fxguide: Richard Bluff is the Production Visual Effects Supervisor, for Disney+’s The Mandalorian. We spoke to Richard in March 2020 about season one of the hit Star Wars show and we recently caught up with him again to discuss the advances in ILM StageCraft 2.0 that were used for the new LED stage built for the second season.
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I remember reading about this back in March of 2020 when their first article came out about this new idea for a virtual stage. I think this is one of the coolest ideas for expanding how much you can do with scenery in shows like these. I can see how traveling to locations and scouting for different sets could get costly and take up a lot of time, so this versatility in being able to set the scene anywhere that they want is incredibly useful. The Mandalorian is incredibly unique in terms of scenic design, as is all of Star Wars, so being able to customize whatever they want seems like an amazing asset to the show. I have enjoyed watching the evolution of this set play out. The fact that they are increasing the scale of the stage and expanding upon the technology they are using means that it is proving to be very successful. The Mandalorian does not seem to be going off of Disney+ anytime soon, so I think this will be really awesome to see how this expands in the future.
Movie and TV sets continue to feel like a sort of mystery to me. I think I read a news article on the way they filmed The Mandalorian last year, and it blew my mind. It makes so much sense (in the coolest way possible) to line up depth perception in a dynamic LED set/screen with your camera movements and use that synchronicity to create realistic looking backgrounds. From the stills and trailer clips I've seen, the show continues to look convincing and fantastic for a Disney-produced series in the Star Wars universe. I'm really glad that the article included the annotated photo of the set and stations around there, because it gave good context as to who and what is actually essential to the production in the moment. The amount of work that goes into creating realistic environments is astounding, especially when thinking about organic elements such as smoke, haze, or water.
When I read the title, I was assuming that the “virtual productions innovations” had to do with filming in the era of COVID-19, but it just means how digital the filming process is. I found it fascinating that they have pre-created the backgrounds so they can film and review it live. This may not be new, but the few behind the scenes things I’ve seen about superhero movies, they always seem to use greenscreens and the little dot suits, but they seem to be doing a hybrid of that here. From the photos in the article, it looks like most of the costumes are real and a significant portion of the set (minus the background) is real. The LED wall is cool and I guess that can stay put and you can just swap out the set in front of it as needed, rotating through a couple different sound stages to let the art department catch up with you.
If my memory serves me correctly, there was an article a few weeks ago that I read about the LED tech they were able to use to film season two of the Mandalorian– which is what this delves into, in greater detail. The discussion is really interesting; while it goes beyond my own knowledge of the technology and scenic design I found it fascinating to read about. The set up looks incredibly complex (with a massive budget too, I’m sure). The diagrams included in the article helped my understanding, and it is definitely a very realistic finished product based on stills and clips I’ve seen. They are creating worlds and spaces that are from a large assortment of planets, sometimes looking nothing like what we are used to seeing on Earth, so creating a realistic set makes the show even more interesting– I hope to be able to watch it sometime!
This was amazing to read and so freaking interesting to me. Not gonna lie some of the in depth ILM parts did fly over my head on first read, but the more I looked into it the more interesting it became. As a huge Star Wars fan I loved to get inside scoops on what happens backstage and how the creators are able to provide such an amazing product. There was a short docu series released by disney loosely going over the behind the scenes production of the Mandalorian however to read an in-depth article about it, I realized just how much thought and innovation was put into the tech. Something that I loved about the original trilogy was how innovative it was for its time with the technical aspects. I kept telling everyone that watching The Mandalorian gave me the same feeling as watching the original trilogy for the first time, I now think that it wasn't just the story but the entire package of the show that allowed me to have that sort of feeling. TV and movie tech has always been something I'm very interested in going into and I honestly would love to see even more article about the behind the scenes.
I, like James, remember reading an article about this back in March 2020 and being absolutely astounded by the new ways of creating virtual space. I'm not very familiar with sound stages, how they work, or what they used to/ typically are like so I don't have a lot to work with as far as prior knowledge. I think in my head the backgrounds were always real, concrete sets that were made for these shows and that also always confused me because I couldn't imagine how they could possibly stay in budget. I never really got into Star Wars but I'm hoping Mandalorian will be my in when I finally have the time and will to continue watching it. (I got like 2 episodes in, really liked it, then never watched it again.) The visuals are just so dynamic and beautiful I kind of got hooked on the look but never returned. I do wish this article had given a more in depth view and possibly more pictures of what's going on with the integration between actual set and actors and movement and the backgrounds.
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