Why I Switched from Location Shoots to Virtual Worlds

The Production Grind

For years, my workflow looked the same. Wake up before dawn to catch golden hour. Load a van full of gear: cameras, lenses, lighting rigs, monitors, batteries, cables, and whatever else the shoot demanded. Drive an hour, sometimes two, to a location I’d scouted the week before. Set up. Wait for the light. Shoot. Tear down. Do it again tomorrow.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a magic to location work that I genuinely love. The unpredictability of natural light, the energy of being on-set, the feeling of capturing something real and unrepeatable. But there’s also the other side: permit headaches, weather cancellations, three-hour round trips for a 20-minute window of usable light, and the constant pressure of knowing that every second on location costs money.

The Moment Everything Shifted

The first time I saw Unreal Engine 5 running in real-time, I sat there for a solid ten minutes just moving a virtual camera through a photorealistic environment. Volumetric fog rolling through a forest. Dynamic global illumination shifting as the sun angle changed. A fully realized world that I could light, frame, and shoot, right there on my screen, with instant feedback, no render queue, no waiting.

It wasn’t a gradual realization. It was more like a switch flipping in my head. I remember thinking: “I could build any location I want. Any time of day. Any weather. Any planet.” The creative possibilities weren’t just expanded. They were fundamentally unlimited.

The Honest Learning Curve

I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Transitioning from traditional production to virtual production was one of the hardest things I’ve done professionally. Unreal Engine is powerful, but it’s also a beast. Blueprints, materials, lighting systems, Sequencer, Niagara particles. The amount of new knowledge required was staggering.

There were weeks where I felt like a complete beginner again. I’d been directing and shooting for years, and suddenly I was watching YouTube tutorials about node graphs and UV mapping. It was humbling. But it was also exhilarating. Every new technique I learned opened up ten more creative possibilities I hadn’t considered.

The Breakthrough: New Era Cap

The moment it all clicked was the New Era Cap project. They wanted a cosmic, “out-of-this-world” campaign (planets, galaxies, deep space environments) with their products floating through it all. On a traditional production, that brief would have meant green screen stages, weeks of post-production compositing, and a budget that would make most brands walk away.

Instead, I built the entire universe in Unreal Engine 5. Planets with atmospheric scattering. Nebulae with volumetric particle systems. Stars that reflected off photorealistic 3D cap models. And the best part? I could fly a virtual camera through the entire thing in real-time, composing shots on the fly, adjusting lighting with a slider, and seeing final-quality output instantly.

What would have been a multi-month production became a six-week pipeline from concept to delivery. The client saw real-time previews during the process and could give feedback that I implemented in minutes, not days. That project didn’t just prove the concept. It fundamentally changed how I approach every brief that comes through the door.

What Virtual Production Actually Delivers

After working this way for a while now, the benefits have compounded in ways I didn’t initially expect. Unlimited creative control is the obvious one. I can put a product on Mars or at the bottom of the ocean, and both scenarios are equally achievable. But the less obvious advantages are just as powerful.

Weather-proof production means I never cancel a shoot. Rapid iteration means clients see their vision coming to life in real-time instead of waiting weeks for a rough cut. Cost efficiency at scale means I can deliver cinematic 4K content at a fraction of what traditional production would cost, and reinvest that savings into higher production value.

And then there’s reusability. Every environment I build, every asset I create, every lighting setup I dial in, it all lives in a library that I can pull from for future projects. The more I create, the faster and more efficient the pipeline becomes.

The Hybrid Approach

Here’s something I want to be clear about: I haven’t abandoned real-world cinematography. I still shoot on location when it makes sense. There are projects where nothing beats the texture and authenticity of a real environment, real talent, and real light. I still love those shoots.

What’s changed is that virtual production has expanded my toolkit. Now when a brief comes in, I’m not limited by physical constraints. I can ask “what’s the best approach for this story?” instead of “what can we afford to build on set?” Sometimes the answer is a location shoot. Sometimes it’s a fully virtual environment. Often, it’s a hybrid: real footage enhanced and extended by virtual worlds.

More Tools, Better Work

This isn’t a story about traditional filmmaking dying. It’s a story about having more tools in the arsenal. The brands I work with don’t care whether their content was shot on location or rendered in Unreal Engine. They care that it looks incredible, tells a compelling story, and was delivered on time and on budget.

Virtual production lets me deliver on all three, consistently, without compromise. And the technology is only getting better. Every update to Unreal Engine closes the gap between “virtual” and “indistinguishable from reality” a little further.

If you’re a creative professional still on the fence about making the leap, or a brand wondering if virtual production is right for your next project, my advice is simple: the best time to start was two years ago. The second-best time is now.