Butcher Bird Studios: virtual production with Ultimatte 12 4K

Blackmagic Design 的 Ultimatte 12 4K compositor is helping production company 屠夫鸟工作室 expand the possibilities of its work, which often relies on the use of chroma key.

屠夫鸟工作室 is a company that specialises in using green screens to create live compositions based on the 虚幻引擎 graphics engine, a tool it began using in 2019. At the time, the virtual technology was already being used in large-scale projects with generous budgets, such as 曼达洛人, but 格里芬·戴维斯, its technical director, was confident that Butcher Bird could offer a similar finish at a ·more reasonable· price. Their first tests were based on combining a 色度集 与几个 黑魔法设计 解决方案，包括 小熊迷你专业版 和 Micro Studio Camera 4K cameras, and multiple ATEM搅拌机. All of this equipment was interacted with an 终极12 compositor, which was used to integrate live subjects into three-dimensional environments by combining foreground elements with Unreal Engine-generated backgrounds.

Butcher Bird’s next step was to integrate the ultra high definition version of this system. Several 终极 12 4K units are already part of the production company’s workflow. The latest version of Blackmagic Design’s system, in addition to being able to work in 4K resolutions, features “a sleeker design, a new onboard video interface, and buttons to save profiles directly to the machine itself. It’s definitely a technology upgrade in all the right directions,” says Davis.

These devices are responsible for compositing 多个摄像头 at different angles, each with elements in the foreground 并与 motion tracking in the real and virtual world. Signals extracted from the 终极 12 4K are sent to 虚幻引擎 通过 DeckLink 8K 专业版 采集卡和回放卡。

Davis feels that the new Ultimatte 12 4K model, like many Blackmagic Design products, allows other studios to enter the world of virtual productions regardless of size or budget: “This is a major hero move by Blackmagic Design. Just like so many of their amazing products, what once cost a lot to even consider is now approachable. That opens a lot of doors for the budget filmmaker. You can now have a device that does professional grade, newscast quality keying, including shadows, at an affordable price. I’m always impressed how Blackmagic continues to democratize big broadcast tools, making them affordable and easy to use.”