When The Mandalorian debuted in 2019, it wasn’t just Baby Yoda that made jaws drop. It was the massive LED volume stage behind him—the kind of setup […]

When The Mandalorian debuted in 2019, it wasn’t just Baby Yoda that made jaws drop. It was the massive LED volume stage behind him—the kind of setup that let filmmakers build entire galaxies inside a soundstage. Fast-forward to today, and that futuristic pipeline isn’t a novelty anymore. It’s becoming industry standard.

But the real story? It’s not just Disney-sized studios reaping the benefits. Virtual production has evolved—grown smarter, more flexible, more indie-accessible. And at the center of this shift is a cavernous LED stage in Vancouver, run by Versatile Media, where directors now conjure ancient courtyards, dense forests, or alien terrain without ever leaving the building.

We sat down with Steve Read (Head of Studio, Versatile Media), Raphaël Gaudin (Virtual Production Supervisor), and Jayce Barreiro (President, Big Picture Cinema Group) to unpack what this tech really means for the future of film—and how it’s shifting from sci-fi to the new normal.

So… What Exactly Is a Volume Stage?

At first glance, a volume stage might just look like a really expensive, really huge wraparound TV screen. But it’s much more than that—it’s a fully immersive, camera-tracked LED environment where filmmakers can place their actors inside a photoreal digital world and capture it all in-camera. No green screens. No waiting until post to see how the scene will really look. It’s film production reengineered from the inside out.

Versatile Media’s Vancouver volume is a beast of a setup: 30 feet high, 87 feet across, and rigged with cutting-edge LED panels running at blistering refresh rates. The wall is powered by Unreal Engine, the same software that powers games like Fortnite and The Matrix Awakens. But here, it doesn’t spawn enemies—it renders dynamic skies, weather systems, futuristic cityscapes, ancient temples, or whatever else your production demands.

The real magic lies in camera tracking and parallax correction. As the physical camera moves, the digital background shifts in real time to match perspective—making the image feel three-dimensional and lifelike. You’re not shooting in front of a digital world; you’re shooting inside it.

“When you move the camera, the shadows change, the perspective shifts—just like they would in the real world,” explains Raphaël Gaudin, Versatile’s Virtual Production Supervisor. “It’s that interactivity that makes the illusion work. You’re not stuck with a static backdrop.”

And it’s not just for sci-fi or fantasy anymore. Want a street corner in Tokyo? A windswept desert at dusk? A moving car ride through LA at night? Done. You can even shoot “magic hour” all day long if you want—because inside the volume, the sun only sets when you say so.

“The power isn’t just in what we can show,” adds Steve Read, Versatile’s Head of Studio. “It’s that we can control everything—light, timing, location—without leaving the stage.”

Think of it like building a world-sized backlot inside a soundstage. A backlot where you can shift from a mountaintop sunrise to a foggy forest road with the click of a button. And—here’s the kicker—it’s already being used in both indie films and $300 million blockbusters.

So no, it’s not just a fancy screen. It’s a creative engine. And it’s changing how stories are told, one pixel at a time.

Is It Cheaper? Or Just Cooler?

Let’s get one thing out of the way: virtual production can save money—but that’s not the reason filmmakers keep coming back to it. The real draw? Control.

If you’ve ever tried filming an outdoor scene in Vancouver (or, honestly, anywhere that isn’t southern California), you know what a logistical nightmare it can be. Weather shifts. Light changes. Trucks get stuck. Permits expire. “The forest you scouted two weeks ago? Now it’s a swamp,” says Jayce Barreiro, President of Big Picture Cinema Group. “Virtual production solves all that. No rain delays. No airport runs. No unexpected bulldozers.”

On a volume stage, you don’t wait for golden hour—you just dial it in. You don’t fly your cast to Nepal—you build the Himalayas inside Unreal Engine and shoot it with AC blasting. What used to be six locations across three countries is now one soundstage and a Google Drive of assets.

But does that make it cheaper?

“Well, yes and no,” says Steve Read. “It depends how you use it. If you’re trying to replicate 12 different sets across the world and only have five days to do it—this tech will absolutely save you time and money. But if you treat it like a giant toy without a plan, it’ll eat your budget fast.”

That’s the trick: virtual production doesn’t replace prep—it demands more of it. The savings come not from cutting corners, but from eliminating chaos. Fewer weather delays, fewer location moves, fewer VFX surprises in post.

That was the case on Night Comes, a forest-heavy thriller Barreiro originally planned to shoot in practical environments. But unpredictable terrain and tight timelines made it a logistical headache. Then he stepped into Versatile’s volume stage.

“We realized we could build a better forest indoors,” he says. “And the bonus? We could shoot night for day, day for night—whatever we needed. We weren’t racing the sun anymore.”

And that’s not just good for the budget—it’s good for the story. The creative flexibility you gain by shooting on a volume often ends up being the biggest benefit. Control the light, adjust the set instantly, change locations between setups without breaking a sweat. For production teams, that’s the dream.

So is it cheaper? Sometimes. But more often, it’s just smarter.

Is This Just for Big Studios?

It used to be. When The Mandalorian debuted, Disney made it clear: this was cutting-edge tech with a capital “C.” You needed deep pockets, a VFX army, and a lot of time to pull it off. But things have changed—fast.

Virtual production isn’t just a Marvel-only playground anymore. Thanks to evolving software, smarter pipelines, and more accessible hardware, the volume stage is now open to indie filmmakers and mid-tier productions looking to punch above their weight.

“We’ve worked on $300 million Apple shows and major studio films,” says Steve Read. “But we’ve also worked with scrappy indie teams shooting lean, efficient features. It’s not just about size—it’s about intent.”

Case in point: Big Picture Cinema Group’s The Marshmallow Experiment, a raunchy, heartfelt comedy with a killer cast—Steve Buscemi, Johnny Knoxville, Daphne Keene, Josh Lucas—and a sharp script. While it wasn’t a blockbuster budget-wise, the production used Versatile’s volume to maximize scope and minimize chaos.

“We shot entire sequences that would’ve taken days on location—in a single day here,” says Barreiro. “We weren’t guessing what it would look like later in post. It was all right there in front of us.”

That’s where Versatile’s model really shines. Unlike rental-only stages where you get a wall and little else, Versatile positions itself as a creative partner. They offer script breakdowns, virtual set design, technical supervision, and ongoing consultation.

“We’ll sit down with a director, go through the script scene by scene, and figure out what belongs on the volume and what doesn’t,” says Gaudin. “Sometimes the best use of the stage is knowing when not to use it.”

That kind of collaboration—part studio, part tech lab, part production partner—isn’t common. But it’s crucial. Because virtual production isn’t a plug-and-play solution; it’s a rethinking of the entire creative pipeline.

And the support system matters. Versatile’s team includes engineers, game devs, VFX artists, and cinematographers. They don’t just know the tech—they know how to make it serve the story.

So no, it’s not just for mega-franchises anymore. It’s for any filmmaker willing to think strategically and collaborate early. If you’ve got a story to tell and the openness to learn something new, the volume is no longer out of reach.

What About the Challenges?

As much as virtual production promises—and delivers—a new frontier of creative freedom, it’s not exactly a “set it and forget it” magic trick. Like anything worth doing in filmmaking, it comes with its own set of rules, quirks, and yes, technical gremlins.

Let’s start with the most obvious: sound. “LED walls are basically massive, beautifully lit mirrors for audio,” says Raphaël Gaudin. That means echo. Lots of it. The hard surfaces inside a volume stage can bounce sound in unpredictable ways, turning your intimate character scene into a mini opera hall if you’re not prepared.

“There’s a bit of a learning curve for sound teams,” Gaudin admits. “Sometimes we bring in dampening panels, sometimes we plan for ADR. But if you know it going in, you can work around it.”

Then there’s the tech itself. Unreal Engine is powerful, but it’s also built for real-time rendering. That means every asset, every animation, every camera movement has to play nice together—live. If something crashes or glitches, you’re troubleshooting in the middle of your shoot day, not after.

“This isn’t like fixing a VFX shot in post,” says Steve Read. “This is a real-time environment. If something breaks, it can slow everything down unless your team is sharp and prepped.”

And that’s the key word: prep.

Virtual production thrives when everyone on set knows what’s coming—because unlike traditional filmmaking, you can’t just fix it later. You need your camera team, lighting crew, set designers, and virtual artists working as one organism. If one piece lags, the whole process suffers.

“We always tell people: treat this like a new department,” Read emphasizes. “Just like makeup, lighting, or sound. It’s not a gimmick—it’s a workflow. And it needs to be respected as one.”

That includes bringing production design into conversations early. Building physical props that match digital environments. Pre-lighting scenes based on virtual sunlight. Designing camera moves with parallax in mind.

The upside? Once a team gets it, they really get it.

“There’s always this moment—usually day one—where you see a crew go from cautious to amazed,” says Read. “They realize they’re not just saving time or money. They’re gaining creative options they never had before.”

But the challenges don’t disappear entirely. Virtual production doesn’t eliminate filmmaking’s complexity—it just reorganizes it. Instead of dealing with chaos on set, you’re front-loading the work. Storyboarding becomes mission-critical. Shot lists aren’t suggestions—they’re gospel.

The good news? That structure often leads to smoother, more focused shoots. You spend less time fixing mistakes and more time creating cool stuff on purpose.

So yes, there are hurdles. But for productions willing to put in the work upfront, the payoff is undeniable: fewer surprises, better control, and a final product that looks like a million bucks—even when it didn’t cost it.

Okay, But… Could This Be the New Normal?

Short answer? Yeah. Longer answer? It’s already happening—and you just might not realize it yet.

Virtual production is no longer an experiment tucked away on massive sci-fi sets or prestige streaming shows. It’s steadily moving from the bleeding edge to the industry standard, much in the way nonlinear editing, digital cameras, and color grading once did. And like those transitions, it’s not about if virtual production will catch on—it’s about when the holdouts will get on board.

“Every month we’re seeing more producers walk through our stage who’ve never worked like this before,” says Steve Read. “And the common thread is: they’re curious. Skeptical sometimes—but curious.”

That skepticism usually melts away after a single shoot. Because once teams see what the volume can do—how fast they can switch between scenes, how intuitive it is to light, how much they can achieve without chasing the sun—it becomes harder and harder to justify going back to old-school methods, especially on tight timelines or mid-budget projects.

Jayce Barreiro sees it from the indie side: “We came in thinking, ‘Okay, maybe we’ll use this for two or three scenes.’ But once we saw how flexible it was, we ended up expanding it to more of the movie. Now it’s one of our first considerations in pre-production.”

And he’s not alone. A growing number of productions now treat virtual stages like just another tool in the box—alongside location scouting and soundstage builds. It’s not a novelty anymore. It’s infrastructure.

That said, it’s not a silver bullet. There are still genres, stories, and sequences where traditional location shoots make more sense. There are directors who thrive on real-world unpredictability, who want the chaos of a real street or the texture of an unscouted mountain range. That’s not going away—and it shouldn’t.

But increasingly, the volume is not about compromise—it’s about expanding the menu of possibilities. Need a high-speed car chase at night but only have two shooting days and a limited stunt budget? Volume. Need to recreate a location from a previous season without rebuilding the set from scratch? Volume. Want to pull off four radically different locations in one week without moving your gear? You know the answer.

“It’s not a gimmick,” says Raphaël Gaudin. “It’s a production strategy. And it’s getting better every day.”

Add to that the global expansion of stages (Versatile has multiple locations across China and is eyeing new builds in North America and Europe), and you start to see how quickly the infrastructure is being laid down to support this kind of production at scale.

So no, virtual production isn’t coming. It’s here. And whether you’re a big-budget franchise or a two-person creative team with a clever script and a tight schedule, the question isn’t whether you’ll use it—it’s how soon you’ll want to.

Final Thought: Embrace, Don’t Resist

Virtual production doesn’t want to replace the soul of filmmaking. It doesn’t want to get rid of actors or sets or directors or the messy magic that happens on location when everything just clicks. What it does want—what it’s uniquely built for—is to amplify that magic, to take the parts of production that are unpredictable, unmanageable, or flat-out impossible and turn them into assets, not obstacles.

But for that to happen, the industry needs to stop treating it like a science experiment.

“The biggest challenge we see is hesitation,” says Steve Read. “People come in thinking this is a novelty or a workaround. But the moment they start using it, they realize it’s just another part of the creative process—like lighting, camera, sound. It’s a tool. A powerful one.”

Read, Gaudin, and Barreiro all return to the same theme: curiosity over caution. The best results come not from dipping a toe in, but from jumping in with your whole team—DPs, producers, art directors, editors—and treating the volume stage as a core component of the shoot, not a postscript.

“It’s not about having all the answers upfront,” Gaudin adds. “It’s about being willing to learn, to collaborate, to rethink what your film can look like when you’re not shackled to the limitations of physical space.”

It’s also about trust—trust in your creative instincts, trust in the crew around you, and trust that the technology wants to work with you, not against you. The most successful shoots on Versatile’s stage? They weren’t the ones with the biggest budgets or the most visual effects. They were the ones with the clearest vision, and the openness to adapt.

Barreiro puts it plainly: “Once you shoot like this, it’s hard to go back. You start to see the potential—not just to finish a movie, but to make a better one.”

As virtual production continues to evolve, as AI tools accelerate asset creation, and as more creatives from gaming, VFX, and live-action converge, the possibilities are only expanding. But at its core, this is still storytelling. Human. Collaborative. Imaginative.

The volume doesn’t take away the artistry—it sharpens it.

So if you’re a filmmaker—whether you’re planning a gritty indie or a globe-hopping action epic—the future is no longer on the horizon. It’s lit, rendered, and ready. You just have to step into it.