The history
From a projector behind a screen in 1930 to walls of LEDs that redraw a world for every move of the camera.
Film makers have always wanted to put actors in places they could not go. First they projected filmed scenery behind them, then in front of them, then replaced it with green screens and computers. Game engines, camera tracking and bright LED screens finally let the world be drawn live around the actors, lighting them as it goes.
1930
Studio to use rear projection
Fox Film Corporation, Liliom and Just Imagine
1955
Front projection patents
Will F. Jenkins (Murray Leinster), USA
1968
Modern front projection fully developed
2001: A Space Odyssey, Elstree Studios, UK
2013
LED light box for a feature film (widely considered)
Gravity, Framestore, UK
2019
LED volume for a whole series (widely considered)
The Mandalorian, ILM StageCraft, USA
2022
Full-service LED stage in India (as announced)
Annapurna Studios and Qube Cinema, Hyderabad
1927 – 1990
Mirrors, rear projection and front projection put filmed scenery behind actors on a stage, all in camera.
1927
For Metropolis, Schüfftan set a mirror at 45° in front of the camera. It reflected small model buildings, while part of its silver was scraped away so the camera could see real actors through the glass. Both were filmed in one shot.
Why it mattered. It showed that a big world could be joined to real actors inside the camera, with nothing added later.
1930
Fox became the first studio to use rear projection in its films Liliom and Just Imagine. A projector behind a translucent screen played filmed scenery while actors performed in front of it. New film stock, brighter lamps and motors that kept camera and projector in step made it possible.
Why it mattered. Backgrounds could now be shot anywhere and brought onto the stage, the first 'virtual location'.
1933
2 March 1933
King Kong combined live actors with stop-motion monsters using rear projection. Fay Wray spent many hours in a fake tree while the animated battle was projected behind her. The team even built tiny screens into their miniature sets to project the actors into them.
Why it mattered. Rear projection became the standard way to put actors into worlds that did not exist.
1933
from 1933
Rear projection was dim, so the picture faded on big screens. At Paramount, Edouart refined the process, for example running three projectors in sync on the same background plate to make it brighter and more even.
Why it mattered. Brightness has been the problem of every screen-based stage since, LED walls included.
1949
c. 1949
3M's Scotchlite, a sheet covered in tiny glass beads, reflects light straight back towards its source. Shortly after it was invented, people began to experiment with projecting scenery onto it from the camera side.
Why it mattered. It led to front projection, which was much brighter than rear projection.
1950
1940s–60s
For decades, most scenes of people talking in cars were shot on a stage. The actors sat in a car or a cut-down mock-up while a filmed road played on a screen behind them, and crew rocked the car to fake the bumps.
Why it mattered. Driving shots, or 'process shots', are still one of the biggest jobs for LED stages today.
1955
20 December 1955
Jenkins, better known as the science-fiction writer Murray Leinster, received two US patents for front projection. A half-silvered mirror lets a projector beside the camera throw the background along the same line as the lens onto a Scotchlite screen.
Why it mattered. The actor's own body hides the shadow they cast, so the trick is invisible to the camera.
1963
The Japanese horror film Matango used front projection extensively for its scenes on a yacht, one of the first feature films to rely on it.
Why it mattered. It showed the technique could work across whole sequences, not just a few shots.
1968
April 1968
For the 'Dawn of Man' scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, photographs of African landscapes were front-projected onto a giant Scotchlite screen behind actors in ape costumes. The modern version of front projection was fully developed for this film.
Why it mattered. It proved a whole landscape could be put behind actors on a stage, sharp and bright.
1978
December 1978
Perisic's Zoptic system linked zoom lenses on the camera and the front projector. Zooming both together made the actor seem to fly towards or away from the camera while the background stayed the same size.
Why it mattered. Camera and background were being controlled together, an early step towards tracking.
1981
Introvision was a front projection system that could combine actors with both background plates and models. It was first used in Outland, putting Sean Connery into a mining colony on a moon of Jupiter.
Why it mattered. Front projection stayed in use until computer effects replaced it in the 1990s.
1990 – 2019
Game engines, tracked virtual cameras and LED light boxes let film makers see, frame and light computer worlds live.
1998
Epic Games released the video game Unreal, running on an engine Sweeney had begun building in 1995. Other studios licensed the Unreal Engine for their own games.
Why it mattered. Twenty years later the same family of software would draw the worlds on LED walls.
2009
December 2009
Avatar was made with a 'virtual camera': James Cameron could see the motion-capture actors as their digital characters in the CG world, in real time, while he framed the shot. He compared it to a big, powerful game engine.
Why it mattered. Directors began to frame shots of virtual worlds as if they were real (see MocapClear).
2013
April 2013
For Oblivion's glass sky tower set, 21 projectors threw filmed clouds onto a seamless white screen 152 m long and 13 m tall, wrapped 270° around the set. The footage was shot from a Hawaiian mountain top with three cameras side by side.
Why it mattered. It lit the glass set with its own sky and captured the reflections in camera, the core idea of an LED volume.
2013
4 October 2013
For Gravity, actors sat inside a cube lined with LED panels, reported as 1.8 million individually controlled LEDs. The panels played the light of the Earth, the Sun and stars moving around them, so their faces were lit exactly as the CG world demanded.
Why it mattered. It proved that LED screens could be the lighting, not just the background.
2016
April 2016
The Jungle Book was shot entirely on stages in Los Angeles, with one young actor, Neel Sethi. A tracked 'Simulcam' system showed the camera operators a rough version of the CG jungle and animals in real time, laid over the live picture.
Why it mattered. Tracking a real camera and drawing the virtual world from its point of view, live, became normal practice.
2018
October 2018
For the cockpit scenes of First Man, the team built an LED screen about 35 feet tall and 60 feet across (about 11 × 18 m) and played about 90 minutes of space and sky footage made by DNEG. Ryan Gosling's visor and eyes reflected it for real. The film won the Oscar for visual effects.
Why it mattered. It showed LED screens could replace green screen for whole sequences, reflections included.
2019
July 2019
The Lion King's crew walked around its computer-made African landscapes wearing VR headsets, placing virtual cameras and lights as on a real location. The platform was built on the Unity game engine.
Why it mattered. Game engines had become film tools, and crews learned to 'shoot' inside them.
2019 – today
Walls and ceilings of LEDs, run by game engines and tracked cameras, show and light the world in camera. Stages spread worldwide, India included.
2019
August 2019
At the SIGGRAPH conference, Epic showed a small LED volume of three walls and a ceiling, run by Unreal Engine's nDisplay. A tracked camera filmed a motorcyclist in a virtual desert, with the walls lighting and reflecting on him, final pixel in camera.
Why it mattered. It showed the rest of the industry the whole in-camera VFX workflow working live.
2019
12 November 2019
The first season of The Mandalorian was filmed in an LED volume about 6 m (20 ft) tall and 23 m (75 ft) across, wrapping 270° with an LED ceiling: 1,326 ROE Black Pearl panels at 2.84 mm pitch, run by Unreal Engine. More than half the season was shot this way, with about 8 frames of latency and 40% overscan.
Why it mattered. It made LED volumes famous and set the pattern that most stages still follow.
2020
2020–22
When the pandemic stopped travel, filming a far-off place without going there became very attractive. Most LED stages were built during or after the lockdowns. Epic Games estimated there were about 300 by October 2022, up from 3 in 2019.
Why it mattered. Virtual production went from one famous show to a normal tool, within three years.
2021
February 2021
ILM opened a permanent StageCraft volume at Pinewood Studios near London, after a second one in Manhattan Beach, and announced another in Vancouver later that year.
Why it mattered. The idea spread from one stage in California to permanent stages on several continents.
2022
5 April 2022
Epic released Unreal Engine 5, with Nanite for huge amounts of detail and Lumen for light that bounces in real time. Both help virtual worlds look real enough to be filmed directly.
Why it mattered. Better real-time pictures mean more shots can be final straight out of the camera (see CGIClear).
2022
11 April 2022
Annapurna Studios and Qube Cinema announced an LED virtual production stage in Hyderabad, with a curved wall about 60 ft wide and 20 ft tall (18 × 6 m) of 2.3 mm LEDs, camera tracking and Unreal Engine. Tests began in October 2022 and it has since been used for films, ads and music videos.
Why it mattered. Indian productions could now shoot in-camera VFX at home; other stages, for example in Mumbai, have followed.
2022
LED volumes were used for films such as The Batman and series such as House of the Dragon and 1899, often for night streets, skies, cockpits and far-off landscapes.
Why it mattered. The volume became one tool among many, used where it works best.
2023
March 2023
A virtual production stage described as the world's largest at the time opened at Docklands Studios in Melbourne.
Why it mattered. Stages keep growing, so bigger scenes and vehicles fit inside.
Did you know?
For King Kong (1933), Fay Wray spent many hours in a fake tree while the monster battle was projected behind her.
Oblivion's sky was a single white screen 152 m long, lit by 21 projectors.
The Mandalorian's first volume used 1,326 LED panels, and the picture on them ran about 8 frames behind the camera.
Epic Games counted about 3 LED stages in 2019 and about 300 by late 2022.
The people
1893 – 1977 · Cinematographer and inventor · Germany
His mirror process joined model sets and live actors inside the camera for Metropolis.
1886 – 1962 · Effects artist · USA
Brought King Kong to life, combining stop-motion with rear projection.
1894 – 1980 · Process photography expert · USA
Made rear projection brighter at Paramount, with several projectors running in sync.
1896 – 1975 · Writer and inventor · USA
Patented front projection, and wrote science fiction as Murray Leinster.
1928 – 1999 · Film director · USA, worked in England
Used front projection to put Africa on a stage for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
born 1964 · Cinematographer · Mexico
Lit Gravity's actors from inside a box of LED panels.
born 1970 · Programmer, founder of Epic Games · USA
Created the Unreal Engine that later drew the worlds on LED walls.
born 1966 · Director and producer · USA
Pushed virtual production from The Jungle Book to The Lion King and The Mandalorian.
born 1975 · Cinematographer · Australia
Helped shape the LED volume for The Mandalorian.
Where it happened
Sources
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and historians sometimes disagree about who was first. If you spot a mistake, tell us.
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