It's not every day that old-Hollywood glamour meets brand new technology, but that's exactly what happened when actor and September cover star Blake Lively stepped onto to bring a full-on jewelry heist—as envisioned by director —to life. “We needed to tell a story that spanned many locations, both indoors and outdoors,” said Luhrmann of the shoot, adding: “We’re in Monte Carlo, we’re in a period, we’re going to all around locations we could never get to if we had to do it without the power of the [LED] Volume.” The LED Volume technology that allowed Luhrmann to imagine Lively as Cat, an enterprising and glamorous jewel thief making her way through mid-20th century Monte Carlo, is most frequently used for motion campaigns.
However, Luhrmann used it to tell a dynamic and deeply engaging story through photography, illustrating a whole new world of possibilities for the production system. “It's a relatively new technology," says Pier59 Studios Virtual Production Supervisor Jim Rider. “There's been a lot of high-profile TV shows and movies using virtual production, but commercials and stills are starting to embrace it.
” And who better to introduce LED Volume to the world of high fashion than Lively and Luhrmann? A campaign on the scale of Luhrmann's cover shoot would normally be done via green screen, but LED Volume allowed for a much more fluid and dynamic creative process for all those involved. Of course, there were still production challenges. Luhrmann's entire spread had to be photographed within a single day, which surely would have hamstrung a less visionary director.
But Pier59 Studios—which was founded in 1995 by Corporation—offered the opportunity for a quicker, more immersive shoot that allowed the production to, in the words of Luhrmann's wife and frequent creative collaborator , “traverse vast distances and go from an interior to an exterior to a night shot to a day shot.” If you're wondering how, specifically, LED Volume technology allowed for Lively's September cover to reach new heights, look no further than the instantly-iconic image toward the end of the spread of her (as Cat) making her getaway under a full moon; this scene would have been nearly impossible to shoot via traditional filmmaking methods, but Pier59 Studios' partnership allowed Luhrmann to capture Lively in the moonlight so clearly and intimately that it's easy to imagine you're right beside Cat on her caper, stashing priceless jewels away before making a grand escape into the night..
