The Volume: how a huge LED cylinder is dispensing with location shoots
Movie locations have a certain romance, said Stephen Armstrong in The Daily Telegraph. At Surbiton station on my way into work in London, the wait for the train is lent an “unexpected glamour” by the knowledge that one of its waiting rooms was once used in a Harry Potter film. But it’s likely that the whole business of filming on location will soon become a thing of the past, thanks to “the Volume,” a hi-tech successor to the green screen that is becoming “a fixture at every major studio”.
A vast, two-storey-high cylinder lined with LED panels, the Volume plants actors “inside a 21st-century version of a Greek cyclorama”. Rather than travel to far-flung locations, or build elaborate sets, directors can use computer-generated images to “paint” the walls of the cylinder with fabricated worlds, which the actors react to in real time. Ewan McGregor, who filmed Obi-Wan Kenobi in a Volume, has likened it to the early days of Hollywood, when actors moved between three-sided sets on a lot. You can do all the scenes in one place, then drive home after a day’s filming.
Not all film-makers will get on board, of course. Tom Cruise, for instance, famously insists on doing real-life stunts, and refuses to use green screen; and for his Second World War epic Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan eschewed CGI, and instead used real boats, including
11 of the “little ships” that had taken part in the evacuation itself. For movies to be great, they have to be a “little bit fake, but it’s the reality that makes them magical”.