Now that The Mandalorian season 1 is over, a few behind-the-scenes photos have made their way online via Ian Milham, the virtual production supervisor over at Industrial Light & Magic Visual Effects. And we’re learning how showrunner/creator Jon Favreau used the ILMVFX camera technology to make his show look like none before it.
So a couple years ago I had a talk with @ILMVFX about real time environments. They wouldn't share too much, but I still joined up. Next thing you know, they hand us the keys to THIS.
— Ian Milham (@Monkey_Pants) January 24, 2020
More to come as they release it. pic.twitter.com/n1J5QxzKnT
Much of The Mandalorian was filmed in front of photo-realistic screens using cutting-edge stagecraft technology. If you, like me, have no idea what that is, it means using rear-projected LED screens to create “a reactive environment that essentially works as an immersive real-time green screen,” according to Slashfilm.
Take the photo below, the series premiere. You can see that the screen surrounds the entire set, but it’s not the boring kind of green screen that special effects technicians later fill in with detail. There’s already something there to work with:
From Slashfilm: https://t.co/hPsHmcKOHQ pic.twitter.com/ZWJnYDlj4E
— Crown_For_A_King (@Crown_ForAKing) January 28, 2020
Below, you really get a feel for how large the screen has to be for the stagecraft tech to work properly. But obviously, the results are worth it.
From Slashfilm: https://t.co/hPsHmcKOHQ pic.twitter.com/VVh9Co42Zx
— Crown_For_A_King (@Crown_ForAKing) January 28, 2020
This kind of tech is especially helpful when you have a character moving quickly across a vast environment, like when Kuiil (Nick Nolte) rode with Baby Yoda through the desert of Nevarro, trying to get to the Razor Crest before the scout troopers on their speeder bikes catch him. That scene was seamlessly done and very convincing, even though we knew a lot of what we were seeing was computer generated after the fact:
From Slashfilm: https://t.co/hPsHmcKOHQ pic.twitter.com/vw7mNO5tm1
— Crown_For_A_King (@Crown_ForAKing) January 28, 2020
If you want technical jargon on how all this works, Milham is here for you:
One fun thing about this shot, where we're doing a virtual extension of the Razorcrest, is that we were tracking the practical spotlight on that crane and parenting a virtual one in the scene to it, so as the real light moves across the cockpit, the virtual one matches. pic.twitter.com/FFpaboq7G0
— Ian Milham (@Monkey_Pants) January 27, 2020
Notice how the screen behind this set is dotted with thousands of stars, an effective space backdrop.
This is really cool stuff. It’s not filming on location with all-real environments, but it feels more intimate and grounded than filming in front of a green screen. It’ll be exciting to see how the stagecraft technology will be used to film season 2 of The Mandalorian, which is in production now.
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