Star Wars: The Mandalorian’s Huge Boba Fett Episode was the Series’ First Time on Location

Since The Mandalorian premiered one of the most talked about things was the technology used by Lucasfilm to bring the series to life. StageCraft was a fresh approach to production, developed by the company, which utilizes massive LED screens on a sound stage, allowing for foreign planets and exotic locales to be projected behind the actors and shot in camera. This tech also helps to control any potential leaks by limiting the amount of trips required outside of the studio to even shoot the series. With season two however, The Mandalorian was finally forced to leave the StageCraft volume and the studio backlot and go out into the real world.

“We had to take the show to location for the first time because of its scope really. The Volume’s incredible, but it has limitations,” director of photography David Klein said in the super-sized episode of Disney Gallery for The Mandalorian season two. “Whenever we’re going to do direct sun we usually go to the back lot, but the backlot wasn’t big enough for this so we ended up in Simi Valley. The terrain was so difficult, everything we wanted to take up onto those rocks we had to hand carry. It’s dry up there in Simi Valley, we couldn’t have any fire, no explosions; except for when Fennec’s running on the rocks, those are practical, those are practical explosions.”

As Klein implied, all of those explosions you saw in the episode as Boba Fett made mincemeat of StormTroopers were added in post. In the end though, the comfort of working on the StageCraft volumes made the cast and crew eager to get back inside.

“I love doing physical stuff, every day we’re running, we’re jumping, we’re parkouring up these rocky mountain peaks,” Ming-Na Wen (Fennec Shand) said. “There was one point where we were really high up in the rocks and I’m watching the camera men carry these fifty pound (rigs) and I’m trying to traverse and we’re trying to avoid poison oaks and we’re trying to avoid rattlesnakes and divots and stuff. I was like, okay, let’s go back to the volume.”

Both seasons of The Mandalorian are now streaming on Disney+. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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