Beneath the sunset by the lake lies the prosperous splendor of Dongjing; within the dark sewers of the Black Garden hides the clandestine affairs of Bianliang's black market. As the ancient Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival is "revived" through modern light and shadow technology, a visual feast unfolds.

The Mystery of the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, a blockbuster drama launched by Youku, features virtual production technology as its core highlight. During filming, EXCO VISION built a giant LED screen for the production team, standing 10 meters high with a 52-meter arc length. Acting as a powerful "dreamweaver" behind the scenes, this screen provided robust support for the creation of the drama's rich scenes and helped the production present a unique charm of integrated virtual and real visuals.

In recent years, with the continuous advancement of technology, the application of virtual production technology has witnessed an explosive growth. According to industry insiders, as a major drama at the end of 2024, The Mystery of the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival represents the top level of domestic virtual production with its digital production standards. It set a new record for domestic film and television dramas using virtual production by completing the filming of eight key scenes—Snow under the Trees, Sunset by the Lake, Sewer-Open Space, Sewer-The Fearless General, Reed Marsh, Black Elegant Garden, Song Qiyu's Cemetery and Exiting the City—in just 20 days. The giant LED screen built by EXCO VISION played a pivotal role in this achievement.

01 Leading the Visual Industry, Breaking the Boundaries of Traditional Film and Television

In film and television production, large-scale scene shooting has always posed inevitable challenges and pain points for directors in location scouting, light and shadow matching, and other aspects. Take the Snow under the Trees scene as an example: traditional green screen shooting would lead to the green spill phenomenon, as numerous small white elements such as snowflakes absorb a great deal of reflected green light from the screen. This creates extremely high technical challenges for post-production and makes it difficult to achieve the desired visual effects—an issue that virtual production turns into an advantage.

However, not all LED screens used in virtual production can transform the drawbacks of traditional green screen shooting into strengths. A prominent shortcoming of ordinary LED screens is their inability to achieve extreme brightness and deep darkness. While the visual effect may appear excellent to the human eye, camera capture often results in a host of problems, including brightness distortion and moiré patterns, which undoubtedly increase the risks of filming.

To address this issue, EXCO VISION has collaborated with partners to conduct continuous customization and R&D tailored to the needs of the film and television industry, creating a screen specially designed for camera capture. Boasting a resolution of up to 150 million pixels and display performance with three times the brightness of ordinary screens, the screen has successfully overcome a series of challenges in virtual production, such as the inability to shoot action scenes. The more complex the light and shadow changes, the brighter the highlight areas and the richer the details in the shadow areas of the screen, resulting in an ultra-realistic effect captured by the camera. This not only saves the production team a great deal of time spent waiting for natural light changes and scene transitions but also marks a major breakthrough in the field of virtual production.

This stands as the largest LED display screen built and put into use in China to date.

02 Explosive Efficiency Gains, Accelerating the Process of Film and Television

Creation Through long-term technical precipitation and practical testing, EXCO VISION has always adhered to high standards and launched a new generation of cinema-grade products that achieve a high degree of compatibility with the market in terms of systems and virtual production servers. Its solutions offer the dual advantages of superior quality and high efficiency, significantly enhancing visual effects while reducing production costs for film crews—a standout merit that cannot be ignored. Notably, in the virtual production scenes of The Mystery of the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, the solution assisted Alibaba Culture & Entertainment's Virtual-Real Calibration Software in seamlessly integrating virtual backgrounds with real foregrounds.

Empowered by advanced algorithms, the software has achieved a leap in efficiency in scene calibration: the time required for calibration has been reduced from 30 hours to just 20 minutes, representing an efficiency improvement of nearly 100 times. Any issues encountered during actual shooting are real-time fed back to the LED screen, with synchronous adjustments made in post-production. This has boosted filming efficiency by 40% and cut labor costs by 60%, marking a pivotal breakthrough in the field of virtual production.

03 Innovative Creative Expression, Driving the Transformation of the Film and Television Trend

As the Chinese TV drama with the most virtual production scenes to date, The Mystery of the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival also shines with its innovative scene content.

The drama features a unique narrative structure that advances the plot through family units, resulting in numerous lyrical segments with distinct atmospheric settings and intense emotional connotations—scenes that are extremely difficult to replicate in real life, yet perfectly realized through virtual production with LED display screens as the core infrastructure.

In fact, virtual production is gradually becoming an indispensable key link in the film and television production process. The depth of virtual technology and the richness of virtual assets have emerged as one of the core elements for the differentiated competition of video platforms in the future. The drive to advance virtual production is not limited to long-video platforms; even the short drama industry, which is striving to break free from homogeneous competition, has actively embraced this technology. Going forward, leading platforms will conduct increasingly extensive practice in virtual production, and this technology is quietly reshaping the landscape of the film and television industry with an irresistible momentum, propelling the entire industry into a new era of development.

In the past two years, technological accumulation and breakthroughs have injected strong impetus into industrial development. Relying on its solid R&D strength, EXCO VISION has successfully implemented a series of independently developed products and solutions in major universities and radio and television projects, achieving positive results. Furthermore, with its outstanding technological and product advantages, EXCO VISION has stood out in the fierce market competition. The continuous completion of studio projects and the efficient production of film and television dramas are the best rewards for EXCO VISION's years of commitment to innovation and in-depth technical research.

In the future, EXCO VISION aspires to drive the industrialization of the film and television industry with the power of display technology, unlocking more possibilities for the entire sector.