[mitchelhall]

Hi all, really cool that you have taken an interest in this project, a lot of your comments below are very insightful and interesting. I work on the team that deploys this tech on set. We focus on how the video signals get from the video output servers to the LED surfaces, coordinating how we deal with tracking methods, photogrammetry, signal delivery, operator controls and the infrastructure that supports all of this. As noted in some of the comments, the VFX industry solved tracking with mocap suits a long time ago for the post-production process. What we are exploring now is how we can leverage new technology, hardware, and workflows to move some of the post-production processes into the pre-production and production (main/secondary unit photography) stages.

If you are interested in checking out another LED volume setup, my team also worked on First Man last year. This clip shows a little more of how we assemble these LED surfaces as well as a bit of how we use custom integrations to interface with mechanical automation systems. [https://vimeo.com/309382367]

[kragen]

Thanks! This work is really inspiring! Are these OLED screens, matrices of separate LEDs of the usual InGaAs and GaN type, or LCDs backlit with LEDs? The 2.84 mm pixel pitch makes it sound like it's separate inorganic LEDs.

Are there times short of sunshine where you need more directionality to the lighting than the screens can provide? Because the screens can emit from any direction but not toward any direction, being quasi-Lambertian emitters.

[marcan_42]

Discrete LED screens go all the way down to 2mm or even 1.9mm pitch (I have a few 2mm tiles at home). These are certainly discrete LED panels, not OLEDs. I'm not aware of OLEDs being used in "wall" applications like this.

When you hear LED walls, think millions of discrete LEDs mounted on PCBs (and thank China for making this low cost enough to be viable!)

[jweather]

LED video walls are down in the 0.7mm dot pitch vicinity. Not quite the ~0.3mm of a 4K 55" LCD, but we're getting there. And the brightness and contrast ratio can't be beat.

[kragen]

In this case, 106 168 320 discrete LEDs, if we assume RGB and believe the 12288×2160 + 4096×2160 figure in the article; or 35 389 440 discrete LEDs if we count each (presumably RGB) pixel as a single unit, or if they're using a Bayer-pattern screen like PenTile AMOLEDs.

[canada_dry]

> low cost enough

The article doesn't mention cost, but I'm expecting it was in the $5-10M range. Anyone have actual figures for this type of hi-res, hi-lumen hi-refresh LED screen?

[m3at]

Great work! It must be a tremendously interesting job.

You might be able to answer my question which is: why use exclusively LED and no projector? I imagine that it's mainly because it's too dim and the main goal is to get good reflections. Is that something that was considered?

(I'm wondering as I found the work of teamLab very impressive, which rely heavily on projectors: https://www.teamlab.art/)

[akiselev]

How fast are the refresh rates on projector lighting? A really cheap consumer LED can get anywhere from a few hundred Hz to tens of kHz depending on the LED and connection topology, enough to synchronize with high speed cameras with short exposure times and other equipment.

[devindotcom]

Would love to talk to you! Are you at ILM or a partner like Fuse or ROE? You can contact me at devin at techcrunch dot com, I'm working on more pieces on this tech.

[werber]

That article is mindblowing, how do the tech side and the creative side work together on this kind of a project? How much does the technology shape the story telling?