This Blew My Mind

Truly, we are living in the future.

Over 50 percent of The Mandalorian Season 1 was filmed using this ground-breaking new methodology, eliminating the need for location shoots entirely. Instead, actors in The Mandalorian performed in an immersive and massive 20’ high by 270-degree semicircular LED video wall and ceiling with a 75’-diameter performance space, where the practical set pieces were combined with digital extensions on the screens. Digital 3D environments created by ILM played back interactively on the LED walls, edited in real-time during the shoot, which allowed for pixel-accurate tracking and perspective-correct 3D imagery rendered at high resolution via systems powered by NVIDIA GPUs. The environments were lit and rendered from the perspective of the camera to provide parallax in real-time, as if the camera were really capturing the physical environment with accurate interactive light on the actors and practical sets, giving showrunner Jon Favreau, executive producer and director Dave Filoni, visual effects supervisor Richard Bluff, and cinematographers Greig Fraser and Barry Baz Idoine, and the episodic directors the ability to make concrete creative choices for visual effects-driven work during photography and achieve real-time in-camera composites on set.

The technology and workflow required to make in-camera compositing and effects practical for on-set use combined the ingenuity of partners such as Golem Creations, Fuse, Lux Machina, Profile Studios, and ARRI together with ILM’s StageCraft virtual production filmmaking platform and ultimately the real-time interactivity of the Unreal Engine platform.

4 Replies to “This Blew My Mind”

  1. I need REAL TIME FINAL PIXELS IN-CAMERA!!

    Please tell me one of your bands rented this soundstage for a day.
    For your next video.
    To fully capture your demented vision.

  2. I’m impressed with my own cheapskatery. I refuse to pay Disney $6.99 per month. Verizon says they’ll give me Mandalorian for free, but I honestly couldn’t tell if I would pay more or less with the plan that gets me there. Hidden fees, undercoating, overcoating, jedi surcharge, etc.
    Also the proposed plan had some potential for bandwidth throttling. DO NOT THROTTLE MY BANDWIDTH

    1. Not to influence your decision one way or the other, but I think there’s also some bundling package with Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN that might save a buck or two.

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