To bring The Mandalorian to life, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Epic Games — along with production technology partners Fuse, Lux Machina, Profile Studios, Nvidia and ARRI — have introduced a new way to shoot VFX-heavy projects in collaboration with Jon Favreau’s Golem Creations.
The new virtual production workflow allows filmmakers to capture a significant amount of complex visual effects shots in-camera using realtime game engine technology (Epic’s Unreal Engine) and LED screens to represent dynamic photoreal digital landscapes and sets with creative flexibility previously unimaginable.
Also part of the news, ILM has made its new end-to-end virtual production solution, ILM StageCraft, available for use by filmmakers, agencies and showrunners worldwide.
Over 50 percent of The Mandalorian Season 1 was filmed using this new methodology, eliminating the need for location shoots entirely. Instead, actors in The Mandalorian performed in an immersive and massive 20-foot-high by 270-degree semicircular LED video wall and ceiling with a 75-foot-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 realtime during the shoot, which allowed for pixel-accurate tracking and perspective-correct 3D imagery rendered at high resolution via systems powered by Nvidia GPUs.
L-R: Jon Favreau and Richard Bluff
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 Favreau; executive producer/director Dave Filoni; visual effects supervisor Richard Bluff; 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 realtime 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 all the partners involved.
“We’ve been experimenting with these technologies on my past projects and were finally able to bring a group together with different perspectives to synergize film and gaming advances and test the limits of realtime, in-camera rendering,” explains Favreau adding, “We are proud of what was achieved and feel that the system we built was the most efficient way to bring The Mandalorian to life.”
“Merging our efforts in the space with what Jon Favreau has been working toward using virtual reality and game engine technology in his filmmaking finally gave us the chance to execute the vision,” says Rob Bredow, executive creative director and head of ILM. “StageCraft has grown out of the culmination of over a decade of innovation in the virtual production space at ILM. Seeing our digital sets fully integrated, in real time on stage, providing the kind of in-camera shots we’ve always dreamed of while also providing the majority of the lighting was really a dream come true.”
Bluff adds, “Working with Kim Libreri and his Unreal team, Golem Creations, and the ILM StageCraft team has opened new avenues to both the filmmakers and my fellow key creatives on The Mandalorian, allowing us to shoot principal photography on photoreal, virtual sets that are indistinguishable from their physical counterparts while incorporating physical set pieces and props as needed for interaction. It’s truly a game-changer.”
ILM StageCraft’s production tools provide filmmakers with the combination of traditional filmmaking equipment and methodologies with all of the advantages of a fully digital workflow. With ILM StageCraft, a production can acquire many in-camera finals, allowing filmmakers immediate and complete creative control of work typically handed off and reinterpreted in post, improving the quality of visual effects shots with perfectly integrated elements and reducing visual effects requirements in post, which is a major benefit considering today’s compressed schedules.
