What Filmmakers Should Know About Unreal Engine - Keith Sutliff
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- čas přidán 15. 05. 2024
- In this Film Courage interview, we ask Keith Sutliff about Unreal Engine and how he uses it at his virtual production filmmaking studio.
Film Director/Producer/Writer Keith Sutliff, originally from Florida, moved to Los Angeles in 2012. His award-winning work in film encompasses feature films, episodic narratives, short form content and commercial productions. Keith’s original screenplays are the foundation for his creative projects. His original screenplay The Refuge (2019), acquired by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is included in the Margaret Herrick Library (The Oscars Library) permanent Core Collection there. His feature films held premieres at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood with theatrical releases to follow.
Keith’s creative vision has driven him to master the aspects of filmmaking, writing and now virtual production. He founded his production company, KS Pictures, in early 2016. He is now fully committed to virtual production, opening a film studio in the Arts District-Downtown area of Los Angeles called “Sutliff Studios: Virtual Productions.” The studio focuses on rental to companies for film, TV, commercial, and other related media content productions. The studio also focuses on in-house production of its own virtual productions. This is done using the latest cutting-edge software and equipment to bring productions together on a virtual stage. Gaming software such as Unreal Engine combined with a camera tracking solution to help bring real time rendering along with “parallax” on the LED volume wall to life. He is also heavily involved in the operation of the production and filming techniques used on a virtual stage and In-Camera VFX. Familiarity with 2D and 3D assets used on a LED volume and all the technical elements that goes into filming on these stages.
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Stuff we use:
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#tech #filmmaker #filmmaking
What has been your experience with Unreal Engine ?
Unreal engine is, in my opinion, an essential tool for filmmakers. It does have a steep learning curve, but only because it is so capable. It allows anyone to do VFX, animation, compositing, and environments at an extremely high level. And for most users it's free.
UE is easy to learn ... compared to other engines or software.
I wouldn’t say essential. It’s useful though
Is it free?
@@VictoriaHatzson It's free to download, learn and use and if I remember correctly, if your project makes over $1 million you would start paying a 5% royalty fee.
Great interview! It's wonderful to see the Unreal Engine featured in Film Courage, especially since so many films are created inside UE.
I've been using UE for virtual production for film for years. Working on a pc, nearly everything you could need for basic use is free, drag and drop, and reasonably easy to use. By free, I mean incredibly realistic scenarios from cities to forests to whatever you can dream up. Running the engine typically is on a PC that can handle current high-end games; you can create pretty much any movie scene with free assets or at least rough out scenes for previsualization, use in-engine created characters (metahumans) with body and face animation. Realistic lighting, light rigs, audio, visual effects from wind, to fire, to rain, and more. You can create cameras and film movements by animating their position in the engine, there are even cranes, dollies, and tracks; or you can control the cameras around in the engine by externally connecting a professional camera, an ipad, iphone, or android phone, or game controller, and use those as cameras. There are so many current and new tools coming out all of the time to capture body motion and facial performances from actors and transfer that motion to characters in the engine. UE is constantly adding new tools so you can eventually create everything inside of UE that you would normally need multiple digital content creation programs. Hands down the best free tool available with the most robust inclusive community and learning paths to quickly take people from entry-level creators to knowledgeable artists.
It's pretty incredible. Highly recommended!
It's even just for blocking out a live-action film, working your camera angles, and pre-thinking your lighting or tech scouting.
Thank you for posting and sharing some of your experience!
I'm sure that everyone is enjoying the videos you are posting, because it really gives me courage to work in my future career to become a movie director, not only In my country but change the perception of many people about African cinema...with my books that I'm writing so far
Unreal runs on mac silicones but there are still features that are not yet compatible (e.g. pathtracing, hardware raytracing, nanite and hair / fur elements for metahuman for example). You can do a lot already, but for high end professional work you still should rely on a windows workstation with high end GPU.
I'd love to be able to do this, but not enough to actually learn it. I don't think I'm alone in this regard. See you when it's drag and drop I guess :-)
Get a partner who is more interested in this aspect? Or hire someone? Trade off for the former is obviously equity if you’re starting something up. If you’re willing to wait for things to change before using it you probably never will.
@@keosanpeople been making films way before GFX. It’s not a necessity to learn and still can’t compete with practical fx.
What are your thoughts on Unreal Engine?
Unreal engine offers high-quality graphics, offers tools for virtual production. I see it as a development in film making.
I'm K.Omar from Nigeria 🇳🇬 (my dream is to become a movie director).
Sounds like writers are getting lazy.
@@edwardsmith1060 Unreal Engine has nothing to do with writing. It's used for film composition and animation. I agree with you, but not in response to the Unreal Engine comment.
At what point is all the computer composition no longer filmmaking?
It's cinematography or virtual cinematography, film isn't used much now.
@jemhoare2105 I don't mean film vs a memory card. I mean the whole process of actors, crew, locations, lights, make-up, and so forth. There's value in the process.
@@wexwuthor1776 I see what you mean. I think computer composition is absolutely filmmaking. However, it's when some big boi companies try to automate the process through the use of, for example, AI to capture actors' likenesses or write scripts or create the art, that it starts to cross the line out of filmmaking because of the lack of human involvement or creativity.
The use of computer compositions is dependent on a Producer's / Director's choice. It's another tool in the box, so-to-speak -- like lighting, costumes, set design, backdrops, practical effects, et. al. Computer compositions aren't mutually exclusive of filmmaking; rather, consider 'filmmaking' as 'storytelling'. As such, computer compositions (tools in the storytelling box box) will never replace filmmaking.
@@wexwuthor1776 That's also the barrier to entry. Why does the studio system get to monopolize the creation of this medium forever? Especially if they are currently failing at producing or capitalizing on that value that you refer to.
Unreal Engine might be what takes down the monopoly Adobe has on motion graphics. They just released a beta version of a motion graphics kit that looks really promising. They're doing some really really exciting stuff.
Running UNREAL on Mac has been pretty...VERY frustrating. It's an amazing software but not really optimized of Apple OS. Hopefully in next version of MAC (APPLE???) make if compatible.
Thank you for posting. What has been frustrating?
I'm jealous of this guy
Unreal Engine is free, Quixel is free, this guy only started using it a couple of years ago max. He's not particularly computer savvy, he's an artist not a tech guy.
You do need a decent computer though.
It's never too late to get started, especially since Unreal Engine's interface has become easier and easier to understand over the years! You could start now and create something legendary in just a month ;)
How easy is it to drag and drop characters and get to work with tons of premade animations? 😅
Hi,
I'm assuming this is mostly a jk question, which np. But id like to answer in case you or someone else find it helpful. So i mostly use it for game dev. But ill be using it to make youtube videos soon enough. In answer.
Its not quite drag and drop. It is still really easy to get started. There are free and paid models & animations. EPIC gives away resources every month. As well as giving you a lot of assets at no charge.
You can find plenty of resources & professional tutorials online. Including how to make cinematics and scenes. Technically you can get a solid understanding of UE in about 3 months. Just focus on looking for and learning "exactly" what you want to know. Bright side you dont need to learn a line of code. The engine has a visual scripting language. Where you connect nodes and wires, instead of writing endless lines of code.
Take care and have a good one
@@D3bugMod3 The trouble I find with any of these softwares is that you really need a modeler / rigger. A writer / director doesn't have access to enough characters / clothing and slew of animations to make a film. Granted teams should always be encouraged but try making a film in blender with little to no modeling / rigging background :(
@damian3182 If youtube wouldn't just eat the comment. I'd happily give you the list of everything i use or found.
But you're right. If you want a consistent style throughout, you'll need a lot of assets. And the time to learn what you need/want. There are a few ways to deal with this problem.
I found an artist in the marketplace. It wasn't cheap, but I used his work to get started. Im now preparing to shift to my own work. To be fair, i have a background in art.
On the other hand. Animations are far less of a problem now. There is just that much out there. UE5 now has tools to apply and modify animations. You can now even take anims for a person and apply them to animals. There are also a bunch of UE compatible 3rd party apps. That can make photo realistic 3d models and animatios. UE5 now also lets you use UE assets in other software.
This last one i know isn't an option for everyone. There are courses that'll teach you modeling and rigging. Be it photo realistic, low poly, cell shaded. You'll still have to design the characters. But there are also situations for that.
Please know I'm not trying to overhype UE. Nor do I want to under sell the learning curve. Which goes up or down depending on what you want to do. But compared to 5 yrs ago it's night and day. And trust me I fully get some ppl aren't going to want to deal with the hassle.
As always, take care and have a good one
They should know that their "films" will look absolutely horrible, sterile and soulless. I love the technology but hate the results. Bring back films shot on film. Bring back individual visual style.