star wars shift from film to digital techniques

The techniques pioneered by “The Mandalorian” are now spreading across the industry, because they allow for cinema-quality special effects within the tighter budgetary and time constraints of television production.

it really exceeded all of our expectations.” “And to be honest, we weren’t sure that it was going to work when we started. “The Mandalorian was the first time that we had used real-time graphics at this scale to completely wrap around a set and photograph it directly and put it right in the show,” says Rob Bredow, chief creative officer at ILM. Though tested beforehand, producers had their doubts about the set-up. “The Mandalorian” is filmed in a partially virtual world. That would not have been possible using conventional green-screen techniques, says ILM’s general manager, Janet Lewin, who co-produced the show. This approach also helpfully lights the actors realistically, with the scenery reflecting off the Mandalorian’s silver armour, for example. The result is that the video wall, from the camera’s perspective, behaves exactly like a window looking onto a 3D environment. As the camera moves, the view on the screen changes accordingly. The photorealistic imagery that appears on the screen is generated from a 3D virtual world (Unreal Engine was used during the development process). The wall is 6 metres (20 feet) high by 55 metres wide, and composed of more than a thousand individual LED screens. This is a facility (or a “volume”, as ILM calls it) in which a giant curved video wall is positioned behind the actors. The shot of the Mandalorian walking across the ice was one of many created on a film set in Manhattan Beach, California, using its “StageCraft” technology (pictured).

Star wars shift from film to digital techniques