In the middle of a fascinating article over at American Cinematographer discussing the proliferation of StageCraft and similar technologies that are now being used in Marvel, Star Trek, Netflix, HBO and of course Star Wars projects, they reveal that season three of The Mandalorian is now in production.
When the pandemic finally abates, it seems likely that the appeal of this methodology will endure — and that its proliferation within the world of episodic television, in particular, will continue. LED-wall setups expand the potential geographic scope of long-form story-writing, for example, without substantial change or cost to the postproduction workflow. And for episodics that take place within a limited set of locales, the costs for creating a few highly detailed 3D environments can be amortized over a full season, or multiple seasons. In addition, given the potential for a set physically populated essentially by only the actors and an operator — with other crew working remotely — filmmakers may be able to work with specific collaborators regardless of where they may be in the world.
The article goes on to look at those different shows, including a slew of Star Wars projects.
Shows that planned to leverage in-camera VFX from the start include two that will be shot using StageCraft, Industrial Light & Magic’s real-time animation pipeline for LED volumes: The Book of Boba Fett, which will be released later this year, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, set for release in 2022. Both series will use the same volume initially built for The Mandalorian in Manhattan Beach, Calif. More Star Wars shows, including Andor, are in production at Pinewood Studios in England, where ILM has built another large StageCraft volume. Season 3 of The Mandalorian is now in production.
- Stackpole, Michael A. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 384 Pages - 09/07/2021 (Publication Date) - Random House Worlds (Publisher)
