The Mandalorian brought Star Wars space battles to life, in a cool and unique way, using some state-of-the-art effects. Fans are eagerly awaiting the second season to the hit, Disney+ series. The filming of season 2 is already well underway, and it is reported that James Mangold and Robert Rodriguez will direct parts of it. Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni created the popular show, which has been praised for its phenomenal special effects.
The visual effects used on The Mandalorian have been shared and explained by those who work on the show. The show has used both new and older effects to immerse viewers in the Star Wars galaxy. One of the techniques used by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) involved taking massive LED screens and placing them in the background of shots to create immersive, real-time environments. Old matte paintings from the original Star Wars movies were even taken from the ILM archives and reshot.
Ian Milham, a Virtual Production Supervisor at ILM who works on The Mandalorian, took to Twitter to pull the curtains back on some of the visual effects techniques they used. Milham posted a series of tweets with captions explaining some of the techniques, along with accompanying gifs and images of them in action. In one of the tweets, Milham shares, “For space fights, we populated the scene with lasers and explosions in different quadrants and distances, hooked them up to custom buttons on the iPad, and let the director go to town. Like playing X-Wing vs. TIE on a 70 ft screen.” Check out some of the tweets below:
In another tweet, Milham shares a gif of a TIE fighter with an LED screen in the backdrop. He states, “If you look closely, you can see the dude on the left with the mocap stick rotating it. We parented the whole world to that stick so the director could dynamically tumble it as Gideon tried to shake Mando off his TIE, giving us great lighting and reflections.”
This isn’t the first time those working on The Mandalorian have provided behind-the-scenes insights. The show’s actors were able to view digitally created 3D sets and scenes in real-time, instead of needing to work against a green screen. Jon Favreau predicted the new technology would likely influence the way television movie productions are shot in the future.
It’s always incredibly cool to catch a glimpse of how a show is made. All the moving parts coming together, and the innovation and hard work being actualized, resulting in full immersion. After all, inventing new VFX tech is no small feat; if the creators want to show off the fruits of their labor, all the better for them. Season 2 of The Mandalorian returns to Disney+ in October 2020.
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Source: Ian Milham via Twitter
