For decades, green- and bluescreen compositing was the go-to solution for bringing fantastic environments and actors together on the screen. ( Industrial Light & Magic did pioneering work with the technology for the original Star Wars movie.) However, when characters are wearing highly reflective costumes, as is the case with Mando (Pedro Pascal), the title character of The Mandalorian, the reflection of green- and bluescreen in the wardrobe causes costly problems in post-production. In addition, it’s challenging for actors to perform in a “sea of blue,” and for key creatives to have input on shot designs and composition.

75315 Imperial Light Cruiser: Hands-On Review | The Rambling 75315 Imperial Light Cruiser: Hands-On Review | The Rambling

The virtual LED environments were hugely successful, but traditional greenscreen still played a significant role in the production of The Mandalorian, and it was always on hand — especially for situations where the frustum was too wide for the system to adequately respond. The Volume was also capable of producing virtual greenscreen on the LED wall, which could be any size, and any hue or saturation of green. Among the benefits of virtual green-screen were that it required no time to set up or rig, and its size could be set to precisely outline the subject to be replaced — which greatly minimized and sometimes even eliminated green spill. According to Idoine, the production used 50mm, 65mm, 75mm, 100mm, 135mm, 150mm and 180mm Ultra Vistas that range from T2 to T2.8, and he and Fraser tended to expose at T2.5-T3.5. “Dan Sasaki gave us two prototype Ultra Vistas to test in June 2018,” he says, “and from that we worked out what focal-length range to build.The production was looking to minimize the amount of green- and bluescreen photography and requirements of post compositing to improve the quality of the environment for the actors. The LED screen provides a convincing facsimile of a real set/location and avoids the green void that can be challenging for performers.

Mandalorian Nightfall Light-up Canvas - Menkind Star Wars The Mandalorian Nightfall Light-up Canvas - Menkind

Fortunately, says Fraser, Favreau wanted The Mandalorian to have a visual aesthetic that would match that of the original Star Wars. This meant a more “grounded” camera, with slow pans and tilts, and non-aggressive camera moves — an aesthetic that helped to hide the system latency. “In addition to using some of the original camera language in Star Wars, Jon is deeply inspired by old Westerns and samurai films, so he also wanted to borrow a bit from those, especially Westerns,” Fraser notes. “ The Mandalorian is, in essence, a gunslinger, and he’s very methodical. This gave us a set of parameters that helped define the look of the show. At no point will you see an 8mm fisheye lens in someone’s face. That just doesn’t work within this language. Favreau had just completed The Jungle Book and was embarking on The Lion Kingfor Disney — both visual-effects heavy films. This concept was initially proposed by Kim Libreri of Epic Games while he was at Lucasfilm and it has become the basis of the technology that “Holy Grail” that makes a live-action Star Wars television series possible.Scanning is a faster, looser process than photogrammetry and it is done from multiple positions and viewpoints. For scanning, the more parallax introduced, the better the software can resolve the 3-D geometry. Damm created a custom rig where the scanner straps six cameras to their body which all fire simultaneously as the scanner moves about the location. This allows them to gather six times the images in the same amount of time — about 1,800 on average. We chose the LF for a couple reasons,” explains Fraser. “ Star Wars has a long history of anamorphic photography, and that aspect ratio is really key. We tested spherical lenses and cropping to 2.40, but it didn’t feel right. It felt very contemporary, not like the Star Wars we grew up with. Additionally, the LF’s larger sensor changes the focal length of the lens that we use for any given shot to a longer lens and reduces the overall depth of field. The T2.3 of the Ultra Vistas is more like a T0.8 in Super 35, so with less depth of field, it was easier to put the LED screen out of focus faster, which avoided a lot of issues with moiré. It allows the inherent problems in a 2D screen displaying 3D images to fall off in focus a lot faster, so the eye can’t tell that those buildings that appear to be 1,000 feet away are actually being projected on a 2D screen only 20 feet from the actor.

Mandalorian : This Is the Way - American Society of The Mandalorian : This Is the Way - American Society of

We all felt a little like film students at the start of this,” Fraser says. “It’s all new, and we were discovering the limitations and abilities of the system as we went along. We continually pushed the system to break it and see where the edges of the envelope were — but the technology continued to evolve and allow us to push that envelope further. We’d say, ‘Oh, man, I wish we could …’ and someone at the Brain Bar would say, ‘Yeah, I think we can!’ And the next day we’d have that ability. It was pretty amazing.” We should’ve known things would wrap up this way the instant that Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) moseyed into The Mandalorian and pulled focus from Mando. Miraculously disgorged from the Sarlacc pit that devoured him in Return of the Jedi (a silly twist canonized in spinoff properties), Fett had come to reclaim the armor sported by one of The Mandalorian’s most charismatic new characters, a Tatooine marshal (Timothy Olyphant) who wore Fett’s gear like a knight riding into battle against a dragon (actually a sandworm/sand-shark monster). But Fett was really onscreen to reclaim The Mandalorian for that sector of the Star Wars fan base that refuses to accept anything that feels like a revision, subversion, or expansion of what they already know they like — particularly when the new iteration asks them to look beyond all the lovely, shiny things onscreen and think about whether their own relationship with the tried-and-true elements of Star Wars is healthy. Another challenge on production design is the concept that every set must be executed in full 360 degrees. While in traditional filmmaking a production designer may be tempted to shortcut a design knowing that the camera will only see a small portion of a particular set, in this world the set that is off camera is just as important as the set that is seen on camera.

That was our goal,” says Fraser, who had previously explored the Star Wars galaxy while shooting Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ( AC Feb. ’17). “We wanted to create an environment that was conducive not just to giving a composition line-up to the effects, but to actually capturing them in real time, photo-real and in-camera, so that the actors were in that environment in the right lighting — all at the moment of photography.” There are many benefits to the virtual greenscreen. It is nearly immediate, requiring no rigging, stands, time to set up or additional lighting. It can be any size, meaning the green is really only the perfect size to outline the subject to be replaced. When this happens there is no (or extremely limited) green spill on the actors or reflected in other objects around the set. This all but eliminates the requirement for de-spilling green in post; a timely and tedious process. The Volume is a difficult technology to understand until you stand there in front of the ‘projection’ on the LED screen, put an actor in front of it, and move the camera around,” Fraser says. “It’s hard to grasp. It’s not really rear projection; it’s not a TransLite because [it is a real-time, interactive image with 3D objects] and has the proper parallax; and it’s photo-real, not animated, but it is generated through a gaming engine.” And so it is complete. Overall I appreciate the look of the craft. The silhouette fits nicely, and the underlying technic elements in the conning tower provide a sturdy handle, improving the overall swooshability of the model. The tiny TIE fighters are gorgeous. One can be placed in the opening at the front, and pushed forwad. Unfortunately, this mechanism is only functional when the cabin lid is open.