Anyone planning a virtual production faces one fundamental question early on: do we bring the LED wall to the shoot, or bring the shoot to the LED wall? Both paths deliver the same image result, a calibrated LED wall, camera tracking and a real-time engine producing genuine in-camera VFX. The difference lies in logistics, lead time and cost. This guide explains when each option makes sense.
The core difference in one sentence
A fixed studio is a permanently installed LED volume that your team and your objects travel to. A mobile setup is exactly the same technology, in our case the full 35 m² LED wall, transported to your location and built on site. The image doesn’t decide; the real question is: is your subject portable, or tied to a place?
When the fixed studio is the better choice
- Your subject is location-independent. People, products, interviews, recruiting clips, anything you can bring into the studio shoots fastest and cheapest in the fixed volume.
- Short lead time, tight budget. The fixed stage is already calibrated. There’s no multi-day build and strike, no travel of equipment. In Erlangen you shoot in our fixed 35 m² LED stage from €1,450 / half day.
- Frequent, recurring productions. For content series and regular formats, the trip to a fixed studio is predictable and efficient.
The price of that efficiency: everything and everyone has to travel. With a fixed studio in Berlin or Hamburg, that means travel, overnight stays and downtime for the entire team of clients based in southern Germany.
When the mobile setup pays off
- Your subject can’t be moved. The machine in the factory hall, the product in the clean room, the trade-fair stand, the team at their real workplace, here the studio comes to you instead of rebuilding the real environment.
- Many people would otherwise be on the road. If a whole team, executives or clients would have to travel, the on-site build can end up cheaper than the sum of all those trips.
- Real and virtual world in one frame. You combine your actual hall or showroom with any virtual backdrop, without leaving the real environment.
The price of that flexibility: lead time and logistics. On-site set-up of the full 35 m² wall takes around 3 days, and you need a suitable floor area, access and roughly 63 kW of power (provided on site). The mobile day rate starts at €4,500 plus travel.
The decision in three questions
- Is my most important subject portable? Yes → a fixed studio usually suffices. No → mobile setup.
- How many people would otherwise travel? Few → fixed studio. A whole team or your clients → mobile adds up faster.
- What’s my time window? Short notice / tight budget → fixed studio. A set date with lead time for the build → mobile is predictable.
The regional factor, an often overlooked point
The best-known fixed virtual production studios sit in Berlin and Hamburg. For companies in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and the Nuremberg metropolitan region that means a long trip to a fixed studio, or a provider that covers both paths. Our base in Erlangen near Nuremberg puts the fixed 35 m² studio within reach of southern-German clients while making the mobile setup available across Germany. So geography doesn’t dictate the method, your subject does.
In short: Fixed studio when your subject can come to us, mobile setup when the shoot has to happen at your location. The technology and the result are identical; what matters is what has to travel.
More on this: mobile virtual production and our virtual production studio. For how the technology works, see the LED wall explained.