Edward Hanrahan is the director of virtual production at William F White International, and a seasoned visual effects leader, with over a decade of experience working with dedicated visual effects teams on high-budget productions including The Shape of Water and The Mandalorian. In 2017, Hanrahan joined WFW’s partners at PXO to act as virtual production designer, where he worked on shows like Star Trek: Discovery and spearheaded content including demos, interviews, and other reels to educate clients about the features and benefits of virtual production.
Most recently, Hanrahan worked at Scanline VFX as global virtual production manager and technical director, where he built the company’s virtual production team, while designing workflows to integrate alongside traditional visual effects
In Live Design’s online visual design webcast sponsored by ROE on July 21, 2022 (11am-2pm eastern), Hanrahan takes a deep dive into the many technologies needed to build and operate an LED volume, including what to look for in your hardware choices and why. Live Design had the opportunity to chat with him about virtual production.
Live Design: What was your career path to where you are today, in a nutshell?
Edward Hanrahan: I attended Vancouver Film School almost 20 years ago, and have moved between animation, compositing and production until I started focusing on Real-time and virtual production about seven years ago.
LD: How did you swerve into virtual production?
EH: I was trying to render my own projects at home without a render farm...that led me to Unreal Engine, I managed to convince our head of Studio to give me a small RnD team. When we were invited to work on The Mandalorian, we saw the potential for virtual production right away.
LD: What does a director of virtual production job entail exactly?
EH: I focus on production needs and education mostly. Speaking with productions to help them understand VProd, and if it's the right tool for their project. This ties into business development as I hear first-hand what clients NEED and where they need it...so I can try and develop new solutions for those requests.
LD: How do you work to marry art and technology?
EH: The content has to look great, or there isn't any point in VProd...the tools we use to create content hadn't changed in many years...until recently LiDAR and photogrammetry were not as prevalent. With the new tools coming out, getting photo-real results faster has become common...which helps productions hit the new timelines/schedules needed for VProd.
LD: What are the motion capture systems you work with?
EH: Our stages use Vicon or Optitrack...when we started it was NCam, and I've setup stages with Captury Markerless systems...and even Vive. Learning the basics can be done on any system, some systems are very expensive, but the concepts are the same.
LD: How do you employ LED volume solutions for virtual production on set?
EH: We have three LED volumes across Canada; two are used on top-tier mega-productions that have the time and budgets to push the envelope. Our commercial stage is more accessible to projects that want to get involved with VProd, but maybe don't need it for every single scene...it allows people to "dip their toes."
LD: What makes successful VR productions appealing to the audience?
EH: Well, if we do it right the audience won't know we've done anything at all! The best we can hope for is the audience finds the story and look of the production engaging.
LD: What's next in VR technology and beyond?
EH: First we need to get the industry up to speed with where we're at! lots of new features and tech is coming, but the fundamental adoption of the VProd process needs to be woven into film production...the primary focus is on adapting production schedules, focusing more on prep and less on post.