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Fluxx

On-Set Operations

On-set operations are the operational layer of Fluxx’s stage architecture. Large sound stages 15,000 sq ft+ hold three to five smaller modular sets pre-built and pre-lit in parallel. When a stage wraps, the crew leapfrogs to an adjacent large sound stage or to a location shoot while the first stage resets. The Executive Director owns the day. Warp drives the LED wall and ComposiTrack sub-frame capture in-line, so the plate that comes off the camera is already clean. The full crew plus gear baseline is $200K/day, and the schedule is just as valuable as the price.

Stage architecture

Large sound stages, 15,000 sq ft+. Smaller modular sets that move in and out in hours, not days. Three to five sets pre-built and pre-lit in parallel within the same stage. When the first stage wraps, the crew leapfrogs to an adjacent large sound stage to continue shooting, or to a location shoot, while the first stage resets and the next set comes in.

Custom-designed virtual production volumes are structurally inefficient. They sit idle most of the time because every new show needs a new build-out: step-building the LED wall, recalibrating cameras and tracking, rebuilding the practical set, recalibrating color. Weeks of stage time per show. Utilization runs low, often well under half the calendar year. The volume sits dark waiting for the next bespoke build. Custom volumes also constrain what a high-end DP can do with lighting, and a hard top lighting roof limits stunts.

The Fluxx fix is architecture, not software. Stages are standardized infrastructure with standard interfaces (power, mounting, color reference, tracking volume, LED wall geometry). Set pieces are designed for fast in-and-out. The schedule flexibility is just as valuable as the price.

Crew model

The Executive Director (Ari Jampolsky) owns on-set operations end-to-end. On shoot day, the Executive Director sequences stage configuration, lighting recipe application, ComposiTrack capture, and the cross-stage handoff. The role is the single point of accountability for the leapfrog cadence: which stage is live, which is resetting, which is pre-lit and ready.

Crew is the understated cost LED-wall vendors never mention. Roughly 50 artists sit behind a typical shoot day across the pipeline. The leapfrog model is what keeps that crew shooting instead of waiting. Every day the unit isn’t shooting is a day the full crew rate is still running. Removing non-shooting days from the schedule is the cost multiplier; the cost is in the crew, not the facility.

Shoot day flow

  1. Stage configuration loaded. The pre-built, pre-lit modular set is in position. Wall geometry, tracking, color reference confirmed.
  2. Lighting recipe applied. The lighting recipe from LightViz pre-shoot loads on the practical lights, the LED wall, and the color reference. Practical lighting, wall contribution, camera response all aligned.
  3. Warp comes online. Warp drives the LED wall real-time renderer and handles ComposiTrack sub-frame processing in-line. SMPTE 2110 transport across the stage.
  4. Camera rolls. The camera captures both the displayed frame and the chroma-shifted reference, sub-frame.
  5. Fluxx Automate absorbs. The three sub-frames plus provenance flow off the camera into Fluxx Automate.
  6. Near-Time PostViz returns. A quarter-resolution PostViz comes back to the floor in 30 to 60 minutes so the director, the DP, and the Executive Director can see the shot near-final on the day.
  7. Wrap and leapfrog. The stage strikes the modular set in hours. The crew moves to the adjacent large sound stage (or to a location shoot) and the next set comes in behind them.

Warp setup

10x NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 GPUs in 5 flight cases. Mobile, liquid-cooled enterprise compute. SMPTE 2110 transport. Sized for crew-flow only: Warp drives the LED wall real-time renderer, runs ComposiTrack sub-frame processing, and feeds the camera-layer pipeline.

The capital does not concentrate on the wall. It concentrates in Fabrixx, where the heavy render happens overnight against the lighting recipe captured on set. The on-set rig is sized to keep the day running, not to finish the shot.

ComposiTrack capture mechanics

In the microsecond between the display frames the human eye sees, the LED wall flashes a chroma-shifted version of the same background image. The shift is to the average color of the plate background, not to a saturated green or blue. The camera captures both frames. The difference between them is a mathematically perfect matte.

No green spill. No blue spill. No lighting compromise on the actor or the practical set. The plate that comes off the camera is already clean, with the matte attached, and the lighting recipe captured alongside it. Roto cost downstream collapses because the matte was solved at capture, not in post.

What the stage architecture solves (ICVFX two failure modes)

ICVFX has two failure modes, not one, and both must be presented together.

Failure mode 1: inability to change. Once a shot is captured in-camera against an LED wall plate, opening it back up for any change requires extensive roto and traditional VFX work. Most productions accept the in-camera result rather than pay the recovery cost.

Failure mode 2: in-camera quality. The LED wall image in the captured frame is not photoreal. Rendered at real-time frame rate against a GPU budget, background detail comes back blurry, soft, plasticky, unresolved. There is no on-set fix because the limitation is the real-time render itself.

Stage architecture plus Near-Time fixes both. The on-set capture stage is built to get the lighting recipe correct, not to deliver a final pixel. Near-Time re-renders the background at full quality overnight against that recipe. The shot stays openable because the underlying CG asset and lighting recipe are intact. Presenting only failure mode 1 leaves the LED-wall-vendor narrative on in-camera quality intact, which is why both have to be on the table at the same time. Reference Q-G53.

$200K/day baseline

The full crew plus gear baseline for a Fluxx shoot day is $200K/day. That is the actual cost shape of running the stage with the artists, the camera package, Warp, the LED wall, and the practical lighting all online. The number includes the crew that the LED-wall vendors leave off their math. The schedule discipline (leapfrog, modular strike, pre-light in parallel) is what makes the $200K/day work across the show, because the days that run are shooting days.

Cross-references

  • Pipeline Architecture (primitive 1: ComposiTrack)
  • Capture to Delivery Workflow (Phase 2 in the broader workflow)
  • Two Finishing Tracks (what happens after shoot)
  • Q-G51 Stage Design Modular at 04_Fluxx_Shared/_Master_Canon/Q-G/Q-G51_Stage_Design_Modular.md
  • Q-G37 Volume Utilisation Architecture
  • Q-G53 ICVFX Two Failure Modes
  • Q-G3 ComposiTrack Sub-Frame Architecture

Sources

  • 02_Working/Strategy/Company_Overview/Stage_Architecture_Source_2026_05_03.md
  • 02_Working/Strategy/Company_Overview/Pitch_and_Purpose_Source_2026_05_04.md (where surfaced)

Audience visibility

industry, vendor, production, sales, director, investor.