Star Wars: Book of Boba Fett DP Reveals Upgrades to Lucasfilm's Digital Sets
When The Mandalorian made its debut in 2019 it came with it a huge revelation from Lucafilm, the new series was a major step forward for Hollywood production as it featured an entirely digital set that eliminated the need for location shooting and even some post-production effects. The StageCraft screens were used throughout the first two seasons of the show and the new series The Book of Boba Fett, but between the first two seasons of Mando however the "volume" got an upgrade. Speaking in an interview with Kevin Smith's FatMan Beyond podcast, Boba Fett and Mandalorian cinematographer David Klein revealed the upgrades made to the StageCraft and the problems they had on the first season of Mando.
"The Volume, it's an LED volume, so it's LED walls and a ceiling. It's about 60 feet wide, it's about 100 feet long, it's an oval. The first season it was round and the problem with that was that they had to re-record all the dialogue, because it you're in a round building it just echoes like crazy. So season two it became an oval and if you stand at a certain, if you're dead center it echoes like crazy. But otherwise you can record sound in there and it works. It's an oval, it's LED screens, LED ceiling, and you know there are a lot of rules. You can't do day exterior if you need direct sunlight, it's impossible. It sounds like its big, sixty by a hundred, but it gets small really quick....If you see something that's out in the open desert with direct sun, we're outside."
Klein elaborated further on their production schemes for The Book of Boba Fett and their work in the volume stages, revealing that they make an animatic for every episode rather than storyboard them and that he spends time in VR lighting the digital sets.
"Oh no, no, there aren't storyboards, there's a full pre-vis, a full animatic of every episode (before we shoot it). That's, I've gotta say, the way that the volume works you have to know what you're doing ahead of time because you have to know your background. We've been lighting these backgrounds in VR. I spent so much time in VR goggles lighting the backgrounds, it's like a four month process from when we start lighting the VR backgrounds to when we can actually look at them on the walls. It's a big deal."
The Book of Boba Fett is now streaming on Disney+ with new episodes debuting every Wednesday on the service.