Stage-agnostic virtual production and Unreal Engine world-building
The Continuum, established in 2022, supports producers, agencies, brands and studio-led productions with production-ready virtual production workflows — from Unreal Engine world-building and virtual art department (VAD) services through to operating real-time LED volume and chroma-key productions.
As the official African agent for Ncam Technologies, the world-leading camera-tracking system for virtual production, The Continuum brings broadcast- and studio-grade tracking expertise into its workflows — supporting film, commercial and long-form productions across Africa and internationally.
What is Virtual Production?
Virtual Production (or “VP”) is a real-time filmmaking technique that combines LED volumes, camera tracking and game-engine technology to capture dynamic, photoreal environments in-camera.
As the physical camera moves on set, the virtual environment responds in real time, creating accurate parallax and a convincing sense of depth — allowing productions to capture final-pixel imagery without relying on traditional location shoots.
While traditional greenscreen techniques offered a similar compositing approach, virtual production allows cast and crew to see and respond to the final environment while shooting.
This real-time visibility improves performance, lighting integration and creative decision-making — delivering many of the benefits of location shooting while remaining fully controllable within a studio or stage environment.
About us
The Continuum is led by a team of experienced virtual production practitioners, Unreal Engine code developers and real-time, hyperreal world-builders. We are African creators and technologists working diligently at an international production standard.
The rapid acceleration of virtual production during and after COVID reshaped how films and series are made globally. Real-time workflows are now a standard part of feature and episodic production, driven by their ability to reduce risk, compress schedules, and unlock creative flexibility.
The Continuum exists to support the competitiveness of South African and pan-African film and series production by making world-class virtual production capability accessible, reliable, and production-ready — helping local productions attract international partners and investment.
How Virtual Production Works
The Continuum’s virtual production workflows make use of Unreal Engine, a real-time software originally developed for high-end interactive game and console applications.
These engines allow LED volumes or chroma-key stages to function as a real-time “portal”, where the physical camera captures both live-action foreground elements and the virtual environment simultaneously.
As the camera moves, its position and lens data are tracked and fed into the real-time engine, which recalculates perspective and parallax instantly. This ensures the displayed environment always matches the camera’s point of view — a workflow commonly referred to as in-camera visual effects (ICVFX).
Used correctly, virtual production allows filmmakers to capture final-pixel imagery in camera, reducing post-production overhead while increasing creative control on set.
Virtual production is no longer changing the future of production, it’s already an integrated and evolving part of it.
FAQ
What Are Your Services?
We offer:
1. Hyper-realistic World Building for Virtual Production
We have dedicated artists who build production-ready, high-fidelity 3D worlds in the game engine. With our strict performance standards (including Gauntlet, our own environment stress-testing software), our virtual environments are not just beautiful but highly performant for real-time LED volume and/or green screen standards. We focus on efficiency but unlike most, we don’t just rely on dragging and dropping Unreal Megascans, offering a team that develops custom assets including LiDAR scanning, kitbashing and AI-assisted 3D modelling.
2. Unreal Engine-based Previsualisation (Previz) and Techviz
We provide Unreal Engine–based previz and technical visualisation (techviz) to help directors, DPs and producers plan, test and de-risk complex shots well before production.
Using real-time environments, camera simulation and physically accurate lensing, we visualise scenes during script development and early pre-production — allowing creative teams to explore blocking, framing, camera movement and environments quickly, non-destructively and relatively cheaply.
This work often informs both virtual production and traditional shoots, helping productions make confident creative and technical decisions regardless of whether an LED volume is ultimately used.
Where projects do move into virtual production, these previz assets frequently become the foundation for final-pixel environments used on stage.
3. Driving Plates
Our sister company, Habitat XR, has a decade of experience in filming and stitching 360 video live action plates. We make use of their technology and skills to create driving plates for vehicle process work — optimised for Unreal Engine, Assimilate Live FX and in-camera vehicle process work.
4. High-end Camera Tracking
As the Ncam Technologies agent, our fully-certified team facilitates Hollywood studio-grade, high-fidelity camera tracking, including lens (focus and zoom) integration into Unreal Engine. The Ncam MK2 tracking and server system is the most advanced and robust of any inside-out virtual production tracking system.
5. Image-Based Lighting
Based on high-end Aputure film lights, we have developed our own next-generation DMX pixel-mapped light arrays to create incredibly realistic key, practical and bounce lighting with animations. These systems provide many of the lighting benefits of LED volumes, while offering greater control, higher peak brightness, and precise colour management in key lighting scenarios.
6. On-Set Volume Stage Operation
Our team plugs into the traditional on-set production team to facilitate all virtual production technology and content integration. We manage camera tracking, Unreal world changes and image-based lighting during shoot time. Ultimately, we keep the show on the road, having built over 20 proprietary Unreal Engine tools for highly robust, reliable and fast virtual production use on set. This depth of on-set virtual production operation remains rare within the African market.
LED VOLUME OPERATION
We facilitate live-action, in-camera productions operating LED volumes and supporting existing stages. This includes having cast in front of virtual locations, as well as vehicle process, whereby a real vehicle is situated on set but is given the illusion of driving on roads (without the health & safety or logistical challenges of doing it for real).
REAL-TIME GREEN SCREEN OPERATION
Real-time chroma-key virtual production extends traditional green screen workflows by bringing compositing and creative decision-making onto the stage with cutting-edge tech.
With the ability to immediately key practical cast and props from the chroma backdrops, actors and directors are able to see 80% of the final image live, opening up many creative benefits at an affordable price.
Do You Own an LED Volume?
We used to when we started out and were based at Q-Studios in Johannesburg, however, we have realised that the hardest part of virtual production is not simply supplying a display, but all the peripheral skills, content and technology integration required to achieve world-class results. We now focus on this “heavy lifting” and are able to plug in to every LED studio and run a production, giving more flexibility to clients. We have LED volume partner studios in Johannesburg and Cape Town, making us a 1-stop shop for virtual production projects.
Contact us
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