Sony has announced that it will start selling a series of modular displays that can be used to create digital film sets (via The Hollywood Reporter). If this type of technology looks familiar, it may be because Industrial Light & Magic and Epic Games have built similar sets to help create The Mandalorian.
The monitors are part of Sony’s Crystal LED line, which are modular panels that use MicroLEDs and were previously marketed for signage. The technology and modularity of the display means that you can make huge displays using multiple panels connected to a controller. This is useful if you are trying to create a virtual monitor set.
Those announced today are part of the new B series and are marketed as useful for film production: they have an anti-reflective coating and are shiny. Sony says they can operate at 1,800 nits. Apple’s Pro XDR Display reaches 1,600 nits and is an incredibly bright display. (The “XDR” in Apple’s Pro Display XDR actually means “extended dynamic range”, a function of how bright it can look.)
One benefit of building your backdrop with screens is that the light they emit makes it easier to convince your audience that your actors are really there is. With traditional sets of green screens, the background is a smooth, solid color, and you should light up your actors as if the background really exists. When you are using screens, however, the background is already there and providing light.
As a fully invented example, let’s imagine a character sitting in a desert at sunset. If you were shooting on a green screen, you would have to have a lot of lights set up to simulate what the actor would look like if he were really outside. However, if you are using screens, you can rely mainly on them to generate that light for you, making it easier to get a realistic image (you can see this happening in this behind the scenes video).
Using screens can also mean more realistic reflections. If our hypothetical character in the example was wearing, say, a slightly reflective helmet and we were shooting on a green screen, it would reflect that green color. Visual effects artists would have to come back later and make it look like the helmet was really reflecting the desert. With the screens, however, the helmet can reflect the images displayed around it, without the need for post-work. When I was making short films at school, we used regular old TVs to get reflections and avoid afterwork, but you can imagine that these panels would produce slightly better results.
Sony says these monitors are capable of high frame rates and 3D, so there’s a lot of flexibility in the type of signal you can feed them. He is planning to make them available “in the summer”, but has not yet released a price. Given that these are professional-grade products (the B series was “developed in collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment,” Sony’s film production arm), it’s probably a situation “if you have to order, you can’t afford it”. But even if you don’t buy one, you’ll soon be able to watch movies and shows produced with them.