Zack Snyder revealed some test footage filmed with that fancy virtual set technology used on The Mandalorian. The filmmaker talked to a panel during Justice Con and the topic of the so-called “LED walls” came up. For those unaware, Star Wars: The Mandalorian uses Industrial Light & Magic StageCraft to simulate environments and streamline filming. Suddenly, you can film wild sequences inside of a soundstage instead of doing them outside with surprising fidelity. Of course, something like this would pique Snyder’s interest and he said as much. The director was allowed to come down and see the technology for himself. In a surprise, he actually showed off some of the footage collected and it’s impressive to see the Australian outback rendered from a soundstage in California. Check out what he had to say below:
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“Yes, I’ve done a whole bunch of tests recently with the LED walls. They did a bunch of demos with the LED wall. I shot a bunch of stuff recently with it,” Snyder shared. “We played around and I shot a bunch of stuff. They did the big demo for me, so I could see how it works. It’s very in my wheelhouse, if you will. I was like, ‘Guys, I can do this in 10 seconds. Okay, give me the camera, let’s shoot something.’ I actually shot something with Eli… It seemed to be really cool. To be honest, I kind of enjoyed it. It was cool, it was really fun, and I thought there was massive potential to do something cool with it.”
Just a few weeks ago, Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau talked about how much help the technology had been to his production in a behind the scenes feature.”By the second season, ILM developed some software that was specific to this technology and to what the hardware was capable of.” This is truly bespoke effect work now, and the level of customization is off the charts in season two of The Mandalorian. Every set can be rotated and tweaked to the director’s exact vision. Seeing it all moving and evolving is jaw-dropping,” he explained.
“We now have the capability to grab any tree in a forest… and move them around independently,” visual effects supervisor Richard Bluff also said in the feature. If you’ve seen the show, you know where this is going. Helios helped create the perfect atmosphere for one of the standout scenes in “The Jedi.”
Do you want to see Snyder use this technology in his next film? Let us know in the comments!
