Things just got real: How virtual production is revolutionising B2B tech marketing

This is an exciting time for B2B tech marketers as evolving technologies fuel a range of innovative, game-changing marketing strategies. Virtual production has become popular beyond film and gaming and is now being used in our world of B2B marketing. In this blog, we'll explore its possibilities and the potential of virtual production in supercharging your B2B tech marketing efforts.

What is virtual production?

By combining game technology with traditional filmmaking methods, live actors and presenters can be set within the context of digital assets and environments. This is what’s known as virtual production.

In the film industry, the sudden shift to remote work and social distancing accelerated the process of creating and manipulating digital environments, characters and assets in real-time. You may probably have seen the results of virtual production on recent projects such as Lion King, Ripple Effect and Mandalorian.

Just as virtual production became a lifeline for filmmakers, it has also become a reality for marketers. The technology is now so advanced and with facilities such as the state-of-the-art CUBE Studio recently opening its doors to clients, virtual production has become more accessible to all.

For those ready to take the leap, virtual production delivers a far more flexible, creative and scalable way to create video content than traditional production methods.

How does virtual production work?

Forget green screen, think LED screen instead. Virtual production combines innovative LED technology with game engines, camera-tracking and graphic servers. Using real-time 3D engines, you create photorealistic sets that then are displayed on large LED walls behind the physical sets using the real-time rendering capabilities of the game engines. By synching cameras with game engines you get enhanced realism and depth of perspective.

The results are stunning. Without the limitations of traditional filming and post-production methods, video production becomes more agile and creative decisions can be made in real-time, accelerating and streamlining the production process.

For more information on the ins and outs of virtual production technology, check out this glossary of virtual production terms.

What are the benefits of virtual production for B2B tech marketers?

B2B marketers are looking to innovation tools to do things bigger, better and quicker than their competitors, while offering a unique experience to their customers and prospects in the process.

Virtual production offers a whole host of benefits for a variety of marketing practices, from customer marketing and product marketing to partner marketing and events marketing. These include:

Cost efficiency

With a reduced need for physical sets, expensive (not to mention carbon-emitting) flights and extensive on-site crews, your marketing budget goes a lot further with virtual production. Making creative decisions whilst the actors are on set saves time in post-production too. As outlined in this blog, transitioning from one scene to another can happen with minimal interruption and digital assets can be changed up quickly, allowing filmmakers to get the most from your presenters or actors on the day of filming.

This means not only can your budget stretch further, enabling you to reach your KPIs with reduced funding, but you can also reach your targets quicker and more efficiently too.

Real-time collaboration and flexibility

Virtual production enables teams to work together from anywhere in the world, using cloud-based software and virtual reality tools to collaborate in the same digital space. Traditionally it often wasn’t until the final release that the entire crew could see the CGI graphics and finalised storylines. With virtual production, everyone involved can have complete understanding of the film from start to finish.

This means from storyboarding, right through to the finished product, you can quickly and efficiently produce assets and videos that match your initial plans and goals, helping you set and meet stakeholder expectations.

Enhanced creativity

As discussed in this blog, virtual production allows you to move around objects and assets on your set as well as experiment with camera angles and lighting as the filming is taking place. The use of a 3D backdrop allows actors and presenters to feel more immersed and can bring out a better performance, a topic explored more here. Filmmakers can also visualise and plan shots and environments before any actors and performers arrive on set.

Whether you’re filming your CTO or using a set of actors to run through a situational demo video, planning ahead means that everyone feels comfortable with their role in the project before they step on set.

Brand identity

By creating custom digital environments, assets and characters, businesses can craft a consistent and memorable brand experience. This cohesive visual identity can help generate brand recognition and loyalty among potential clients and ensures you are instantly recognisable for your work.

This provides you with global reach from one local studio. You can create one set of branded videos in multiple languages that can then be used across the world.

Scalability

Repurposing is a great way to make marketing budgets stretch further and with virtual production, B2B tech marketers can utilise and customise pre-built assets from existing libraries to generate various types of content in a consistent way. For example, a 3D model of a product can be repurposed for multiple marketing channels, including social media posts, explainer videos and virtual demonstrations.

What are the practical applications of virtual production for B2B marketers?

B2B tech marketers often need to showcase complex products or services and the engaging and visually stunning content made possible by virtual production allows them to do this more creatively.

Let’s look at four scalable and creative ways B2B tech marketers can harness the benefits of virtual production.

• Customer success stories – interview big name clients in quirky and unique environments that can switch and change to provide relevant context to your story. By creating engaging video content as opposed to simple case studies, you provide a different user experience and can really tease more out of the story.
• Informative videos – create global reach on a whole host of topics like customer onboarding, staff information videos or how-to videos that show you round a partner portal. No matter what your video content is, it can be chopped and changed in real-time to provide content for social teasers and shorter snippets. Check out Virgin Media’s virtual production brand campaign about hybrid working in the pandemic.
• Product videos – film different employees in different regions all using the same set and background to ensure your product videos have a cohesive and consistent look and feel. With the ease of changing elements in pre-production, you can tweak and tailor your sets to adhere to cultural needs without breaking the bank with real life set changes.
• Event keynotes – create a backdrop of changing backgrounds to reflect where your speaker is ‘located’. You can create once and scale many times by playing the same video at multiple events – without having to fly your speaker across the globe! For smaller budgets, you could even film the entire event using virtual production and conduct local viewing parties to allow for networking and discussion.

Whether it’s a global video for social media, a try-before-you-buy product video or creative event production, there’s a whole host of ways that virtual production can support your B2B tech marketing efforts.

Experience it for yourself

Virtual production is revolutionising the way B2B tech marketers create and share content. Whatever innovative or immersive experience you can dream up for your target audiences, you can pretty much create it with virtual production.

Want to find out more? To discover the full potential of virtual production techniques, we’re inviting B2B tech marketers to CUBE Studio in Maidenhead, just west of London, to see the magic in action.

This brand new 6,500 square-foot, state-of the-art virtual production studio, owned by our video production partner CUBE, provides a full-service solution for enterprise businesses, marketing agencies, production houses and film and TV.

It’s an incredible space with game-changing opportunities to produce scalable content for B2B marketers – if you’d like to see the studio for yourself simply fill in the form below.