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Sunday, January 28th, 2024

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What might "Volume Unit" mean, in TV credits?

"Masters of the Air" (imdb.com/title/tt2640044/fullcredits) has these subheadings in the end credits scroll:

- Cast

- Post Production

- Volume Unit

- Second Unit

Any ideas what the term "volume" refers to, in this specific context? The use of the usual "second" suggests to me that it isn't simply a more or less arbitrary label, like "Wolf" and "Dragon" for "Game of Thrones", which became somewhat well-known.

I tried googling it, but audio engineers apparently do use a measurement called a "volume unit", which makes the term so common in the general context of television production that I quickly gave up. There are audio credits under the heading in question, but nowhere near enough to make it seem likely that that has anything to do with it.

What did occur to me is that a counterpart to "volume" could be "surface", as in geometry, and in turn a counterpart to "surface" could be "aerial", as in footage. So it could be the unit responsible for the flight sequences, in which the viewpoint is much more likely to move and/or point vertically instead of only horizontally than in ground sequences.

Another sense I considered is the "in volume", like "in large amounts", one. Crowd scenes, say, need large numbers of extras, or their CG equivalents. Feels way implausible, though.

Thanks for any insights! :)

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ETA: Ah, I went through the 100+ occurrences of "unit" in the /fullcredits page linked above now, and there were a couple of other uncommon ones:

- Bailout unit

- Pick up unit

- Splinter unit

I'm guessing it forms a set with some or all of those. Still not really clear on what any of the terms refer to, though. "Bailout" is the one that's most directly linked to flight, to my mind... but is in colloquial use as well, of course, so... *shrug*

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ETA: Ah again, now I googled those other terms - and for one of them, that actually yielded a direct definition (howtofilmschool.com/film-television-dictionary-letter-s):

Splinter Unit: A part of the main filming unit that splinters off to get alternate shots.

The other two, just as the original one, are either too uncommon overall, or too common in unrelated contexts, but googling "splinter unit" alongside each of the others shows that none of them are original to "Masters of the Air", at any rate. So the first word does in each case have a particular meaning, even if I don't know what this is yet. Progress! :)

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2 years ago

I don't know, but I found this:

"The first step Masters of the Air's creators took when filming the drama's flight scenes was using on-set virtual production. On-set virtual production, otherwise known as OSVP or The Volume, is a form of entertainment technology which includes a series of LED panels that are used as a backdrop on set, and which display videos and images in real time."

https://screenrant.com/how-masters-of-the-air-flight-scenes-filmed-cgi/

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Nice! I do remember the buzz that technology generated when ILM initially developed and deployed it for "The Mandalorian". So I probably did come across this name as well at the time, even if I can't recall that now.

Thanks so much!

Poking around a bit more with that in mind now, I reckon the name originates here (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volumetric_capture):

Volumetric capture or volumetric video is a technique that captures a three-dimensional space, such as a location or performance. This type of volumography acquires data that can be viewed on flat screens as well as using 3D displays and VR goggles. Consumer-facing formats are numerous and the required motion capture techniques lean on computer graphics, photogrammetry, and other computation-based methods. The viewer generally experiences the result in a real-time engine and has direct input in exploring the generated volume

So my geometric interpretation was spot-on... even though the direction I took it in was a bit off, heh. :)

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2 years ago

Good find. In the end, I guess it could be pretty much anything. ”New York unit”, ”dragon unit”, ”studio unit” etc. Whatever ”name” suits the production best. ”Second unit” is the most common, but even that can mean anything from a few person crew capturing e.g. nature shots for the film, or a big unit making car chases and stunt scenes to films like Fast&Furious.