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?
The same wall, which is why a test shoot transfers 1:1
The most important sentence in this comparison is a technical one: it is the same wall. 35 m² of LED area, 1,500 nits of brightness, 100 Hz frame rate, camera tracking and an Unreal Engine workflow, on the permanent stage in Erlangen exactly as on the build at your location. No smaller touring version, no budget-trimmed partial area.
That has a planning consequence which is easy to miss: what you test in the studio holds on location. You can book half a day of dry hire in Erlangen, work through the virtual set, the lighting and your camera settings, review samples and get them signed off internally, then shoot on site with the same values. The result is not “roughly that”, it is the same image.
It works the other way round too. A campaign shot half in your plant and half on the stage has no visible seam between the parts, because area, brightness and frame rate are identical.
With modular setups that are configured differently for each booking, that transferability is not automatic. So if you are planning around a test shoot, ask explicitly whether the configuration on the shoot day is the same one you tested on.
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. Why a rented event screen replaces neither setup is covered in event screen or volume?.