Paladone The Mandalorian Desktop Light, Officially Licensed Star Wars Merchandise

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That was our goal,” says Fraser, who had previously explored the Star Wars galaxy while shooting Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ( AC Feb. ’17). “We wanted to create an environment that was conducive not just to giving a composition line-up to the effects, but to actually capturing them in real time, photo-real and in-camera, so that the actors were in that environment in the right lighting — all at the moment of photography.” And so it is complete. Overall I appreciate the look of the craft. The silhouette fits nicely, and the underlying technic elements in the conning tower provide a sturdy handle, improving the overall swooshability of the model. The tiny TIE fighters are gorgeous. One can be placed in the opening at the front, and pushed forwad. Unfortunately, this mechanism is only functional when the cabin lid is open.

Wookieepedia | Fandom Class 546 Cruiser | Wookieepedia | Fandom

If the content was created in advance of the shoot, then photographing actors, props and set pieces in front of this wall could create final in-camera visual effects — or “near” finals, with only technical fixes required, and with complete creative confidence in the composition and look of the shots. On The Mandalorian, this space was dubbed “the Volume.” (Technically, a “volume” is any space defined by motion-capture technology.) This information was mapped onto 3D virtual sets and then modified or embellished as necessary to adhere to the Star Wars design aesthetic. If there wasn’t a real-world location to photograph, the environments were created entirely by ILM’s “environments” visual-effects team. The elements of the locations were loaded into the Unreal Engine video game platform, which provided a live, real-time, 3D environment that could react to the camera’s position. For decades, green- and bluescreen compositing was the go-to solution for bringing fantastic environments and actors together on the screen. ( Industrial Light & Magic did pioneering work with the technology for the original Star Wars movie.) However, when characters are wearing highly reflective costumes, as is the case with Mando (Pedro Pascal), the title character of The Mandalorian, the reflection of green- and bluescreen in the wardrobe causes costly problems in post-production. In addition, it’s challenging for actors to perform in a “sea of blue,” and for key creatives to have input on shot designs and composition.Speaking as a card-carrying OG Star Wars nerd — literally: I bought the first set of trading cards at my neighborhood comic shop in Kansas City, and to this day I can’t look at jpegs of those babies without hallucinating an olfactory Proustian bubblegum rush — I truly do understand the grateful tears that some viewers shed during the last ten minutes of “The Rescue,” particularly at the “surprise” revelation of Grogu’s savior. When that hood dropped, waterworks flowed around the world. And the saltwater level rose when episode director Peyton Reed held that anguished close-up of Mando watching his emerald child depart. In the fourth episode, the Mandalorian is looking to lay low and travels to the remote farming planet of Sorgan and visits the common house, which is a thatched, basket-weave structure. The actual common house was a miniature built by the art department and then photographed to be included in the virtual world. The miniature was lit with a single, hard light source that emulated natural daylight breaking through the thatched walls. “You could clearly see that one side of the common house was in hard light and the other side was in shadow,” recalls Idoine. “There were hot spots in the model that really looked great so we incorporated LED “movers” with slash gobos and Charlie Bars [long flags] to break up the light in a similar basket-weave pattern. Because of this very open basket-weave construction and the fact that the load had a lot of shafts of light, I added in random slashes of hard light into the practical set and it mixed really well.” The perfect weather condition for these photographic captures is a heavily overcast day, as there are little to no shadows on the landscape. A situation with harsh sunlight and hard shadows means that it cannot easily be re-lit in the virtual world. In those cases, software such as Agisoft De-Lighter was used to analyze the photographs for lighting and remove shadows to result in a more neutral canvas for virtual lighting. This concept was initially proposed by Kim Libreri of Epic Games while he was at Lucasfilm and it has become the basis of the technology that “Holy Grail” that makes a live-action Star Wars television series possible. It was also of paramount importance to me that the result of this technology not just be ‘suitable for TV,’ but match that of major, high-end motion pictures,” Fraser continues. “We had to push the bar to the point where no one would really know we were using new technology; they would just accept it as is. Amazingly, we were able to do just that.”

Paladone The Mandalorian Desktop Light, Officially Licensed

I went to see Jon and ask him if we would like to do something for Disney’s new streaming service,” Kennedy says. “I’ve known that Jon has wanted to do a Star Wars project for a long time, so we started talking right away about what he could do that would push technology and that led to a whole conversation around what could change the production path; what could actually create a way in which we could make things differently?” A variation of the LEGO Minifigure baby, Grogu has appeared in 4 sets now, appearing the same each time. It is one of the most adorable minifigures I have ever seen, from the sand green rubbery head to the infant’s torso. While not unique, it is good to see it here. The BuildMany objects that are physical are also virtual. Even if a prop or set piece is physically constructed, it is scanned and incorporated into the virtual world so that it becomes not only a practical asset, but a digital one as well. Once it’s in the virtual world, it can be turned on or off on a particular set or duplicated. All of this was captured in the Volume, in-camera and in real time. Part of the walkway was a real, practical set, but the rest of the world was the virtual image on the LED screen, and the parallax as the camera boomed up matched perfectly with the real set. The effect of this system is seamless.