Chapter 49: Pre Production

[3rd Person POV]

After getting the overall flow of the script, Ven proceeds to write the rest of the details until the whole script is completed. He then proceeds to draw the concept art and shot angles he wants. He wanted the costume to be the Amazing Spider-man 2 suit as his primary look. Ven never really liked the MCU costume and he hated the triangular lens from the Raimi one. And the TASM2 was the closest to comic accurate in Mark Bagley style. Since this was going to be his original and main suit, Ven also wrote a scene of him making said suit. For cosplayers, making such a suit wasn't that a big of a deal anyway so it wasn't something that could be called impossible. 

After making sure all that material was done, he then proceeded to finalize his base NYC within the DCU movie instance and used Matrix FD to its fullest. He also added the New York sanctum and other important locations like Nelson and Murdoch's law firm or Daily Bugle. 

After a few days of focusing on the city recreation, he then started getting his staff to start adding details to the city and smaller things like shops, garbage cans, chairs etc. After having some production crews signed with NDA's, he then had them start getting used to shooting within DCU movie instance to understand how it differs with movie making in the real world. The production crew was so amazed with shooting within full dive VR since there were a lot of things that were made easier and the effects were easily added as either temporary or permanent additions to the current recordings. The camera's were also more free now and didn't have any more physical limitations. They could be remotely controlled and can be invisible as well. So they didn't have to even worry about reflections and can use the entire 360 degree view around the characters. 

And since they were inside the game, they can add certain modifications to stats or abilities as required even physical appearance. This wouldn't have been viable if the rendering wasn't very realistic. But Unreal engine, combined with full dive tech created by geniuses from this universe, lets the system use a bit of the developers memories to add details and realism. 

The crew quickly got used to the operations but to be sure, they were given a few weeks of proper training and test shots. While all this was going on, the staff had begun casting auditions though they were given vague test scripts for confidentiality. Ven intended to search for specific actors he wanted to cast just in case. But since this was going to be inside DCU movie instance, there was a cheat he could use that most movie makers cant. That's the avatars. If he found a really good actor but can't use them because they were not the desired look, Ven could simply hire them as motion capture and voice performance but the avatar could be modified to have the look they want. Similar to how stunt doubles work, they do the required stunts but their final appearance is edited at post to what the main characters look like. But in DCU, Ven could hire someone with really good acting or performance, and simply make their avatar look the way he wanted. 

Ven wanted to look for some of the original actors like Emma Stone for Gwen, or Marissa Tomei for Aunt May. But worst case, Ven would hire whoever acts best and have an original character made by his Matrix character creation. Just like how his original worlds Japan made FFVII remake characters, he knew he could create totally new ones as well. But since the actor's likeness may or may not be used at all, he had simply told his staff to take this as part of the negotiation offer when it came to their contract salaries. 

After several weeks of casting auditions, they were able to get some of them but in the end, Ven did go create modified avatars instead. He notified the actors about their likeness being used but he also notified them about the modifications. Like for Emma Stone, it didn't look exactly like her. The Gwen character was using her as a base but the avatar was a beautified version of her. So it wasn't exactly her anymore. So the contracts were more like VA's but were paid more because they still had to perform physically, albeit digitally. After all the actors needed were signed with contracts, Ven still hired stunt doubles though compared to most people from the industry, he wasn't picky and limited to appearance since he was going to change their avatars anyway. Because of DCU movie instance, stunt doubles had more options now when it comes to their work. This would remove the limitations they had of being required to look similar to certain actors. But this would only be true when it came to Vgames for now.

DCU movie instance also allowed them to skip mass producing costumes but Ven still had an actual costume made via Ironhead studio so they would have some for movie promotions. 

DCU allowed hyper realism so even clothing felt and acted real and didn't require separate gravity simulation calculations. What would have taken so much computing power, became achievable with DCU because of the full dive tech combination. And because the base tech was from Cisco's dream diver idea and Ven's input from being a symbiote, DCU skipped a lot of simulation calculations and simply accessed the developers thoughts on how objects should act with each other including its physics and collisions. 

Though at the back of Ven's mind, he was a little worried that what happened with the Matrix animated films would happen to his DCU as well. There was an animated short where an athlete went beyond his own human limitation and woke himself up in the middle of his race. So to be sure this didn't happen, Ven had set proper limits. 

Because of how complex this technology was, Ven had temporarily bonded with Hiro/Toyman at some point in order to borrow his brilliant mind and remember as much as possible regarding this technology and understand every little thing on how it worked. So Ven essentially knew the complex details on how it was constructed as well. Upon separating from Hiro, it didn't make him a genius so he couldn't suddenly start inventing stuff, but he still had all the details of the technology memorized so it was imprinted in his memory at least. It was also simple enough to make Hiro forget the bonding by using the persuasion skill.

Since the set's were basically completed within DCU movie instance, and the actors were selected and signed with contracts and NDA's, Ven had them start training as well to get used to their specific way of shooting. Everyone started learning of DCU movie instance and how to do their roles that way. 

It greatly surprised the cast as well when they first tried out the full dive pod. Ven didn't show them DCU main planet and instead had them directly log in to the movie instance so they didn't know of the actual DCU but of course they had their suspicions and assumptions. After all, Vgames WAS a game company. But the experience was so novel and new that most of the actors wished nothing more than to brag about it online. But they were not able to do so since Ven made the penalty of NDA's so high that they would not even consider of risking it. 

And thus, the first movie to be shot inside DCU movie instance was well on its way.

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