io9.gizmodo.com: When people think of Industrial Light and Magic, they obviously think of great visual effects, as well as the countless classic movies the company has worked on. But what you might not realize is that for many of those films, some of the effects were completely impossible until ILM specifically created the technology for them.
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Another Mandalorian, Season 2 article to remind me that I need to watch this show? Yes, yes indeed. I think this is the third I’ve read this semester in fact. ILM’s tool that this article discusses is fascinating. Using screens, the filmmakers have even more ability to construct the world around the actors. The video showcases this, you can see what the set looks like from behind the camera and how they can manipulate the screens between scenes. The directors, producers, and managers all spoke very highly of the technology and how it has enhanced the filming of the second season. Stagecraft 2.0 gives really strong editing power along the walls of the set, and the ceiling, making it even more powerful for filming. This is really interesting, and yet again, as I said before, I am reminded of how much I want to go watch this show! I would love to see how this technology enhanced the viewing experience.
It'll be interesting to see how this piece & system of technology evolves and is used for other locations. I think that for shows and worlds such as that of Star Wars and the Mandalorian, there's this already baked in sense of suspension of disbelief- we know that these locations are not meant to represent anywhere that we would have actually gone, so there's no real expectation for it to look like something we know directly. That gives a little bit of wiggle room to the visual effects artists, since they're not trying to exactly duplicate an existing location. But what if someone wanted to use the Stagecraft system to recreate New York City, or another well-known place? Would the technology, even with its constant evolution and upgrades, be able to successfully create the visual feeling of such an iconic time or place? I am curious to see what kind of projects make the most use of this.
I love seeing articles about the Mandalorian and get super excited when I see anything new about the behind the scenes. Not going to lie, I have seen a ton of articles about this technology however this is the first article I have seen that explicitly said what the technology was and who had created this technology. I think any innovation like this is so cool and although I don't think this technological advancement is made for every sort of film making I do think it would be a huge asset in the fantasy/scifi realm. I can't help but think how much better the prequels to this series could have been if they had this technology or just how amazing the filming process would be for series like game of thrones or lord of the rings. This technology would not be as affective as going to a real place in my opinion but it would totally enhance the experience for an actor in a fiction world and setting. I think the mandalorian using this technology and promoting it in the behind the scenes will just inspire more people to be curious and perhaps make even better technological changes.
When I first saw / heard of the technology all that ILM had created and was using for the Mandalorian all I could think about was ohh boy I’m gonna lose my job potential in the film industry. But now that I’ve seen the show and how they are moving to use this technology I get more and more excited to move into this as a field. The integration and the communication between all elements of the production is fascinating. We finally have a world where we can in real time adjust the environment that we are in. In the past we have been limited by what is physically possible or what we could do in the post production process months after when we may not be able to re-block something to fit exactly what we want / need. Now with the technology we are able to use we can in real time create and design worlds to the exact specifications. My only wonder now is how long will this take to trickle through the industry and move to other fields.
I remember roughly a year ago, learning about LED volumes and this shooting technique about a year ago, funnily enough through news week comments. Even in just the past year, I myself have learned a lot about it, but at the same time the technology has become even more powerful. Between these articles and my brother-in-law, who is a cinematographer, I have learned an incredible amount about this production process. My biggest question about this process, something I addressed in my previous comment a year ago, was how they dealt with the issue of the LED’s natural strobing at 50Hz, and how this worked with the cameras. I learned that on a production with a volume, there is a team called the “brain bar” who, in addition to running the LED volume, also sync up the strobing rate of the volume with the frame rate of the camera, to ensure there is no flickering in the shot. At first this sounded like such a simple task, but the more I think about it the more it shocks me. This adjustment would need to be made every time the cameras begin to roll. Is the adjustment made on the camera side, or the volume side? It has been incredible to see this technology develop over just the past year, between watching productions that shot on a volume and actually seeing behind the scenes shots from a location with a volume. I am interested to see where this technology will be in the next year, two, five, ten years.
I am probably not the first to say it, and I most certainly will not be the last to say it, but the quality of new Disney television shows streaming on Disney+ has been elite. From High School Musical: The Musical: The Series to WandaVision, they for sure hit the standard I expect from a big monopoly corporation like Disney. The Mandalorian is especially up to this caliber, considering it wedges into the comprehensive Star Wars universe as well. The ability for them to film the entire series in one major studio with interchangeable sets is revolutionary. This is not the first time Disney has created new technology for one of their productions either. For Tangled, the Rapunzel movie back in 2010, they developed a new program entirely just to animate and light her hair. I cannot wait to see where they continue to take their large projects and skill sets.
I love reading articles about the amazing technologies that are being used to create the content that we watch so much now in this digital age. It is crazy how much the production process is being fundamentally changed because of advances in LED screen capabilities. These innovations bring a lot of questions into play about whether or not certain technical areas of specialization are going to become obsolete over the next few years. As a Scenic Designer, I am fine because there will still always be environments to design and worlds to create. But for the artisans craftsman technicians carpenters and builders who create all of the real physical settings, their jobs are at stake because of advances in technology. This just goes to show that we have a labor problem as a society and that has technology advances more and more jobs will be lost due to automation. I believe that the use of a LED screen needs to be finessed and balanced between digital and practical elements while filming a TV show or movie. I feel like Mandalorian definitely did that well and I’m so excited to see the third season.
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