Studios Spotlight – Behind the scenes at Morden Wolf
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In the latest in our Studios Spotlight series, we talk to Rob Chandler, CEO and founder of London virtual production studio Morden Wolf, who says that virtual production allows you to “film the unfilmable”…
Tell us about Morden Wolf
The studio was set up just over three years ago, firstly as a virtual production [VP] R&D project while virtual production matured. We are a smart virtual production studio - mixing LED and live-to-tape chroma keying for optimal options.
The soft launch was almost a year ago, as a virtual production-only studio, specialising in the entire process from creative and creative consultation, pre-production, virtual art, production and post- production. This approach enables us to be incredibly agile and highly creative, and to offer blisteringly fast delivery while keeping a crew well-balanced.
A great thing about Morden Wolf is that we’re set up in an unused office space, meaning a similar set-up could be installed in any similar office facility.
The studio is completely self-funded - one of the best-kept secrets about virtual production, is that it's actually not that expensive to install in any space or studio. It’s also well-situated: a short walk from North Greenwich tube, very close to the Blackwall tunnel and only ten mins drive from City Airport.
What would you say are the key reasons to use Virtual Production?
• Flexibility - Shoot in any number of locations all from one studio - film in a spacecraft, a field of lollipops, Trafalgar Square at rush hour (without the need of a permit) or a really small space. Our virtual production rigs can also be installed with little impact to any appropriate existing studio.
• Agility - changing the angle, colour and strength of the sun, moon, street light with a push of a preprogrammed button. Move a mountain, or a vase, swap a logo at the very last minute. Run and gun.
• Efficiency – Shoot-movable multi cameras for each take; change location or camera position with a touch of a button. Almost no post-production.
• Creativity - creators and writers are no longer constrained by the resources available. Film the unfilmable.
• New formats and versioning - Now not an afterthought, localise backgrounds with a touch of a button.
• Sustainability - mixing shooting options to keep environment impact as controlled as possible
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What kind of projects have you hosted?
We shoot ‘virtual’ anything, real or imagined. We hosted a set of customer stories for Salesforce with highly stylised virtual locations (£30k budget) – a full production. The pilot episode of The Contractor TV series also used Morden Wolf, shooting in around eight ‘locations’ within a virtual investment bank and trading floor, utilised a special VFX controlling turntable - previs and camera (a £60k production).
Other projects include more than 20 social-first (vertical) advertising campaign - shot in a day, 20 variants of a single virtual location, live to tape (£15k); 24 bite-sized training videos - two moving cameras, live in-camera VFX within a virtual office space at different virtual times of day, live-to-tape, one day shoot, draft edit within 4 working hours (£20k) and indie film Low Power Mode - five days, mix post (£25k).
What would you say is your standout feature?
We pride ourselves on having a relaxed and safe facility, with maintaining trust our number one value. To us, trust, is everything.
Do you have a sustainability strategy?
Yes - reduce crew size and keep travel miles to a minimum, allowing for those key shots to be possible. Also, our LED wall is compact and we use low-power cyc lights for our chroma keying studio
What’s next?
We are developing a virtual production-first green cyc - this will optimise the ability to shoot perfect live-to-tape, thus reducing post-production and timescales even further.
Happy clients
“The on-set flexibility and agility was astounding. While the entire project of 46 videos cost less than hiring an LED stage for just one day”, Nate James - creative producer, Caxton.
“We had an overwhelmingly positive experience with Morden Wolf. We’ve found a partner who understands our goals and gives us great results in record time”, Martin Petkov - head of marketing, Cudos.
With many thanks to Rob Chandler of Morden Wolf for his help in compiling this article. Morden Wolf also features in our new World of Studios supplement, available online and in print soon.
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