D23 2024 poured news, reveals and gallons of anticipation into the sloshing jug of fandom, and the work of the genius team at ILM and the StageCraft team was the most eye-catching thing to see on the showfloor. Clayton Sandell was on the ground to check out the exhibit, talk to the fans who took part in this very special pop-up Volume experience and dig into the enjoyment it brought, not least to the ILM team who were thrilled to see it out in the world.
At D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, the ILM crew assembled a volume— something normally sequestered on an off-limits studio soundstage— inside the Anaheim Convention Center just for fans attending D23.
“I think everybody is blown away by the scale of this, and how immersive it actually is when you get to see it here on the show floor,” says Rob Bredow, senior vice president, creative innovation for Lucasfilm and chief creative officer of ILM.
During the three-day event, a rotating trio of scenes appeared on the volume’s giant LED panels: an Imperial hangar created for The Mandalorian, a Rebel hangar from Ahsoka (2023) and a vibrant city street on the planet Daiyu seen in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“You’re looking at over 18-and-a-half million pixels of LED wall and a live-tracked camera,” Bredow tells ILM.com. “Wherever the camera looks, we get a high-fidelity version with exactly the right perspective for the illusion of creating an immersive environment. It looks impressive enough here at the convention center but when we collaborate with the production designer and the art department on one of our productions that’s when the technology really sings. It’s a powerful tool in the filmmaker’s toolbox that we can deploy when building standing sets on a stage or traveling the cast and crew to a far-flung location isn’t feasible.”
