A Christmas Day special for S4C, produced by Filmiau Twm Twm — and the first virtual production in the broadcaster's history. Three shoot days, two workflows, one Welsh elf on the shelf.
Allan o Sync BTS
Filmiau Twm Twm came to us with the brief for an S4C Christmas Day special built around a simple, charming premise. Actor Llyr Ifans — feeling allan o sync with the festive season — sets out to find his perfect Christmas, celebrating with the characters of his village along the way. The catch: for much of the programme, Llyr appears as an elf on the shelf. Shrunk down, tucked into Christmas trees, perched beside baubles, peering out from mantelpieces.
Director Gwion Hallam brought us in to make it work in-camera. The schedule was tight, the visual gag depended on precise scale and placement, and the show needed to feel handmade — not green-screen-flat.
We split the production across three shoot days at Vedri, matching the workflow to the type of shot.
For the elf-on-the-shelf scenes, we pre-shot the village locations as plates and loaded them into Assimilate Live FX. Llyr performed against green, and we scaled and positioned him live into each plate — director, talent and crew watching the final composite on monitors as we shot.
No post-only reveals. What Gwion saw on the monitor was the shot.
For the wider narrative scenes, we rigged the Blackmagic Pyxis 6K with a Mo-Sys StarTracker Max and fed live tracking data into Unreal Engine. Fully 3D environments with perspective-correct parallax — Dafydd (dop) could move the camera freely, and the virtual world moved with it.
Three days, two distinct workflows, one team. Days one and two were the plate days — Llyr performing micro-scale beats against green, with each composite locked off on the monitor before we moved on. The pace was brisk: with the final image visible live, we could approve framing, scale and continuity in the room, not at a post house weeks later.
Day three switched modes. Mo-Sys tracking on the Pyxis, Unreal scenes rendering in real time, Will Phillip Moss a VP supervising in the virtual space as if it were a physical set. Andrew Lai handled the VP tech across all three days; Daniel Parry Evans led VP on the floor alongside Phillip.
The first programme in S4C’s history made with virtual production —
and the first to broadcast a real-time composite on a Welsh-language channel.
Allan o Sync aired on Christmas Day to a national Welsh-language audience. It was the first programme in S4C’s history to be made using virtual production, and the first to feature real-time compositing on the channel.
For us, it was proof of the model we’ve been building. Broadcast-quality VP doesn’t require a London facility or budget. A Welsh studio, a Welsh director, a Welsh-language broadcast — made with the same real-time tools you’d find on the biggest stages.
Come and see the stage, meet the team, and talk through your project. No sales pitch.
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VEDRI is based in North Wales, bringing virtual production to a region that’s never had it. Local expertise, real kit, fair pricing.
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