The Filmmaking Tech Behind 'The Mandalorian' Is Straight Out of the Star Wars Universe (qz.com) 90
In a Quartz article, Adam Epstein writes about the filmmaking technology used to film The Mandalorian on Disney+: Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) -- the Lucasfilm subsidiary George Lucas founded in 1975 to make the visual effects for Star Wars -- deployed a real-time 3D projection system called "Stagecraft" on the Disney+ series that could, eventually, replace green-screen as the film industry standard for rendering virtual environments. The company has been testing Stagecraft for five years -- most recently on the Star Wars spin-off movie Solo in 2018. But The Mandalorian, the flagship series on Disney's new streaming service, likely marks the most extensive use yet of the new system.
Stagecraft's chief innovation is that it can project a 3D visual environment around the actors that changes in real time to match the perspective of the camera. When the camera moves, the background moves too, simulating the experience of filming in a different location. It's a significant upgrade from green-screen technology, which requires the filmmakers layer in a static image or footage after filming in front of the blank backdrop. [...] The tech has a wide range of benefits. For starters, it can draw better performances from the actors, who don't have to imagine the environment they are in, as they do when filming in front of green-screen. They can instantly be transported to any location, real or made-up, and feel as though they are there. And that's another big advantage: Stagecraft allows films and TV shows to simulate environments without actually having to send an entire production there to film. "One downside is that the displays used in Stagecraft require liquid crystals that take several years to grow," the report adds. "Growing and maintaining these crystals, which are the backbone of LCD (liquid crystal display) screens, can be expensive and time-consuming, perhaps complicating the attempts of other companies to adapt the technology."
This video from Unreal Engine shows a smaller scale version of the tech in action.
Stagecraft's chief innovation is that it can project a 3D visual environment around the actors that changes in real time to match the perspective of the camera. When the camera moves, the background moves too, simulating the experience of filming in a different location. It's a significant upgrade from green-screen technology, which requires the filmmakers layer in a static image or footage after filming in front of the blank backdrop. [...] The tech has a wide range of benefits. For starters, it can draw better performances from the actors, who don't have to imagine the environment they are in, as they do when filming in front of green-screen. They can instantly be transported to any location, real or made-up, and feel as though they are there. And that's another big advantage: Stagecraft allows films and TV shows to simulate environments without actually having to send an entire production there to film. "One downside is that the displays used in Stagecraft require liquid crystals that take several years to grow," the report adds. "Growing and maintaining these crystals, which are the backbone of LCD (liquid crystal display) screens, can be expensive and time-consuming, perhaps complicating the attempts of other companies to adapt the technology."
This video from Unreal Engine shows a smaller scale version of the tech in action.
Re: midichlorians aka bugs in yer blood (Score:2, Redundant)
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I always thought it sounded like a feature of some laundry detergent.
NEW with the power of MIDICHLORIANS
anyway Whiskey Tango is a Mandalorian? Some kind of musical instrument?
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anyway Whiskey Tango is a Mandalorian? Some kind of musical instrument?
Basically a generic boba fett.
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They're Lucas jabberwoky for mitochondria.
Anyway that post is a joke, excruciatingly belaboring exactly what the problem is -- quantifying the mystery does not actually help the mystery. Wonder is broken when it is explained.
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They are a group of people from the planet Mandalore, who for some reason are all bounty hunters. It's slowly being explained on the show but so far is just a generic "stoic, warrior race" kinda thing. They seem to have been oppressed in the past and now keep themselves hidden, except when a bunch of them turn out for a big firefight. Never take their helmets off, must get pretty funky in there.
I'm wondering if the one in the show is force sensitive. He seems to have incredibly good aim compared to everyone
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I always thought it sounded like a feature of some laundry detergent.
NEW with the power of MIDICHLORIANS
Remember to only use midichlorian bleach on your whites. Never your coloreds (unless it's Samuel L Jackson).
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"The midichlorian is the powerhouse of the force" is what I always think.
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anyway Whiskey Tango is a Mandalorian? Some kind of musical instrument?
It's basically a bion [wikipedia.org].
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anyway Whiskey Tango is a Mandalorian? Some kind of musical instrument?
It's basically a bion [wikipedia.org].
Oops. Thought you were asking about midichlorians. Nevermind.
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That's all so well and so good but if Midichlorians are a life form of some kind then surely a known force sensitive person could give blood/whatever samples, identify and seperate the Midichlorians, breed them, concentrate them and then inject them to make any one force mad either permanetly or for a time. I always thought of it more like the ki in dragonball z, technically anyone can do it, but realistically, no.
Works the other way around. Midiclorians don't cause the force, the force causes midiclorians. Collect the midiclorians and inject them into somebody else and without sufficient force around them, they will just die. Here, go read this [wikipedia.org] but substitute 'force' for 'orgone' and 'midiclorian' for 'bion'. Then realize that Jedi don't have sex because it helps build up the 'force' in their bodies.
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I always thought "midichlorian" was a mispronunciation of "mitochondria." Which are indeed inside all (eukaryote) cells, and they are in some weird sense a lifeform, e.g. they have their own DNA.
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How about Lucas was making this shit up as he went along, which is why he kept going back and changing stuff.
Elephant in the Room (Score:4, Insightful)
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I watched two episodes of The Mandalorian so far. I think it's crap so far, but as a Star Wars fan I am willing to give it a chance, hoping it's going to improve as time goes by.
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Completely agreed with the bad writing. I was thinking that they could have taken the storyline so far and put it into pretty much any setting, and it would have worked equally well / badly. Might as well have been watching a western show. It's pretty shoddy. The episode structure is also pretty uninteresting - basically it's 1. Introduce obstacle 2. Clear obstacle 3. Credits. Booooring.
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You just can't please some people ; )
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It is a Space Western, for sure. But it's the kind of Space Western where the the main character is totally confident badass in this scene, only to suffer a humiliating defeat further down the road from the hands of a species widely known in the Star Wars as being cowardly and skittish. He's "the best" in his bounty hunter job but totally forgets to secure his space ship when landing on a wild desert planet. The first two episodes left me wondering what exactly is this guy (not who, but what). Is he a badas
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The Mandalorian is a bit underwhelming at the moment. It might be going somewhere but right now it's just a few decent but not amazing action scenes set in the Star Wars universe.
They have the luxury of taking their time with a longer series so can build up to something interesting. Films have to get to the point a bit quicker.
Strange you would single out Kennedy. Most people blame Abrams and Johnson for what they dislike about the new trilogy. She was only producer, it's mostly a managerial role while they
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Kennedy is just another idiot that managed to fail upward in Hollywood. She's not particular special, but she does occupy the figurehead position and draws more blame/pra
What the F (Score:2, Interesting)
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They're special Star Wars liquid crystals I guess. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy also said in the article that the result of the technology is not believable so I guess they have to have some reason to charge Disney a bunch of money and their unique (but very slow, not good for the millions/billions of devices that already use them) of growing liquid crystals seems fair.
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Maybe they are growing liquid Kyber crystals ? :-D (Score:4, Informative)
Kathleen speak: {something something whatever grow crystal}
Actual engineer: They are high resolution LCD or OLED walls with a very special *ROOM SIZE* dimension. They are custom: these panels cost insane shit to make.
Because most of the panels this size are usually used in completely different setting - such as billboards - which don't require such high resolution and precise colour control. Thus the currently mass produced (and hence cheap) walls this size use simple RGB leds and are designed to be looked accross the town plazza or accross a stadium. Whereas this thing requires a ultra high quality LCD or OLED that needs to look spotless while being recorded a mere few meters away by some ultra-HD 8k cinema camera, and all lights including the ambient reflection on the actors' skin has too look perfect.
Kathleen : Na, never mind. My liquid crystal blurb sounds cooler, I'm going to use that in the interview. It sound like Kyber crystals, I'm sure the crowd will love it.
Geek crowd: Pfff... we used to that already back when hacking wiimote for the actual tracking used to be cool [youtube.com]
Glass-painting artist: you think you invented imaginary scene filmed in-camera instead of in post? You yunguns, get of my lawn!
---
The one-eyed cyclop: You invented StarTreck holo-decks !
Every normal human actor with functional depth perception, while the display is jerking around to follow the motion of the camera and its perspective: Nausea !
Kathleen: It's unbelievable, like the set is here !
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Aliens used a back projection on a screen behind the actors, which is an old technique from the earliest days of cinema. That scene with the crashing ship, or her on the platform with the burning collapsing infrastructure behind her.
This is a modern version of that. Only the projection tech is new.
...and the motion + perspective (Score:2)
Aliens used a back projection on a screen behind the actors, which is an old technique from the earliest days of cinema. That scene with the crashing ship, or her on the platform with the burning collapsing infrastructure behind her.
Or any old black and white movie with a driving scene...
(Bonus point for actor frenetically wiggle the steering wheel left and right while absolutely not matching the motion depicted on the rear projection).
This is a modern version of that. Only the projection tech is new.
And the motion + perspective.
- Old school glass painting: no motion, you're stuck with a static picture. And because it's a static picture, you can't change much of perpective so you're stuck to faraway objects (without parallax) and thus can only use for landscape and other distant backdrops (fixed in t
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They are high resolution LCD or OLED walls with a very special *ROOM SIZE* dimension.
You could probably achieve same results by using smaller panels, separated by thin green gaps, and fill those in during post-processing using suitable neural net.
We're fixing it in post... (Score:2)
(If not precisely planned for) Is the worse thing to say because there's ALWAYS something that can go wrong and require manual fine tuning.
the fixing DNN spilling over the actor, or on the contrary missing some spot.
that is going to generated additional unplanned costs (the salary of people fixing the stuff).
Better have a big upfront fixed and planned for cost, and optionally brag about how much you're investing to make you movie look cool.
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You could probably achieve same results by using smaller panels
They use video projectors.
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Whereas this thing requires a ultra high quality LCD or OLED that needs to look spotless while being recorded a mere few meters away by some ultra-HD 8k cinema camera, and all lights including the ambient reflection on the actors' skin has too look perfect.
I'm don't believe that how this works. The scene projected on the LCD is not in the final video. It still treats it like a green screen, stripping out the background, doing some processing, and then compositing it with the final (usually CGI) background. So it doesn't need to be super high resolution.
reduce the work (Score:2)
The scene projected on the LCD is not in the final video. It still treats it like a green screen, stripping out the background, doing some processing,
Still it makes it easier if the final picture looks more or less okay, and all you need to composite in a few high details in the background, rather than needing to perfectly strip out an imperfect background that looks like a pixelated glassdoor seen though a grate.
Less things that can go wrong, and a simpler upfront cost, instead of needing to pay unexpected salary and suffering delays while some technician needs to fix and fine tune the part that didn't work 100% perfect.
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This will make it complicated for other companies to replicate this technology. Other companies these are not the droids you are looking for should stick with traditional green screens and flashlights.
Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Kennedy said a Disney executive visited the set of The Mandalorian and thought that the Stagecraft-generated environment was physically there. “He had no idea he was standing in a virtual set,” Kennedy said, according to Slashfilm. “That’s how unbelievable it is.”
(emphasis mine)
Shouldn't the goal be to make things believable? If the executive found it unbelievable it must be pretty shit, so where's the news?
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I saw this tech demoed at IBC this year, and it’s pretty impressive. Mind, everything looks real funny when standing on the stage yourself, it’s an optical illusion that only looks right from the point of view of the camera. Through the camera it all looks pretty real, though the demo I saw was a virtual (and rather fake looking) news desk; an actual backdrop meant to look like something real would have been much mo
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When I was in grad school we were going to build a CAVE, but then someone got a big grant and actually bought one.
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Sounds like Disney has some pretty stupid executives.
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Buying into tech (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Buying into tech (Score:5, Funny)
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I honestly can not watch movies without a story or only a crap story.
The main reason I no longer go into the cinema. Sometimes when I'm curious I try to find the movie online aka on youtube.
Interesting is only "the making of".
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I totally agree. To be honest, its starting to affect my enjoyment of games as well. I'm fed up with game narratives always being tired old cliches - like the story doesn't matter, just plug in any old garbage. It doesn't have to be world shattering or even original, just give me a compelling narrative that's engaging and well plotted, rather than the same old filler.
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ditto, though I find that quite a few recent movies (though often not the blockbusters) do have interesting stories. Might just be my selection of movies.
But for games - oh yeah. I am so much starving for a game with a really good storyline. Instead you drown in micro-transaction DLC bullshit.
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Star Trek - not Star Wars. This is a holodeck. (Score:3)
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Indeed, for some reason holographic projection in Star Wars is crap. Flickery, monochrome, loads of banding.
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Indeed, for some reason holographic projection in Star Wars is crap. Flickery, monochrome, loads of banding.
Give them a break. It was a long time ago.
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Give them a break. It was a long time ago.
And far, far away.
In England.
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What does Data's evil brother have to do with this?
That would be a pradox (Score:1)
Breathless hyperbole? (Score:2)
It's not though, is it?
such a shame (Score:2)
As someone who does not give 2 shits (Score:2)
impressive video (Score:2)
The video on yt is really impressive, but i wonder about one thing.
As the background is not created real-time, how easy is it to change afterwards?
The strength of the greenscreen is that you do one take and then you can fiddle around with the background/environment as much as you want, change and compare and pick the best. As this new system puts already an whole environment in place it's not that easy to adjust or change afterwards.
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In an nVidia video about this they show a green screen mode. The system knows the camera field of view and projects a green screen (with tracking markers) over only that area. The rest of the surrounding scene is displayed normally so that lighting and reflections are consistent.
and baby Yoda... (Score:2)
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Yeah funny how this comes out right before the peak shopping season. As if the rights to Star Wars itself isn't a license to print money.
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It's from Disney. Disney has been doing merchandising a LONG time. Notice how Frozen 2 also came out just before Christmas.
If you look at the list, in the early days Disney released films at all times of year. Now everything is June (right before school ends) and November (right before Christmas). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What? (Score:2)
" require liquid crystals that take several years to grow,"
Huh? I'm more interested in this than the rest of the story.
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So am I. This doesn't make sense to me at all.
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I feel like it's some garbled version of the production of the single-crystal silicon ingots that are used in semiconductor manufacturing.
TARDIS (Score:1)
Alternative headlines... (Score:2)
Disney Uses Tech it Bought to Make Film - Entire World Shocked to the Very Core
High Technology Used to Cover Up Disney's Crappiness
Disney Desperately Seeking Ways to Make Money From Massive Star Wars Investment
Gees... this is hardly illuminatory, is it!?
Perhaps (Score:2)
Their holograms are still stuttering like in the seventies though.
Straight out of the Star Wars Universe? (Score:2)
So it's from a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?
What a shit article title.
It does in fact look like Star Wars (Score:2)
We got the week trial, and won't be continuing service in part because the Disney+ interface is technically far behind every other player, although at least the video plays cleanly on our satellite connection — which you can't say for all of the other streaming services. Netflix and YouTube both also work well for us; most of the others do not. Exede throttles video pretty hard, and I haven't tried to find out if they throttle different services to different rates, which may account for the difference
Just one question: (Score:2)
How does the Mandalorian see out of that visor? It completely blocks his peripheral vision.
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Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them.
"Growing liquid crystals"? (Score:2)
One downside is that the displays used in Stagecraft require liquid crystals that take several years to grow. “It’s quite a process,” Kennedy said. Growing and maintaining these crystals, which are the backbone of LCD (liquid crystal display) screens, can be expensive and time-consuming, perhaps complicating the attempts of other companies to adapt the technology.
Can somebody here shed some light on what this means? I find it utterly confusing.
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Someone already did post what they believe is meant, several hours before you posted.
https://entertainment.slashdot... [slashdot.org]
The Filmmaking Tech Behind (Score:1)
Stagecraft: a giant LED screen that's live updated (Score:1)
Do you mean, a giant LED screen that's live updated, and the composite image is processed in real time.