Cinematography lighting & VFX director Joel Aron discusses the advancements that have taken place to make The Bad Batch attractive and achievable for weekly television, a process that has improved in constant increments since the days of the earliest The Clone Wars episodes.
An earlier advancement that influenced the techniques currently used for The Bad Batch came on Star Wars Rebels, the first production the team made without George Lucas’ direct supervision. To Aron, the look of The Clone Wars was still “too CG.” As a demonstration, he took a shot of Yoda from The Clone Wars, and began adding layers typically used only by live-action visual effects artists.
“When you have a digital T-rex against a live-action shot, the edge of that T-rex can’t be sharp,” says Aron. “There’s a blur that makes it look like it’s there. So I took that same method into Rebels. That show has a sizzle all around the edges. There was contrast. I wanted to rip up the edges all the time.” Animators routinely began applying grain in the final color grade. “Now we do it in everything.” He smiles as he talks about this “cinema first” principle, noting that “we still keep the fingerprints of the classic George Lucas style in there.”
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