In 2014, Joel Metz, a cellphone tower climber, was replacing an antenna 240 feet up when his cable snapped. He died. He was only 28 years old. Filmmaker Tisha Robinson-Daly was horrified to learn that this was not uncommon — OSHA even called cellphone tower-climbing the most dangerous job in America.

Tisha Robinson-Daly and Jonathan Mason

Determined to avoid more deaths, Robinson-Daly decided to start a nonprofit to advocate for climbers’ working conditions. Then, she and fellow writer/director Jonathan Mason took things one step further. They decided to make an indie short film, called High, to highlight the tragic price we continue to pay for cell service.

We spoke to Robinson-Daly and Mason about creating the film’s early proof of concept, including how they used virtual production to create shots that replicated the intensity of the climbers’ dangerous work without taking any risks.

Why did you decide to use virtual production to depict the cellphone tower sequences?
Jonathan Mason: Tisha and I were invited to participate in Tribeca and Epic Games’ Writing in Unreal initiative, where we learned to use the Unreal Engine toolset to ideate and previsualize sequences. When the time came to develop a proof of concept for High, we knew we could use Unreal Engine to design sets, animate characters and simulate various camera angles for a fraction of the cost associated with traditional prepro.

Tisha Robinson-Daly: It was later that we realized that shooting in an LED volume would enable us to create realistic parallax effects that just wouldn’t be possible with a greenscreen. We would also be able to blend the virtual backgrounds seamlessly with our practical tower sets. That’s when we brought producers James J. Yi and Ben Baker of Mesh aboard and decided to shoot in Disguise and Roe Visual’s Virtual Production Accelerator.

Can you tell us about the shoot itself?
Robinson-Daly: We shot for two extremely productive days on the Accelerator stage. Day 1 was spent constructing the tower top and capturing 12 shots with golden hour and night lighting. Day 2 was devoted to assembling the leg of the tower and capturing another 12 shots with overcast day, dusk and night lighting.

We were very happy with all the footage, and I can confidently say that we achieved what we set out to do: demonstrate a safe and repeatable way of shooting tower scenes.

Mason: We knew that we needed to build different sections of the tower practically and that we’d be using the 15-foot LED volume to display the vast landscape that surrounds the climbers. Our incredible production designer, Rebekah Bukhbinder, who was an art director on The Mandalorian and other Star Wars projects, helped us to build this amazing set that seamlessly merged with the volume’s digital elements. (Key grip Amy Snell and grip Gavriel Dorian were also part of that effort.)

We gave our virtual production supervisors (Kourosh Pirnazar and Nhan Le) coordinates for the area of rural Pennsylvania where we wanted the tower to be. They used satellite photos to locate it and analyze it from each angle and used those as a reference for their Unreal Engine environment model. They then worked on accurately modeling the 50 square miles of countryside seen below our characters, occasionally morphing and merging things to create a landscape somewhere between reality and what we needed for the film.

What considerations and challenges are involved with virtual production on an indie budget?
Mason: There’s nothing intrinsically cost-saving about virtual production. You need to use it in a way that increases efficiency and makes your budget go further than it would with more traditional methods.

From our very first day shooting this proof of concept, we had a newfound confidence and energy. Shooting on the Accelerator stage, we had access to Disguise’s workflow expertise, which was key to calibrating lenses, setting practical lighting levels and getting the color profile we’d determined.

What creative benefits did virtual production grant you?
Robinson-Daly: This technology gave us unparalleled control over the production. On-set we didn’t need to tell everyone to imagine the Pennsylvania countryside from 200 feet in the air. It was right there on the screen.

We could even ask the operators to simulate the breeze shaking the trees below or the twinkling of lights in the distance, all of which we could capture in-camera. We could even adjust things like the position of the sun, the thickness of the clouds or the brightness of the city lights with a slider. It was just a case of sliding them up or down as needed. Using the Disguise system, the volume operator could ensure that all the digital content was being outputted to the wall at the right frame rate and tracked correctly, so Jonathan and I could focus on everything else.

Do you think virtual production is a viable tool for productions like High?
Mason: I think virtual production will be an immensely valuable tool for the independent film sector. Trying to shoot something like High practically on top of an actual tower would require resources far beyond the capacity of independent productions. What would take three weeks to shoot with traditional filmmaking methods could easily be done in one week inside the volume. Even small, independent productions could find ways to benefit from that increased efficiency.