Behind The Scenes Visual Effects For Ballad Of A Small Player

By DMN Staff

Ballad of a Small Player is a darkly comic psychological thriller set amid the glittering casinos of Macau’s high-stakes gambling world, adapted from the novel by Lawrence Osborne.     

The film follows Lord Doyle, (Colin Farrell) who is laying low in Macao – spending his days and nights on the casino floors, drinking heavily and gambling what little money he has left. Struggling to keep up with his fast-rising debts, he is offered a lifeline by the mysterious Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a casino employee with secrets of her own. However, in hot pursuit is Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton) – a private investigator ready to confront Doyle with what he is running from. As Doyle tries to climb to salvation, the confines of reality start to close in.

Visual Effects: Lexhag VFX

Lexhag delivered the film’s visual effects to enhance the Macau setting and establish some of the film’s surreal elements. Lexhag also designed an LED virtual production solution in Macau to overcome location restrictions and logistical challenges. Virtual Production and VFX were supervised by Alexis Haggar.

Rather than shooting key sequences on live casino floors or against greenscreen, the production used an LED volume driven by Assimilate LiveFX. This approach was used for the intimate baccarat and roulette scenes and offered:

• Interactive lighting – casino lights illuminated actors and set pieces naturally.
• Authentic reflections – glossy surfaces reflected the casino environment without complex compositing.
• Improved performance – Background actors added movement to the environment without impacting the VFX process, and production could shoot without the time pressures of filming in a working casino.

LiveFX enabled real-time manipulation of casino plates on the LED wall – adjusting perspective, colour and lighting.

Comments from Alexis Haggar

For Ballad of a Small Player, Lexhag was responsible for two major pillars of the film’s visual world: the design and execution of the Virtual Production sequences, and the creative leadership of the post-production VFX.

The project began with conversations between Alexis and cinematographer James Friend around how to capture authentic casino environments within extremely tight on-location access windows. Shooting on an active casino floor meant limited time, restricted movement, and many areas that could not be dressed, altered, or filmed. The solution was to re-stage the required scenes under controlled conditions using LED instead of greenscreen, allowing the production to keep Macau’s cinematic atmosphere without the limitations of the venue.

Because LED/VP facilities are scarce in Macau, the team leaned on a stroke of fortune: Lexhag had previously worked on a stage show inside a Macau casino that featured a very large LED wall. Through that connection, Lexhag made introductions to the MGM Casino and temporarily transformed the theatre into a VP stage.

To minimise risk, the entire setup was pre-visualised before anyone travelled. Using Assimilate LiveFX (the show control tool used on the shoot) and Unreal Engine, Lexhag built a digital twin of the theatre from CAD data. This enabled:

• camera-position planning and lens testing
• previs of how physical set dressing would blend into the LED imagery
• early identification of illusions that would not hold on camera
• testing plate perspectives and placements before any media was captured

This preparation also allowed the team to pre-configure media playlists, control layouts and operator workflows weeks in advance – crucial considering the theatre was operational and on-site testing time was minimal.

On location, Alexis and VP floor supervisor Chris Bouchard shipped a fully self-sufficient VP pipeline to Macau, complete with redundancy and a temporary VFX lab. The second-unit captured background plates on the casino floor under Alexis’s supervision. With very limited freedom to move objects or lighting, the team found compositions that matched principal photography and cleaned the plates extensively: removing tables, signage, advertising and light flicker, and generating multiple field-of-view options for the director.

All processing was completed on site due to uncertainties about data-transfer capabilities andy preparing plates ahead of the shoot, the team effectively absorbed what would normally require a full pre-light programming day – a saving that made the one-day VP shoot viable.

Once principal photography was complete, Lexhag continued to conduct post-production VFX reviews via Assimilate Scratch.    

Comments from Chris Bouchard, VP Floor Supervisor / Assimilate Operator

The need on the VP shoot day was to allow the director Ed Berger to shoot continuously in these semi improvised scenes at the tables. So we processed the plates into loops the day before shooting, so that they could play continuously, with almost invisible loop point. This was appreciated as they wouldn’t have to cut every 2 minutes & interrupt the flow Collin Farrel’s performance. This enabled the crew to shoot extremely quickly, which was a nice change for them after shooting on locations with large crowds of extras.

Digital extras were combined with a few real extras in the mid ground, with correct scale & perspective.

Care was taken to color blend the white/creams of the real seats to the cream seats in the back plate on the wall. & exposure, gamma & gain was tweaked per shot by James Friend to integrate with lighting. 

Working with DIT Peter Marsden and DoP James Friend, the colour of the LED wall was managed carefully to maximise possible dynamic range & faithful reproduction of the plate on the Alexa35 camera. As LED skews green & the brightness was capped at 1000nits, we skewed white balance of the cameras magenta to ‘help’ the LED wall reproduce the plate in the best possible gamut & dynamic range. (As the location contained lots of reds/warm tones, this helped us capture more range of colour in the warm tones to aid grading in post, even though it appeared very green on the wall to the naked eye. With a tweak to Peter Marsden’s LUT, he was able to get a very good match to the look of the location which had already been established. Assimilate’s histogram & scopes were immensely useful for managing this & ensuring we maximised the quality of the Alexa35 LogCV4 source plates when displayed on the LED wall & captured by camera. This way we were also able to maintain real world linearity of colour levels from low to bright intensity, which is critical for believable VP colour.

The LED wall had facets, so we projected the plates with Assimilate. We setup a framing guide for the camera operator & marked floor & set positions, carpet & tables with the art department to ensure perspective of the plates was maintained as per the previs. The height of the camera was critical to maintain perspective & avoid keystoning on the LED wall. But as there was no need to track camera motion, we simply used a laser measure & punched in the numbers to Assimilate’s projection camera on the Frustum to Wall node. This ensured perfect perspective in camera. 

For some shots a much wider lens was used, and we were able to accommodate this on the fly by scaling the plate up & projecting it seamlessly across the hexagonal LED wall facets.

For other shots the camera was on a longer lens, panning & moving across faces & we ensured sufficient overscan, wide focal length on the plates to allow for this freedom.

We were also able to provide a blurry red background for one scene as a special insert. Using Assimilate’s powerful blur tools.

All in all it was an enormous stage & an ambitious & seamless use of LED virtual production, achieving final pixel shots in camera.

About Assimilate

Assimilate’s Live FX provides filmmakers with an all-in-one toolset for live compositing, LED-wall staging, and real-time VFX. By unifying camera tracking, projection mapping, lighting control, and recording into one platform, Live FX accelerates creative decision-making, reduces turnaround time, and enhances in-camera storytelling.

Assimilate also develops a full suite of post-production tools, including:

• Live FX Studio – live compositing, projection mapping, DMX lighting, and keying
  
• Live Assist – multi-cam VTR for video assist with green-screen support
  
• Live Looks – live grading and instant look creation with Scratch integration
  
• Play Pro Studio – professional player for VFX reviews, ProRes RAW QC, and transcoding
  

Assimilate tools are trusted worldwide by DITs and post artists for stability, speed, and flexibility.

Learn more at www.assimilateinc.com.