Virtual production techniques and technologies are rapidly shaping the future of filmmaking. Here’s what you need to know.

VFX house Pixomondo turns to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine for virtual production for the fourth season of “Star Trek: Discovery.”

From sports coverage to the lecture hall, new options abound.

“Our Flag Means Death” employed a massive 30 by 160-foot LED wall for virtual production of the HBO Max pirate series set on the high seas.

“1899” is revealed to be the first production at Netflix’s Dark Bay, a new Volume stage built at Studio Babelsberg in Berlin.

ILM creates “ABBAtars” for the members of the legendary Swedish band ABBA, taking them back to 1979 for a virtual concert tour.

There’s nothing to fear in moving beyond “the old way.” The technology is here today for a successful reinvention of live sports production.

Virtual production technologies such as ILM’s StageCraft system leverage Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to display CG environments in real time.

“Once we stop looking at moving current production technologies and workflows to the cloud and instead ask how we reinvent live production it totally transforms how we cover events.”

Bobbitt collaborated with director Shaka King for an unconventional biopic of Black Panther Fred Hampton: “We wanted it to feel like a film that might have been made in the 1960s. From that comes the composition and movement of the cameras.”

Virtual production is one sector which actually has been helped by pandemic restrictions. Crews can work more safely on a virtual stage and the costs of location shooting are saved. The technology is expensive up front, but as producers become used to the changes to workflow, cost and production time should come down.

Felix & Paul Studios bring VR production into orbit for their pioneering four-part immersive series “Space Explorers: The ISS Experience.”