From the creators of the glabally acclaimed series ‘Dark’ comes ‘1899’, a new mystery-thriller series that’s about to set sail soon. Showrun by Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar, the 8-part mystery series ‘1899’ premiered at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival (tiff) recently and left the audience thrilled.
While a lot has been said about the gripping story, the mood and the international ensemble cast of ‘1899’, not many know of the unique “Volume” technology that has been used in its making.
Volume technology operates on the same basic principle as rear projection and is an LED immersive soundstage. It displays a pre-recorded image or video onto a screen in the background, while live-action elements are filmed in the foreground to achieve an in-camera composition of physical and digital components.
In other words the actors perform their scenes in-front of a large number of seamless LED panels arranged in an almost 360-degree style and they have the digital display of the required background playing on it.
This technique replaces the conventional green screen method in which the backgrounds are adjusted during the post production and thus saves time. Volume technology has been used in season 1 and 2 of ‘Mandalorian’ and ‘The Batman’ (2022). Other than ‘1899’, it will also be used in the upcoming Marvel movie ‘Ant-Man – Quantumania’.
Coming back to ‘1899’, the series follows the mysterious circumstances around the voyage of an immigrant ship from Europe to New York. The passengers, all of different backgrounds and nationalities, are united by their hopes and dreams for a new century and their future abroad. When they discover a second ship adrift on the open sea that had gone missing for months, their journey takes an unexpected turn. What they find on board will turn their passage to the promised land into a nightmare-like riddle, connecting each of the passenger’s pasts through a web of secrets.
Set out to be a multi-language series, the international cast includes Emily Beecham, Aneurin Barnard, Andreas Pietschmann, Miguel Bernardeau, Maciej Musial, Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen, Rosalie Craig, Clara Rosager, Maria Erwolter, Yann Gael, Mathilde Ollivier, José Pimentão, Isabella Wei, Gabby Wong, Jonas Bloquet, Fflyn Edwards, Alexandre Willaume and Anton Lesser.
‘1899’ is produced and showrun by Jantje Friese, who has also written the series, and Baran bo Odar, who also serves as the director for the series. Friese and Odar have produced the series under their DARK WAYS banner which was founded after the worldwide success with the hit series DARK (Netflix).
Here’s a glimpse of the Volume technology used in ‘1899’