The VP Futures programme: A fractionated training environment for UK creative companies

How do trainees from diverse disciplinary backgrounds manage entry to Virtual Production (VP) – a convergence zone where game design, real-time technologies, and traditional filmmaking meet? Developed in response to skills shortages highlighted in the 2021 and 2023 StoryFutures Academy VP Skills reports, the VP Futures training programme also served as an R&D intervention for creative companies engaging with this evolving landscape, the programme brought together Epic Games and Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to co-deliver an intensive series of masterclasses and mentorship, guiding eight selected companies through 8 weeks of de-risked R&D grounded in real-world production practices. Using Playbooks, vlogs, and VP Skills Matrix audits as evidence, this paper focuses on three companies with differing disciplinary backgrounds – animation and game engines, documentary filmmaking, and theatre/immersive design – to examine how creative teams established anchor points from their home disciplines into VP, shifting their practice as their understanding evolved. An exploratory reframing of VP is given, using Galison’s concepts of ‘trading zones’ and ‘interactional expertise’, alongside Ash’s concept of the ‘interface envelope’. The paper examines how the VP Futures programme, and VP training more widely, can be understood as a fractionated training-trading environment – where teams from diverse ‘fractions’ of the creative industries are able to design and work with VP interface environments and develop interdisciplinary capability in VP through shared practice.