I was very encouraged by my experiences using similar technology on Jungle Book [ AC, May ’16], and using virtual cameras on The Lion King [ AC, Aug. ’19],” explains Favreau, series creator and executive producer. “I had also experimented with a partial video wall for the pilot episode of The Orville. With the team we had assembled between our crew, ILM, Magnopus, Epic Games, Profile Studios and Lux Machina, I felt that we had a very good chance at a positive outcome.” Visual effects supervisor Richard Bluff and executive creative director and head of ILM Rob Bredow showed Favreau a number of tests that ILM had conducted including the technology of the LED wall from Rogue One. Fraser suggested with the advancements in LED technology since Rogue One that this project could leverage new panels and push the envelope on real-time, in-camera visual effects. Favreau loved the concept and decided that was the production path to take. “I was very encouraged by my experiences using similar technology on Jungle Book and using virtual cameras on The Lion King. I had also experimented with a partial video wall for the pilot episode of The Orville.” We saw four out of seven sets feature female characters; and 5 out of 25 characters as definite females, including one storm trooper. The selection of minifigures seen during this wave of LEGO® Star Wars sets has been remarkable, and the ones included in this set are no exception, although it is a shame that many of them are only included in the most expensive set of the wave.

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In 2016, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy approached writer-director Jon Favreau about a potential project. This article is an expanded version of the story that appears in our February, 2020 print magazine.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. Unit photography by François Duhamel, SMPSP, and Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP, courtesy of Lucasfilm, Ltd.

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If an actor is close to a set piece, it is more often preferred that piece be physical instead of virtual. If they’re close to a wall, that should be a physical wall so that they are actually close to something real.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.” In this range, there were 24 minifigures released – two identical figures of the Mandalorian – so 23 distinct characters. (add 2 more from 75296 = 25 in total) I chose the sky domes that worked best for all the shots we needed for each sequence on the Volume,” Fraser notes. “After they were chosen and ILM had done their work, I couldn’t raise or lower the sun because the lighting and shadows would be baked in, but I could turn the whole world to adjust where the hot spot was.” The cameras used for scanning were Canon EOS 5D MKIV and EOS 5DS with prime lenses. Zooms are sometimes incorporated as modern stitching software has gotten better about solving multiple images from different focal lengths. When you think about it, unless it’s a practical light in shot, all of our lighting is outside the frame — that’s how we make movies,” Fraser continues. “But when most of your lighting comes from the environment, you have to shape that environment carefully. We sometimes have to add a practical or a window into the design, which provides our key light even though we never see that [element] on camera.”

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Bags 8&9 go towards building the lid of the bridge. Bag 9’s contents already appeared unwrapped with bag 6, however. A majority of the shots were done completely in camera,” Favreau adds. “And in cases where we didn’t get to final pixel, the postproduction process was shortened significantly because we had already made creative choices based on what we had seen in front of us. Postproduction was mostly refining creative choices that we were not able to finalize on the set in a way that we deemed photo-real.”The perfect weather condition for these photographic captures is a heavily overcast day, as there are little to no shadows on the landscape. A situation with harsh sunlight and hard shadows means that it cannot easily be re-lit in the virtual world. In those cases, software such as Agisoft De-Lighter was used to analyze the photographs for lighting and remove shadows to result in a more neutral canvas for virtual lighting.