Speaking this week on The Resistance Broadcast, ILM Animation Supervisor Hal Hickel discussed the second season of The Mandalorian with John, James and Lacey, and during the conversation touched upon probably the most asked-about element of the second season; Mark Hamill’s involvement in those final scenes.
“That particular aspect of the effects of season 2 is probably the thing I can talk about the least… But I will say this. One, it was always important for everyone involved to have Mark involved. So it’s not just like ‘Well, we are recasting and we’ll deep-fake over him.’ Mark had to be involved with crafting the performance and he was. He was there on set when the scene was shot… he was totally involved all the way through. Also, Peyton Reed, who directed the episode, he’d done some previous de-aging work with Michael Douglas in ‘Ant-Man’, so he had work with some folks in the process and everything for that, so that played a part into what we were doing and how we did that work. And it was part of the decision making progress. Richard Bluff, who is the overall visual effects supervisor on ‘The Mandalorian’ and myself, we were both very much involved in giving feedback on the work and presenting it to Jon, and Peyton, and Dave. So those were the primary drivers on the work, Peyton’s experience with ‘Ant-Man’ and Mark had to be involved.”
We caught up with Hal across four episodes of Making Tracks before season 2 kicked off, discussing his ILM career and The Mandalorian‘s first season, which you can listen to below, and fingers crossed we’ll be talking with him again at some point in 2021.
- Hardcover Book
- Freed, Alexander (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 480 Pages - 03/02/2021 (Publication Date) - Random House Worlds (Publisher)
