technology showed us.

The experience reminded me that media creators cannot remain inside one narrow role. We should be proud of our own skills without being limited by them. Learning how another field works can widen our view of our own work and help us recognise what we can contribute. We should neither trust every new technology blindly nor reject it because it is unfamiliar.

This project sparked my curiosity enough that I set up a workstation at home to continue researching and experimenting with virtual production. I now see the value of these tools less as a way to remove people from production and more as a way to give people from different fields a shared image around which they can make better decisions. For me, the future of storytelling depends on combining technology with camera craft, communication and the human judgement to know what the story needs.

If Yusuke’s experience has made you curious about how camera craft, storytelling and digital production come together, explore Taylor’s Bachelor of Mass Communication (Honours) (Digital Media Production) programme and the wider filmmaking and content-creation skills it covers.

LEARN MORE ABOUT DIGITAL MEDIA PRODUCTION

Yusuke Kakizawa is a Bachelor of Mass Communication (Honours) (Digital Media Production) student at Taylor’s University.

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