Simulated Travel: Filming with 2D and Driving Plates at Silvertown Studios
For directors and cinematographers, achieving convincing motion across varied environments has traditionally meant significant logistical challenges and heavy reliance on post-production. At Silvertown Studios, our LED stage offers a streamlined alternative: using high-resolution 2D and multi-angle driving plates to create seamless simulated travel, captured directly in-camera. This approach ensures precision and consistency while reducing the costs, time, and unpredictability of location work, delivering reliable results that keep production moving efficiently.
How Our LED Stage Enhances Automotive Scenes
A key advantage of our LED stage for automotive work is the ability to capture highly realistic, optically accurate reflections directly in-camera. The setup, featuring a 17m x 4m LED wall, 5m x 3m ceiling LED, and 2.5m x 2m movable totems, creates a fully controllable lighting environment where vehicles are enveloped in dynamic, responsive light. Paint surfaces, glass, and interiors all respond naturally, with every reflection and subtle shift in illumination recorded through the lens. For cinematographers, this means authentic results on set, faster decision-making, and a significant reduction in the reliance on post-production to recreate environmental detail.
Benefits of using 2D plates include:
Speed and efficiency: Quickly set up scenes without location logistics.
Creative control: Directors can instantly switch from one environment to another, whether it’s day or night, rain or shine.
Performance focus: Actors can respond to a visible, immersive environment rather than an abstract green screen.
Operational efficiency: Eliminates the need for low-loader rigs, road closures, or unit moves, while maintaining production quality.
Seamless Motion on Our LED Stage
Our LED volume creates a seamless fusion of physical and digital worlds, delivering shots that look authentically real straight through the lens. Unlike traditional green screen, where reflections and environmental details must be carefully recreated in post-production, our approach captures these elements live, in-camera. The result is a faster, more efficient workflow that combines production speed with uncompromising cinematic quality.
As well as our in-house Virtual Art Department (VAD) we also work with content providers, including Driving Plates UK, who supply industry-standard footage used across Hollywood films and high-end commercials. This means productions filming at Silvertown Studios gain access to a extensive library of travel sequences, ready to drop directly into a shoot.
Whether it’s the grit of a city street, the calm of the countryside, or the stylised feel of a road trip, simulated travel at Silvertown Studios brings any setting to life without compromise. With advanced technical infrastructure and trusted partnerships, we make the workflow seamless and reliable, giving directors and DoPs the freedom to realise their vision without the limitations of traditional location shoots.
