WiC Watches—Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian
Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian Episode 2 “Legacy” – Pedro Pascal on the set of THE MANDALORIAN. Image Courtesy Disney+
Chapter 6: “Process”
In this episode of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, showrunners Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni dive into pre-visualization, the method by which each episode of The Mandalorian season 1 was brought to life. Pre-vis allows each director to see an entire episode play out before they even film the first shot.
By animating the entire episode beforehand using Unreal Engine technology, which enables directors to actually “film” scenes in a virtual reality setting, production is streamlined. And given how complicated a lot of The Mandalorian is — a showdown between a band of bounty hunters and a group of Mandalorian warriors doesn’t just happen, for instance — being able to plan like this is invaluable.
Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian Episode 1 “Directing” – Baz Idoine and Dave Filoni on the set of THE MANDALORIAN. Image Courtesy Disney+
Because Filoni comes from an animation background — The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels — he’s very comfortable playing in the pre-vis sandbox. But newer converts like Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) are impressed with how animating an episode beforehand makes filming scenes with actors much more efficient; he compares it to how movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are made. Pre-vis is pretty much everywhere now.
Rick Famuyiwa talks about directing “Chapter 6: The Prisoner,” where Mando helps a group of bounty hunters free the Twi’lek mercenary Qin from a New Republic prisoner transport ship. He explains how pre-vis helped him frame the action-packed scene where Mando takes out several New Republic security droids.
Chapter 6. Pedro Pascal is the Mandalorian, Clancy Brown is Burg and Bill Burr is Mayfield in THE MANDALORIAN, exclusively on Disney+
Some other topics on the table:
- Favreau ad Filoni discussed the movies that inspired the story in The Mandalorian, which included Westerns like Red River and the Godfather movies, combined with Akira Kurosawa films like Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress. All of those were required viewing for each director in season 1. Incidentally, The Hidden Fortress is also one of the movies George Lucas cited as an influence on the original Star Wars, so they’re going back to the source here.
- Directors Rick Famuyiw and Deborah Chow were very impressed with Favreau’s pre-visualization process and couldn’t wait to begin filming season 2, which is due out in October.
- Favreau talked about this kind of pre-vis as an ever-evolving technique he really got going with on his Jungle Book and Lion King live-action movies, and it will be even more advanced for The Mandalorian season 2.
Because pre-visualization and the Unreal Engine VR technique has been discussed in previous episodes, “Chapter 6: Process” wasn’t as interesting or exciting as it could have been. Still, it’s very cool to know how Favreau is constantly changing and honing the technique so that it remains on the cutting edge.