Watch Episode 4 of Our Podcast:
LED Walls and AI
Our Philosophy and Approach
When it comes to movies and commercials, most of us have heard the phrase “low-budget,” and know it’s generally considered something no filmmaker or agency aims for. Some of us grew up with those local commercials we love to cringe at, because some of them are the epitome of that phrase. Our view is that it doesn’t have to be like that, even if there isn’t a big budget behind a project. The essence of our approach at Grey Sky Films is to always have the highest bar for quality. Whether we’re filming a commercial or internal corporate video, our mindset and our standard is what people generally call “Hollywood level.” For us, every video deserves to come out looking polished & professional, and telling the story in a meaningful and effective way.
Our overarching perspective on delivering quality—and you’ll hear us say this a lot—is that a great production stems from great pre-production. For every project, we go through a thorough discovery and planning process to make sure we’re ready on shoot day, and are able to pivot when unforeseen eventualities arise. We ask a lot of questions to ensure we truly have a full grasp of the vision, and then we brainstorm on various ways we can realize that vision within the client’s budget.
The technology & equipment available to us is often key in closing the gap between vision and reality. And our use of the best tech is instrumental in enabling us to realize bigger and more ambitious dreams for our clients. This is one reason we put so much energy into cutting-edge technology and how we use it. Our tech focus is also fueled by our passion for what we do. Our team members are deeply invested in their specific craft, and for some of the crew, tech is completely intertwined with their jobs—so we’re always on the lookout for the latest film-related tech developments.
Throughout August, we’ve been talking about developments in filmmaking technologies and how ongoing innovation continues to impact how we work. What was available to us and our clients 10, 15, or 25 years ago is light years from what’s accessible today. Over the years, we’ve seen equipment shrink in size, while software and other technology has grown exponentially. In many ways it’s helped us to dramatically expand what we can offer and deliver, moving us closer and closer to delivering corporate and commercial videos at Hollywood standards.
Everything needs to strike the right balance, though. So, while we deeply understand and appreciate the value of technology in continuously leveling up our capabilities, we don’t indiscriminately leverage tech just because it exists. And we never use technology to replace the artistry and decision-making of humans. We stay educated on what’s out there, make informed, intentional investments into the latest & greatest, and use the appropriate tech for any given project. When we’re in pre-production, a significant part of the process is figuring out the right tools for the job. We always consider precisely what we’re there to accomplish for our client and what the project needs, and ask: is this tool going to help, hurt, enhance – or is it just not necessary?
Staying Ahead of the Curve
Innovations in film technology have continuously brought us closer and closer to Hollywood-level quality, enabling us and our clients to dream bigger.
Tech Enablement in Automotive Video Production
We create videos for a wide variety of businesses, brands, and subject matter. One of the areas we get really excited about is learning & development, and we’ve had the opportunity to work on relevant projects in complex sectors like regulated industries. Regardless of which company or industry we make L&D videos for, they need to be informative and engaging. It’s not enough to just throw information on the screen, or simply film someone talking at the camera. So we put a lot of thought and creativity into producing videos that are visually appealing and hold the audience’s attention while achieving their educational goals.
The most action-packed learning & development work we’ve been doing in L&D is for a global automotive brand you’ve certainly heard of. And of all the sectors we’ve worked in, automotive is the one that’s benefited most from ongoing revolutions in tech. Our learning & development projects for automotive cover a big range of purposes and topics, but a good deal is focused on training employees on the cars, their features & capabilities. Traditionally, this means a lot of on-location driving scenes, and historically, these have been complex and challenging. This is where new tech has a major impact.
If you think of any car commercial you’ve seen over the years, you’ll likely recall a vehicle whizzing around a hairpin turn in some dramatic location, or driving through an urban environment as the city lights fly by. In the past–whether a driving scene in a movie or a car commercial– these types of shots would have required big, heavy rigs of cameras, lights, stabilizers, and a good number of people. The old setup traditionally involved the car in question being loaded onto a flatbed truck or other type of trailer, while the film crew would be behind it in a “follow car.” The trailer actually did all the driving, and the cinematographers would need to hold large cameras out the follow car’s windows and film the subject car. Through camera magic and editing, it would look to the viewer as though the car in focus was actually being driven.
Innovation in Camera Rigs for Auto
Rigs for shooting moving car scenes have come a long way, and now provide usability and safety that were previously unavailable. Today, we have cutting-edge tools like the DJI Ronin 4D and the Tilta Hydra Alien Arm Mounting System. The Ronin is a very advanced cinema camera with incredible stabilization built in. If you imagine riding in a car and trying to capture video of something outside, we’re sure you can imagine that video coming out blurry, due the car’s motion and bouncing along the road. Someone using the Ronin 4D in a moving vehicle can film driving scenes that in reality involve tons of bouncing and instability, but that the camera captures flawlessly and smoothly. This not only ensures we get the best footage, it can also significantly reduce post-production efforts by limiting the need for corrections.
The Tilta Alien Arm system provides safety and flexibility that simply didn’t exist years ago by allowing cinematographers to film without even opening a car window. It’s basically a stabilized camera mounting system that uses very strong suction cups to stick to whatever it’s placed on. While the Alien Arm sturdily supports the camera mounted to the outside of the follow car, the person filming controls everything from inside the car, watching all the action on a mobile device screen and using a thumbstick to control the pan & tilt of the stabilizer. This gives us the ability to get angles and types of shots that would otherwise involve a certain level of gymnastics. We use the Alien Arm to get cool action shots, like the ones where we’re driving toward the subject and getting footage of it as it whizzes by. For any instructional video or commercial in the automotive world, it’s also important to show vehicles in different environments. The Alien Arm is a robust piece of equipment that makes it much easier to capture the variety of contexts we like to capture: a highway, city streets, backroads, and the track to show it going from 0 to 60.
Another cool tool we use for driving scenes is the GoPro, which a lot of people are familiar with because it’s used so widely these days. Our team uses them as action cameras inside moving subject cars. They’re suctioned to the windshield and windows securely so that while the car is being driven, the GoPros are getting shots of the talent as they’re driving and/or talking. They also give us the ability to capture great footage of any talent that’s in the backseat, as well as the environment and motion behind the vehicle. Additionally, we use GoPros on the outside of the car to capture shots of what the car & driver are seeing as they move along the road.
To fully round out our cornucopia of cameras, we of course use drones. Grey Sky leverages drones broadly, and in the automotive context, they’re great for car comparison videos. For these, we get overhead drone shots of cars flying down a track to showcase how a car performs and compares to another vehicle. With all these different ways of getting footage, by the end of a typical driving shoot, we have a wealth to choose from and combine in a compelling way.
Lighting Evolutions
Lights have also come a long way since Grey Sky Films got its start. This is an area our team spends a lot of time and attention on, because it is such a critical aspect of creating a professional, high-quality production. If you get it wrong, a lot of material and time can go out the window, and getting it right really is an art in & of itself. Lights used to be big, heavy, and hot (which generally did not make actors happy). With the advent of LED and its widespread usage, lighting is much smaller, lighter, cooler, and more energy efficient. In addition, the LED lights we use can be controlled from an iPad. For comparison: with the old lighting rigs, if we wanted to mimic the sun, we needed a specific light and a generator. But today, we can change the hue & brightness with just a tap, or even have the LEDs mimic the sun, a cop car, fire, TV, or candle. This saves a ton of time while also adding more Hollywood-level polish to our productions.
Filming Outdoors Where Nature Rules
Even with all these gadgets and advancements, filming car videos outdoors can have its challenges, and the elements still call the shots. Here are some of the considerations for any outdoor driving scenes we shoot:
- The cost of getting the whole crew to the location
- Permits and other facets of filming in any desired location
- The size of the rigs used to capture the shots
- The weather, the moving sun changing the lighting, and other aspects of the outdoors
- Other moving traffic, pedestrians, and bicyclists
From the Real World & Backdrops to Realistic Immersive Spaces
So, what happens if a client wants a car or driving video, but doesn’t have the budget or desire to do a big outdoor shoot? Not so long ago, there weren’t many options. Today, however, the game has changed dramatically, for Hollywood as well as for video production agencies like Grey Sky. While we have a host of tech inventions to thank for the relative ease of filming complex shots these days, there’s one in particular that has done more to help realize bigger visions than almost any other development: LED walls. This technology allows us to film scenes that look like they’re outdoors—or anywhere, really—all from inside a studio.
So, what is an LED wall? Let’s start with some groundwork using a familiar example: the weather man or woman. You know how when you’re watching the weather report, he or she is vaguely gesticulating toward something behind them, but it usually doesn’t quite line up, and they don’t look like a part of the background? That’s because they’re using a green screen, which is a canvas or fabric background that’s a very specific shade of green. This particular color can easily be selected, removed, and replaced during the editing process, which is why it’s used. Filmmakers use these backdrops as an easy and affordable way to take video of a subject in front of it, and then add any background scenery they want during post-production. This method is completely acceptable for the weather report, where viewers know the reporter isn’t actually hovering in space over a map, but it doesn’t always work for complex setups and scenes.
This is where LED walls come in. Hollywood has been using LED Walls for a long time to film driving scenes and in other contexts that require a lot of motion and highly-detailed backgrounds. In fact, they’ve been around in some form for about 40 years, though they’ve only become realistically accessible to smaller filmmakers more recently. These walls are made up of what are essentially 1’ x 1’ TV panels that snap together like Legos, and they project like a TV does, rendering whatever image is supposed to come through. Unlike a green screen, they project imagery in real time, so there’s no need to splice the background in behind the subject of the film later.
The scenery projected by any given LED wall is pivotal in achieving the desired effect. To create 3D environments that look and feel real, they’re often designed using software like Unreal Engine, which is used heavily in video game production. In other cases, pre-recorded footage from the real world is used. Once the imagery is loaded and the necessary number of panels are conjoined, they project one seamless image that can be manipulated and moved around, simulating realistic motion through the space. With this technology, we can turn any studio into an immersive world of any kind, and its highly configurable nature gives film crews virtually endless possibilities for size and exact setup. LED walls can even provide a ceiling to mimic the movement of people and objects through the environment (for instance the reflection of the street a car is driving on). Its only real limitations are the size of the studio and the imagery one can find or make to suit their needs. What all this means is that we can now film a movie-theater-worthy driving scene indoors.
Programming these walls is a whole other art, and one of the best aspects of working with LED walls is the related jobs they’ve created. When we go to a studio that has LED walls, or we rent the walls from a supplier, they come with a team of technicians. These computer and visual effects experts come to the studio, set up the walls, and work with the Director of Photography throughout the shoot. While filming, our DP and team provide direction, and the tech team can make changes on the fly and control the environmental background by programming the walls real-time.
One thing that hasn’t changed in the face of all these tech innovations is the need for great set design and props, because no matter how amazing your background is, it’s what’s in the foreground that “sells” the scene’s realness. In fact, Grey Sky Films likes to look at LED walls as the secondary facet of the set, while the practical objects (props) and people are primary. What’s on the floor, as well as objects the talent interacts with, complete the scene, stitching things together so they feel cohesive and natural. Let’s say for example we’re making an automotive video that features a camping scene. If the wall is projecting mountains in the background, someone has to build the forest floor with real life objects like rocks, dirt, and branches, and they have to make sure it blends in with the environment. The set designer has to bring in tents, coolers, and other realistic scene-setting objects.
With green screens there’s also it can be much more challenging to know ahead of time what props and people are going to look like once the final background is added during post-production. Will the lighting work well? Will that chair look like it’s really in the scene? Will the floor blend in with the background scenery? Sometimes clients have chosen a background in advance and the team can test things out while filming, but with LED walls, there’s more reliable real-time information that different departments can use to make snap decisions for improvement. Set designers can switch out a chair, or the wall techs can change the colorization of the background to better match the floor and practical objects. While this may add time during live production, it can amount to significant reductions in post-production costs brought on by efforts to fix whatever didn’t go quite right when filming. There’s also the added benefit of giving actors a lifelike environment to interact with, offering more inspiration than a blank wall or green screen.
As with any technology, LED walls aren’t the best thing for all things, so we use them when they make the most sense, and are most appropriate for a project and its goals. Sometimes there’s nothing like physically being in a place for certain projects. If you’re trying to capture something with raw emotion, like – let’s say – a romance film, the right location can mean everything. Filming in Paris (for example) will not only feel more real to the audience from a visual perspective, it can also bring the production to life by inspiring the crew and the actors with its sights, smells, and sounds. For a 30 second automotive spot where we’re showing off a car and its features (and not necessarily trying to show the details of its driving performance), an LED wall provides a compelling environment to enhance the appeal of the video at a lower cost. But for a full-length film, or a project where the location is absolutely critical to the story (like our Real Talk spots for Don Juan Marcona Almonds), you really need to be there.
Let’s Talk About AI
With something as world-changing as AI, we feel it’s important to talk about it, how we feel about it, how we use it, and how we don’t use it. We believe in open communication and illustrating how we use any technology to create best-in-class videos that meet our clients’ needs while helping them dream bigger. After all, AI isn’t going away, so we’ve taken time at this critical juncture to think and talk about these new developments and our philosophy about using them. Before diving in, we want to clarify how we use the term “artificial intelligence,” because we’ve seen it thrown around to refer to things that are really just…automation. We use the term “AI” in the strictest sense, meaning that there’s a clear distinction between technology-enabled automations and shortcuts, and actual artificial intelligence that interacts and “decides” more like a person might.
Grey Sky Films doesn’t shy away from AI. In fact, we understand the importance of learning about and embracing it, or any new technology, early on. As early adopters, we’ve ensured we don’t get left behind. (History shows what happens to those who turn away from innovations that help their craft, especially when the rest of the world is already accepting the sea change.) True to Grey Sky form, though, we keep this—like anything else we do—in balance. We combine our generally welcoming attitude toward new technology with a dedication to using it mindfully, ethically, and responsibly. In our view, AI is a tool, and like any other tool, it’s there to streamline and enhance, but never to replace humans or true creativity.
Our usage of AI is focused mostly on post-production, and we only use it to handle time-sinking tasks, so the team can focus on what they do best. Here are some examples:
- We’ll use AI to speed up our process by using it for tasks like organizing footage, syncing audio, and cleaning up audio interference.
- Autotranscription is another powerful application of AI, saving us hours upon hours of listening, typing, listening, and typing, or paying a transcriptionist.
- It can help with color grading, though a technician still needs to “drive” the process and adjust things.
- AI is also good for mock voiceovers. While we always hire and record human voice actors for the final voiceovers, we need to share early cuts with our clients while we work on post-production. Before we could leverage AI for this, we’d do things like voice it over ourselves using a phone, which isn’t the best quality audio. AI may not get things like proper names right, but it speeds up the process by saving us the time of voicing over the video ourselves while we wait to have time to sync the final audio to the final cut of the video.
AI can be powerful in pre-production too, for example, in speeding up tasks like organizing a script into shooting locations, or through prompting an AI to generate storyboards. Not every creative director is a great sketch artist, so AI can help save some of the time & effort involved in sketching out concepts that successfully get the point across, especially when a client has a tight timeline. The concepts and the creative thinking still comes from a human, but the execution can quickly be done by AI in some cases.
Although AI has some decision-making capabilities, it doesn’t possess the kind that people do. This technology, above all others, requires oversight and governance. So, no matter how or where we use AI, humans are there making the decisions and putting rules around its implementation. One simple example is when we’re reformatting a 16×9 video for vertical video (9×16). Video editing programs like Premiere have an automated feature that “tracks” the subject, to keep what needs to be in the frame in focus at all times, but it’s often wrong and needs to be adjusted manually. auto resize We need people to double check everything AI does, especially because it doesn’t always get the assigned task right. Sometimes during transcription, it can misinterpret what it “heard” and will often mispronounce things like proper names. Most importantly, we need people at the helm with the type of insight only humans can have, like a deep understanding of the client’s needs, or the ability to judge the caliber of a performance or piece of footage.
We look at AI as an efficient, yet flawed, knowledge management & graphics assistant. It’s mostly very good at knowing where things are, putting them in order, and pointing them out for us. It can help us with organizing our thoughts in a concise manner, but it can’t be us; and it’s not a creator, a thinker, or a true practitioner of anything.
The Right Tech for the Right Job
We don't use tech just for the sake of tech. Instead, we select the appropriate tools for a project, based on the budget, timeline, vision, and other factors.
FAQ: LED Walls, AI, and Modern Video Production
What is an LED wall in video production?
An LED wall is a group of LED panels that lock together and act as one large screen. It can display a digital environment on set so the camera, lighting, and talent are responding to a real image instead of a green screen.
Are LED walls better than green screen?
They are better for some projects, not all of them. LED walls can improve lighting, reflections, and performance because the environment is visible live. Green screen can still be the right choice when the background needs more flexibility in post or the wall cannot cover the required angles.
When should a brand use an LED wall instead of shooting on location?
An LED wall makes sense when travel, weather, permits, talent schedules, or multiple location changes would slow the production down. A real location is still better when the place itself is part of the story and the budget allows the team to be there.
Does AI replace video editors or production crews?
No. AI can organize footage, transcribe interviews, clean audio, resize frames, and speed up some first-pass work. Editors, directors, cinematographers, and producers still make the creative and technical decisions that determine whether the video works.
Where does AI actually save time in video production?
The most reliable time savings are in pre-production and post-production: storyboards, transcripts, media organization, audio cleanup, rough resizing, and baseline color matching. It is much less reliable as a way to generate an entire brand video from a prompt.
Why can’t a company just generate its video with AI?
Fully generated video still struggles with consistency, performance, brand voice, and the small human details audiences notice. It can also become expensive as prompts are revised. For most companies, people and product still need to be real.
How should clients think about new production technology?
Treat every new tool as an option, not a requirement. Ask whether it helps the story, the schedule, the budget, and the final quality. If it does not, the traditional approach is still the smarter one.
How does Grey Sky Films use tools like LED walls and AI?
Grey Sky Films uses new production tools where they support the work, not where they replace the craft. The team still leads with planning, storytelling, and experienced execution. You can explore our services, view our work, read our case studies, or request a quote to start a project.
