Butcher Bird Studios: virtual production with the Ultimatte 12 4K

Composer Ultimatte 12 4K Blackmagic Design is helping the producer Butcher Bird Studios to expand the possibilities of his works, which are frequently based on the use of color schemes.

Butcher Bird Studios is a company specialized in using green screens to create compositions live based on the graphics engine Unreal Engine, a tool that began to be used in 2019. At that time, virtual technology was already being used in large scale projects with generous budgets, such as The Mandalorian, but Griffin Davis, its technical director, was confident that Butcher Bird could offer a similar finish at a “more reasonable” price. His first tests were based on the combination of a set the chroma with various teams Blackmagic Design, among which were cameras URSA Mini Pro y Micro Studio Camera 4K, and multiple mixers ATEM. All these teams were in dialogue with a composer Ultimatte 12, which was used for integrate live subjects into three-dimensional environments combining foreground elements with the backgrounds generated with Unreal Engine.

Butcher Bird's next step has been to integrate the ultra high definition version of this system. Multiple units Ultimatte 12 4K They are already part of the production company's workflow. The latest version of the system Blackmagic Design, beyond allowing you to work in 4K resolutions, have “a more stylized design, a renewed interface and buttons that allow you to save profiles directly from the device,” underlines Davis.

These teams are responsible for creating compositions with multiple cameras located at different angles, each one with elements in foreground and with motion tracking in the real and virtual world. The signals extracted from the Ultimatte 12 4K are sent to Unreal Engine using capture and playback cards DeckLink 8K Pro.

Davis feels that the new model Ultimatte 12 4K, Like many Blackmagic Design products, it allows other studios to enter the world of independent virtual productions his size or budget: "It's a big step by Blackmagic Design. As with many of their other devices, you can now access something that was once extremely expensive. That opens up a lot of possibilities for filmmakers with limited funds. Today you can have equipment that allows you to grade professional images and create bulletin-quality compositions at an affordable price. I'm always amazed at how Blackmagic continues to make professional tools that are accessible and easy to use."