What Is a Driving Plate? From Rear Projection to 360° ICVFX
A driving plate is footage of a real journey, recorded from a moving vehicle and played back behind performers so that a scene set in a car, bus, train or boat can be shot without anyone driving. The performers sit in a stationary vehicle on a stage, and the plate supplies the world moving past. A flat plate covers one direction – the view out of the window it was framed for. A 360° plate covers every direction at once, so every window, every mirror and every reflective surface shows the correct part of the same drive at the same instant.
What is a driving plate used for?
Dialogue scenes in moving vehicles are the case these plates are built for. Shooting on a public road with a camera car, lighting and a full crew is weather-dependent and hard to repeat; a plate moves that problem into pre-production and leaves the stage day for performance. The same file also drives reflections on bodywork and glass, and image-based lighting.
The vehicle type sets the geometry. Point-of-view height is published on every product page and is constant within a type: 130 cm for cars, 200 cm for boats, 220 cm for trains, 310 cm for buses. Two plates of the same vehicle type therefore cut together without the horizon jumping. Of the 437 plates in the full driving plate catalogue, 391 are cars, 17 trains, 14 boats and 14 buses.
What is the difference between a flat plate and a 360° plate?
A flat plate is a rectangle. It solves the shot it was framed for and nothing else: point the camera at the opposite window and there is no material behind the actor. The alternative is several flat plates from several directions, which then have to be matched to each other in exposure, colour and timing.
A 360° plate is a sphere: equirectangular 360 × 180°, with a usable field of 360 × 125° – roughly 55° of the sphere falls outside it. The sky is inside the usable field. Because the whole surround exists in one file, the plate is not tied to a camera direction chosen months earlier.
Why does every window show the same moment of the same drive?
Because the plate came off one lens and one sensor. The rig is gyro-stabilized and stitching-free up to 16K, and that single optical path makes the whole surround one recording of one place:
- One viewpoint, taken from a single point in space, on the vehicle's own line on the road.
- Coherent motion: one sensor, one shutter, one rolling-shutter behaviour across the whole surround.
- No parallax to reconcile. Close objects – pillars, signs, oncoming vehicles – stay simple and solid, and nothing in frame is reconstructed.
- One exposure and one white balance all the way round and all the way through the take, which is what makes a plate usable as the sole source for reflections and image-based lighting.
- One colour response in every direction, and one lens flare that travels coherently as the vehicle turns.
On stage, windscreen, side windows, rear window and wing mirrors all read the same second of the same drive.
What does ICVFX mean?
ICVFX stands for in-camera visual effects: the background is present on set, photographed together with the actors, and the shot is finished in camera rather than replaced later. In practice ICVFX today usually means an LED volume – walls and often a ceiling of LED panels – with the on-set camera tracked so the perspective on the wall updates as it moves.
Driving scenes suit ICVFX because the actors are enclosed in glass. Whatever is on the wall is in the windscreen reflection and in the actor's eyes: the material that fills the wall lights the scene.
How is a plate used on an LED volume, in projection, and in post?
On an LED volume
The plate is mapped so the vehicle sits inside the sphere. The wall lights the car and the performers, and reflections come for free. Resolution per degree matters more than total pixel count, because only a slice of the sphere is ever on screen: 8K at 7680 × 3840 carries about 21 pixels per horizontal degree, 16K at 15360 × 7680 about 43.
In projection
Front and rear projection put the background on a screen around the vehicle. The screen covers less of the surround than a volume, so the plate is cropped to the directions it serves; fill light is weaker than on an LED wall.
As a background in post
The vehicle is shot against greenscreen or in a lit interior, and the plate is composited behind it and reflected into the glass. The full sphere is the asset: the compositor can re-frame and re-orient without going back for more material.
How did background techniques develop?
- Rear projection. Projected onto a translucent screen from behind the vehicle. Simple to rig, limited in brightness and contrast.
- Front projection. Projected from the camera axis onto a retro-reflective screen. Brighter and sharper, sensitive to alignment.
- Greenscreen. The background is replaced after the shoot. Freedom in post, at the cost of interactive light: nothing on set is lit by the background.
- The LED volume. The background is emissive rather than projected, so it lights the scene as well as filling the frame. This is the current basis of ICVFX work, and the technique that most rewards a plate covering the whole surround.
What should you check before choosing a plate?
| Check | Why it matters | What is published |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution per degree | How close the camera can get | 8K ≈ 21 px/°, 16K ≈ 43 px/° |
| Frame rate | A mismatch forces retiming | 24 and 25 fps both occur |
| Gamma encoding | Sets the colour pipeline | ACEScct (AP1) and HLG (Rec.2020) both occur |
| Point-of-view height | Fixes the horizon between cuts | 130 / 200 / 220 / 310 cm by vehicle type |
| Duration | Continuous takes, not loops | Median 4 min 05 s; 430 of the 437 published as of August 2026 at least two minutes |
Every plate is ProRes 422 HQ at a 180° shutter angle, other formats on request, and carries a Sample variant at 0 SEK: ten seconds, full resolution, watermarked, so the checks above run on the file itself. Further pipeline questions are answered in the driving plate FAQ.
Location and time of day are the other axes. Five cities carry a full day and a full night set: Washington D.C. plates at 53 day and 26 night, New York plates at 24 and 14, London plates at 7 and 13, Stockholm at 30 and 15, and Los Angeles at 30 and 11. All 142 16K plates come from London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Big Sur, Upplands-Bro or the train series. Eight of the sixteen locations have a collection page of their own, and the collection index groups the catalogue by destination, by time of day and by vehicle; the remaining locations are reached through the full catalogue. If the road you need is not there, custom shoots start at 125 000 SEK inside the EU and 250 000 SEK outside it – see custom driving plate shoots.
Key takeaways
- A driving plate is footage of a real journey played back behind performers so a vehicle scene can be shot on a stage.
- A flat plate covers one direction; a 360° plate is equirectangular 360 × 180° with a usable field of 360 × 125°.
- One lens and one sensor give one exposure, one white balance and one colour response all the way round.
- ICVFX puts the background on set with the actors; on an LED volume the plate lights the car as well as filling the frame.
- Check before buying: 8K ≈ 21 px/° or 16K ≈ 43 px/°; 24 or 25 fps; ACEScct (AP1) or HLG (Rec.2020); heights 130/200/220/310 cm; median length 4 min 05 s.
- 388 plates, 16 locations, five countries. 8K 25 000 SEK, 16K 37 500 SEK, excluding VAT; free ten-second sample on every plate.
388 plates · free sample on every one
See one on your own wall first
Every plate carries a free ten-second sample at full resolution, watermarked. Put it on the volume, judge the stitch-free sphere and the motion, and decide before anything is licensed.
One lens, gyro-stabilized, up to 16K. 14 locations in five countries.
