Unreal Engine in the filming of “The Mandalorian”
How Unreal Engine has changed the cinema industry.
Intro
“The Mandalorian” the latest addition to the Disney+ premiere and the headliner of the new streaming giant is not only a rich expansion to the Star Wars universe but a great example of how video games can share technologies with traditional cinema.
We’ve collected some intriguing details about it. Jon Favreau used Unreal Engine by Epic Games in the project. He is the pioneer of such a technique which helps directors to create beautiful and immersive worlds in the movies. Let’s dive into the details below!
If you are thoughtful enough you may notice the reference to Epic Games in the credits.
Why it was used, you may ask. The answer is rather simple, it’s being used in the planning stages as a kind of previs.
“We used the V-cam system where we get to make a movie, essentially in VR, send those dailies to the editor, and we have a cut of the film that serves a purpose that previs would have,” explained Favreau.
This technology now is becoming more and more popular in the industry. It was also used in Favreau’s “The Lion King” and “The Jingle Book”.
The environment and its details are created using Unreal Engine previously used for video games. There were LED video walls which were displaying some pre-rendered content and being filmed to provide in-camera composites. Furthermore, there was an opportunity to change the perspective and the environment depending on the camera position and the lens used.
The technology helps to do quick turnarounds on a TV schedule and budget and also provides a major benefit to the actors and the crew. For example, it helps visual effects supervisors to create the final look of the scene.
“For the actors, it was great because you could walk on the set, and even if it’s just for interactive light, you are walking into an environment where you see what’s around you,” stated Favreau. “Even though [the LED walls] might not hold up to the scrutiny if you’re staring right at it from close up, you’re still getting peripheral vision. You know where the horizon is, you feel the light on you. You’re also not setting up a lot of lights. You’re getting a lot of your interactive light off of those LED walls.”
According to Jon Favreau, such a technique can also fool people at the filming set. Some of them perceived the image on the LED walls as a live-action set and wondered that it was built. Actually, it happened because of the parallax in perspective.
Favreau said that it is a great leap forward in the industry:
“I think it also forces you to make creative decisions early and not kick the can down the road,” he said. “Because [typically] you go to a set, you put up a greenscreen, you figure it out later. But here you have all of these brilliant people [and] we have a hundred years of experience making cinema, why abandon that just because we’re disrupting the set? Let’s inherit the skillset of these great artists and build tools out.”
“The Mandalorian” is a Disney+ series released on 12th November. New episodes come out each Friday. Please share your opinion on the future of cinema and videography. Will we see any new crossovers of technologies in the future?
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