Riding the crest of a wave after directing the hit Netflix film Extraction, director Sam Hargrave has confirmed his position as Second Unit Director on the second season of The Mandalorian and chats with Collider about his career – which includes work on Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Atomic Blonde, and Deadpool 2 – and Mando.
Hargrave discussed working on action scenes within the Volume.
“Truthfully, it didn’t really impact us on the action side. It did limit what you could do in the space because The Volume is closed in and its got a ceiling cap, so sometimes if you have, for example, in the first season [the Mandalorian] has a jetpack and they move him with a wire and he’s not just running around, it’s harder to execute that because there are restrictions on the height you can get your equipment to. So, from a design standpoint, it’s a little constrictive.”
He went on to discuss the technical elements of this new filmmaking process.
“But it’s interesting in that it’s almost returning to an older school of filmmaking where you have background prints up. Because you’re seeing and photographing it in real time — a lot of these locations are real or they’re built ahead of time — you have to know your shots. So much prep goes into it. They’re not making it up, going, ‘Oh, well, we could put this in the background.’ They know exactly what they’re going to do. They have a really crazy way of doing virtual scouting where you can ‘scout’ the location before you shoot and see where you want to put the camera. It’s a really wild process. It’s extremely futuristic and kind of going back to an old school way of filmmaking where you have to do a lot more prep. You can’t just throw up a blue screen and wing it on the day.”
And perhaps the most interesting element of them all – he knows baby Yoda’s real name.
“Yes, I know the name of The Child. I carry that secret. It’s a very heavy burden.”
