1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,088
What I was learning to do
from a little bit with Elf,

2
00:00:05,172 --> 00:00:08,300
a little more with Zathura,
and a lot more with Iron Man,

3
00:00:08,383 --> 00:00:12,137
was if I could shoot things right,
the CG's gonna look a lot better.

4
00:00:12,221 --> 00:00:15,807
And there was this illusion,
I think sometimes people still have it,

5
00:00:15,891 --> 00:00:17,518
that you could just do anything later.

6
00:00:17,601 --> 00:00:22,022
Like, "Oh, we'll fix it in post," or
"We'll, you know, we'll paint that out,"

7
00:00:22,105 --> 00:00:25,651
or "We'll fix it in the DI," like...
And you can do a lot of stuff,

8
00:00:25,734 --> 00:00:27,152
but you can't do everything.

9
00:00:27,236 --> 00:00:31,532
Things like interactive light, and things
that you can't fake later effectively,

10
00:00:31,615 --> 00:00:33,742
which is what people
associate with effects

11
00:00:33,825 --> 00:00:36,912
that don't look good in older movies
is you're laying in something,

12
00:00:36,995 --> 00:00:40,624
you're trying to create a shadow
on something that's real after the fact,

13
00:00:40,707 --> 00:00:41,792
never looks great,

14
00:00:41,875 --> 00:00:43,460
or interactive light on people.

15
00:00:44,044 --> 00:00:48,048
With Jungle Book, we started saying,
"Okay, what could we do here?"

16
00:00:48,131 --> 00:00:52,594
Let's create our sets digitally,
a complete jungle,

17
00:00:52,678 --> 00:00:58,225
but let's have video wall panels that
we would use to create interactive light.

18
00:00:58,308 --> 00:01:01,854
And so if elephants were passing,
we'd have shadows casting on the kid.

19
00:01:02,437 --> 00:01:07,192
But on the set, all you would see was
a lot of blue and one little patch of set

20
00:01:07,276 --> 00:01:10,070
that he would walk on
with foliage growing out of it.

21
00:01:10,153 --> 00:01:13,240
And if something cast a shadow on him,
we would bring that in.

22
00:01:13,323 --> 00:01:14,700
It should have gone quickly.

23
00:01:14,783 --> 00:01:17,619
And it was convincing 'cause
the interactive light was great,

24
00:01:17,703 --> 00:01:19,997
the planning was great,
execution was great.

25
00:01:20,080 --> 00:01:22,457
The problem was, it would take forever,

26
00:01:22,541 --> 00:01:25,460
because that blue screen,
if you got to the set and said,

27
00:01:25,544 --> 00:01:27,254
"It looked like this in pre-vis,

28
00:01:27,337 --> 00:01:32,509
but he looks better if we raise the camera
a foot and a half and look down at him,"

29
00:01:32,593 --> 00:01:34,845
well, now you gotta move
all that blue screen.

30
00:01:35,596 --> 00:01:37,764
It took twice as long as it should've.

31
00:01:37,848 --> 00:01:40,559
So I was thinking,
"What's the dream stage to build?"

32
00:01:41,101 --> 00:01:43,270
So all that,
I sort of put that in my...

33
00:01:43,353 --> 00:01:44,897
It was in the back of my head,

34
00:01:44,980 --> 00:01:49,026
and I was hired to do The Lion King

35
00:01:49,109 --> 00:01:51,361
after Jungle Book was a success.

36
00:01:51,945 --> 00:01:53,822
So we pre-animated the whole film.

37
00:01:53,906 --> 00:01:58,202
We created the whole environment,
like we did on Jungle Book, virtually.

38
00:01:58,285 --> 00:02:02,706
Except in this case, all of this
consumer-facing VR equipment came out.

39
00:02:02,789 --> 00:02:04,333
- Jon?
- Yep.

40
00:02:04,416 --> 00:02:06,752
Suggestion to start up
a little bit higher

41
00:02:06,835 --> 00:02:08,295
- and then come down.
- Okay.

42
00:02:08,378 --> 00:02:11,548
Three, two, one. Go.

43
00:02:12,132 --> 00:02:14,259
Ooh!

44
00:02:14,343 --> 00:02:15,969
Really good.

45
00:02:16,053 --> 00:02:17,554
Yeah, I chased him down.

46
00:02:17,638 --> 00:02:19,306
We didn't need
any of the motion builder,

47
00:02:19,389 --> 00:02:23,393
any of the motion capture, expensive stuff
that's really just developed for film.

48
00:02:24,228 --> 00:02:26,480
But instead, using game engine technology.

49
00:02:26,563 --> 00:02:30,317
And so now people were gonna be
operating cameras within VR

50
00:02:30,400 --> 00:02:33,362
where there's no latency,
they're looking at the real thing.

51
00:02:34,029 --> 00:02:38,450
And now we're at a place
where I was taking on

52
00:02:38,534 --> 00:02:41,411
doing a show for Disney , The Mandalorian.

53
00:02:41,495 --> 00:02:44,122
We had a whole team and all of ILM.

54
00:02:44,790 --> 00:02:47,626
And I had worked with ILM before

55
00:02:47,709 --> 00:02:50,629
and I knew a lot of the people there.

56
00:02:50,712 --> 00:02:53,882
There was this sense of,
"Hey, let's push this

57
00:02:53,966 --> 00:02:57,511
"and see what innovations
we can come up with."

58
00:02:57,594 --> 00:03:00,222
And also, these video walls
that we were using,

59
00:03:00,305 --> 00:03:02,766
now these video walls were becoming bigger

60
00:03:02,850 --> 00:03:07,187
and finer pixel pitch and less expensive.

61
00:03:07,980 --> 00:03:09,314
It just got me thinking,

62
00:03:09,398 --> 00:03:12,776
"How do you take advantage
of all these innovations with technology?

63
00:03:13,360 --> 00:03:15,487
"What'd we learn on
Lion King and Jungle Book?

64
00:03:15,571 --> 00:03:17,948
"How do you apply it to The Mandalorian?"

65
00:03:22,327 --> 00:03:26,957
When I was involved from
the very beginning, we got storyboards

66
00:03:27,040 --> 00:03:31,420
of what the show was gonna look like.
At least, episode one.

67
00:03:31,503 --> 00:03:33,380
And the information I had at the time

68
00:03:33,463 --> 00:03:37,551
was that Jon wanted to build upon
the technology from The Lion King.

69
00:03:38,260 --> 00:03:39,761
And at the time, I...

70
00:03:39,845 --> 00:03:42,681
Who's this "Jon"? He sounds fascinating.

71
00:03:43,849 --> 00:03:45,058
And totally unrealistic.

72
00:03:45,684 --> 00:03:47,561
So I was invited down to see it.

73
00:03:47,644 --> 00:03:52,733
And obviously seeing a film crew here
effectively shooting in VR

74
00:03:52,816 --> 00:03:54,318
was a big eye-opener.

75
00:03:54,401 --> 00:03:58,030
Trying to figure out what it was
that you were doing on The Lion King

76
00:03:58,113 --> 00:04:00,574
and how to solve
these environmental problems

77
00:04:00,657 --> 00:04:04,328
on a Star Wars show with eight episodes,

78
00:04:04,411 --> 00:04:09,166
I think the first art department meeting
I was invited to,

79
00:04:09,249 --> 00:04:10,542
I was doing it remotely.

80
00:04:10,626 --> 00:04:14,379
And so I think Doug Chiang was down here
with Andrew Jones, of course,

81
00:04:14,463 --> 00:04:17,049
and I was watching it
remotely from San Francisco.

82
00:04:17,132 --> 00:04:20,844
And I think Andrew made
a reference to "the backlot."

83
00:04:20,928 --> 00:04:24,723
- Right.
- And I think at that point, you wanted to

84
00:04:24,806 --> 00:04:26,266
effectively set the table and say,

85
00:04:26,350 --> 00:04:29,269
"I want to be clear about what I'd
like to try and do on this show."

86
00:04:29,353 --> 00:04:31,647
And then we got in a room,

87
00:04:31,730 --> 00:04:37,903
you know, you, Kathy, myself,
you were in there,

88
00:04:37,986 --> 00:04:40,906
and we had Rob Bredow,
we had a lot of people from ILM,

89
00:04:40,989 --> 00:04:43,033
but then we also brought in Kim Libreri,

90
00:04:43,116 --> 00:04:45,077
who used to work at ILM
and now is at Epic.

91
00:04:45,160 --> 00:04:46,537
- Yep.
- And Unreal.

92
00:04:46,620 --> 00:04:48,705
And there were other people,
and Magnopus,

93
00:04:48,789 --> 00:04:52,292
who I'd worked with on Jungle Book
and I worked on Lion King with,

94
00:04:52,376 --> 00:04:56,797
and there was a bit of a think tank

95
00:04:56,880 --> 00:05:00,384
to figure out
if we could pull this thing off.

96
00:05:06,640 --> 00:05:12,104
The Mandalorian is the first production
ever to use real-time rendering

97
00:05:12,187 --> 00:05:16,483
and video wall in-camera
set extensions and effects,

98
00:05:16,567 --> 00:05:20,070
that was, again, necessity
was the mother of invention

99
00:05:20,153 --> 00:05:25,117
because we were trying to figure out
how to do the production

100
00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:29,329
here in the timeframe at the budget level,

101
00:05:29,413 --> 00:05:31,999
but still get the whole look
we're used to seeing.

102
00:05:32,082 --> 00:05:35,085
Jon, one of
the things it makes me think about,

103
00:05:35,169 --> 00:05:39,423
it fascinates me to think back on
Indian in the Cupboard that we did,

104
00:05:39,506 --> 00:05:41,884
where we used a lot of Translite,

105
00:05:41,967 --> 00:05:44,303
and blue screen,
but a lot of Translite.

106
00:05:44,386 --> 00:05:48,974
I'm just curious,
what has been this evolution

107
00:05:49,057 --> 00:05:53,061
of the use of screens, really, as a way

108
00:05:53,145 --> 00:05:54,813
to inform what Mandalorian...

109
00:05:54,897 --> 00:05:56,356
- Back to King Kong.
- Yeah.

110
00:05:56,440 --> 00:05:58,358
There was front screen projection.

111
00:05:58,442 --> 00:06:00,110
- Yeah.
- In 1933.

112
00:06:00,194 --> 00:06:02,779
- Yeah.
- You have Fay Wray in a little...

113
00:06:02,863 --> 00:06:04,990
And then you have all the stop motion.

114
00:06:05,073 --> 00:06:06,783
- And that was projected...
- Yeah.

115
00:06:06,867 --> 00:06:09,828
- In-camera, right?
- Into a little screen in the set.

116
00:06:09,912 --> 00:06:12,122
Then eventually,
the next big breakthrough,

117
00:06:12,206 --> 00:06:15,042
that technique was being used,
and then Kubrick did a lot of really

118
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- cool front screen projection in 2001.
- Mmm-hmm.

119
00:06:18,003 --> 00:06:19,379
That's the one I think of.

120
00:06:19,463 --> 00:06:21,548
- I'm skipping a few.
- Dawn of Man sequence.

121
00:06:21,632 --> 00:06:24,343
That's why you have
the glint in the eyes of

122
00:06:24,426 --> 00:06:26,053
whatever the big cat was.

123
00:06:26,136 --> 00:06:27,471
- The leopard.
- The leopard?

124
00:06:27,554 --> 00:06:29,306
I was like, "What a cool effect that is."

125
00:06:29,389 --> 00:06:30,682
But that was just the front.

126
00:06:30,766 --> 00:06:33,101
It's so bright and they have
the reflective screen.

127
00:06:33,185 --> 00:06:37,356
But I had always thought that Dawn of Man
was shot in a real environment.

128
00:06:37,439 --> 00:06:38,607
It wasn't. That was indoors.

129
00:06:38,690 --> 00:06:40,651
- It was just like what we were doing.
- Yeah.

130
00:06:40,734 --> 00:06:43,362
But because of the luminance levels and,

131
00:06:43,445 --> 00:06:45,531
well, maybe you guys
could speak better to that.

132
00:06:45,614 --> 00:06:49,910
Why did that Kubrick sequence seem
like such a breakthrough?

133
00:06:51,245 --> 00:06:53,372
It was done with
a really high taste level.

134
00:06:53,455 --> 00:06:56,291
They took a lot of time
to really get those set-ups right.

135
00:06:56,375 --> 00:06:59,378
And they worked with the technology.

136
00:06:59,461 --> 00:07:02,881
You notice that all the foregrounds,
none of them are hard-lit

137
00:07:02,965 --> 00:07:06,009
because if you tried to simulate sunlight,

138
00:07:06,093 --> 00:07:09,513
really wouldn't work with
the front projection screens.

139
00:07:09,596 --> 00:07:12,975
What would happen
if they had done the sunlight is then,

140
00:07:13,058 --> 00:07:16,228
the bright sunlight would've, um,
reflected off the screen

141
00:07:16,311 --> 00:07:18,605
and you would have seen
halos around everyone.

142
00:07:18,689 --> 00:07:22,526
So they put all the sunlight in the
background on the projected part of it

143
00:07:22,609 --> 00:07:24,820
and the foregrounds were
as if they were in shadow.

144
00:07:24,903 --> 00:07:27,531
Which is exactly what
we did on The Volume.

145
00:07:33,537 --> 00:07:36,123
One of the most exciting
things that I had

146
00:07:36,206 --> 00:07:39,710
the pleasure of experiencing on this
was working in the LED Volume.

147
00:07:41,336 --> 00:07:45,465
Which essentially
is this big room of TV screens

148
00:07:45,549 --> 00:07:49,678
and a ceiling as well, which,
basically, you show the environment,

149
00:07:49,761 --> 00:07:53,682
you project it, or you screen
the environment on these TVs.

150
00:07:54,433 --> 00:07:57,519
It's a 75-foot diameter circle
with a ceiling

151
00:07:57,603 --> 00:08:03,317
that is an LED screen,
or thousands of LED screens, LED panels,

152
00:08:03,400 --> 00:08:06,278
and we put content up on that
that we can then photograph

153
00:08:06,361 --> 00:08:08,197
so that everything was in-camera.

154
00:08:08,739 --> 00:08:11,033
The great joy of working
in The Volume is that

155
00:08:11,116 --> 00:08:13,243
you weren't working
in a green screen environment.

156
00:08:13,327 --> 00:08:15,829
We were trying to capture
everything in-camera.

157
00:08:15,913 --> 00:08:19,041
The sets that you see
on the screen are photographs

158
00:08:19,124 --> 00:08:25,506
of locations that have been digitally
recreated and pasted together on geometry,

159
00:08:25,589 --> 00:08:27,841
very photorealistic geometry

160
00:08:27,925 --> 00:08:31,136
and, uh, with real textures
from the photographs

161
00:08:31,220 --> 00:08:33,847
to really trick you into thinking
this is all real.

162
00:08:36,016 --> 00:08:39,353
What we did that was very
different on this project was that

163
00:08:39,436 --> 00:08:43,357
it was content that was
motion-tracked from the camera

164
00:08:43,440 --> 00:08:47,361
so it had a positional data
from the camera,

165
00:08:47,444 --> 00:08:51,281
so you could have perspective
and parallax change as the camera moved,

166
00:08:51,365 --> 00:08:54,910
and so the content on the wall would
change as the camera was changing.

167
00:09:02,209 --> 00:09:04,294
We created this real world.

168
00:09:04,378 --> 00:09:08,757
So it virtually was like shooting
in a real environment,

169
00:09:08,841 --> 00:09:10,300
but it was actually content.

170
00:09:10,384 --> 00:09:16,515
The ability to shoot a 10-hour dawn,
a 12-hour dawn is extraordinary.

171
00:09:17,182 --> 00:09:20,477
To shoot any sequence where you say,

172
00:09:20,561 --> 00:09:23,689
"Oh, this world's not quite right.
Let's just move it a little bit,

173
00:09:23,772 --> 00:09:25,566
"let's just change this a little bit,"

174
00:09:26,441 --> 00:09:29,111
it's mind-blowing what that tool is.

175
00:09:35,284 --> 00:09:38,579
The beginning of The Volume
was just gonna be to have

176
00:09:38,662 --> 00:09:41,540
enough of the design
to be interactive light

177
00:09:42,541 --> 00:09:48,005
and then to have a green screen
that could follow the person around

178
00:09:48,088 --> 00:09:51,049
or be behind them so I didn't have
to wait to light screens.

179
00:09:51,133 --> 00:09:55,637
Then as we started to look more deeply
into the game engine technology

180
00:09:55,721 --> 00:09:58,724
and started doing tests,
and we actually did tests in here

181
00:09:58,807 --> 00:10:01,476
when we were doing Lion King
with just a regular TV set,

182
00:10:01,560 --> 00:10:04,730
and putting a TV set in front using
all the tracking information

183
00:10:04,813 --> 00:10:07,357
that we were using
for the VR for Lion King.

184
00:10:07,441 --> 00:10:09,985
And we saw if we fed that back
into the screen,

185
00:10:10,068 --> 00:10:12,988
it was fast enough that you could
move it around and...

186
00:10:13,071 --> 00:10:19,286
We had a model head of a lion in front
of this piece of architecture,

187
00:10:19,369 --> 00:10:21,622
and it looked weird when you're...

188
00:10:21,705 --> 00:10:23,999
On the outside it's smearing
and doing weird stuff,

189
00:10:24,082 --> 00:10:26,919
but when you looked through the lens,
it was perfect.

190
00:10:27,002 --> 00:10:28,879
And so that was the proof of concept,

191
00:10:28,962 --> 00:10:31,965
and other people have been
thinking about doing things like that,

192
00:10:32,049 --> 00:10:35,761
but it takes a show to commit
a certain amount of resources

193
00:10:35,844 --> 00:10:38,138
and also have somebody,
honestly, like Kathy Kennedy...

194
00:10:38,222 --> 00:10:39,765
- Yeah.
- Who can go in

195
00:10:39,848 --> 00:10:43,769
and who was in charge of ILM
and also in charge of Lucasfilm,

196
00:10:43,852 --> 00:10:47,773
and then me, who was frustrated and
wanting a breakthrough like this to happen

197
00:10:47,856 --> 00:10:49,733
with the vision for how that could be done

198
00:10:49,816 --> 00:10:52,694
and dealing with people who had
been thinking about versions of it.

199
00:10:52,778 --> 00:10:54,488
And as we had talked about before,

200
00:10:54,571 --> 00:10:57,658
and George Lucas
was messing around in that space

201
00:10:57,741 --> 00:11:00,118
since the prequels with set extensions
on green screen.

202
00:11:00,202 --> 00:11:02,621
So everybody was hitting it
from slightly different angle,

203
00:11:02,704 --> 00:11:03,997
and everybody came together.

204
00:11:04,081 --> 00:11:06,834
And then also to have a group of
filmmakers, to be honest with you,

205
00:11:06,917 --> 00:11:11,088
who were up for it and who
weren't frustrated by the limitations,

206
00:11:11,171 --> 00:11:12,589
but saw the opportunities in it.

207
00:11:12,673 --> 00:11:16,593
I think we're talking about
The Volume and the technology,

208
00:11:16,677 --> 00:11:18,887
but, at least for me, I found what it did

209
00:11:18,971 --> 00:11:21,598
- was that it put me back in a set.
- Yes.

210
00:11:21,682 --> 00:11:24,977
You know, it put me back
where the rules are,

211
00:11:25,060 --> 00:11:26,728
you know, what you understand.

212
00:11:26,812 --> 00:11:30,232
And so I was walking into a set
with my actors

213
00:11:30,315 --> 00:11:33,277
and we're talking and we're moving
and we're figuring out

214
00:11:33,360 --> 00:11:37,114
the world and the scenes
as if it was built.

215
00:11:37,197 --> 00:11:42,119
And so the freedom of that was invaluable,

216
00:11:42,202 --> 00:11:44,830
but that all came through the, you know,

217
00:11:44,913 --> 00:11:49,501
the process of knowing how this was
gonna look and what you were going for.

218
00:11:49,585 --> 00:11:52,462
And so when I got on set,
it didn't feel like,

219
00:11:52,546 --> 00:11:56,300
"Oh, my God, what this...
I'm strapped in by..."

220
00:11:56,383 --> 00:12:00,012
Creatively, it felt like I was free
to sort of really create.

221
00:12:00,095 --> 00:12:02,806
And Jon, you sort of
pushed that even more,

222
00:12:02,890 --> 00:12:05,100
'cause I'd sort of be like,
"Well, you know,

223
00:12:05,184 --> 00:12:09,354
"this is kind of how we were doing it
in pre-vis and I'm going that way."

224
00:12:09,438 --> 00:12:12,107
And you're like, "Okay, yeah, cool...

225
00:12:12,191 --> 00:12:16,236
"but let's try, maybe just a...
Let's just do something else."

226
00:12:16,320 --> 00:12:19,489
And I'm like, "Oh, okay, we can do that?
We just spent all this money doing..."

227
00:12:19,573 --> 00:12:22,159
You're like, "Let's just go."

228
00:12:22,242 --> 00:12:23,744
But that got everybody prepared.

229
00:12:23,827 --> 00:12:25,287
Yeah, it gets you prepared...

230
00:12:25,370 --> 00:12:27,873
'Cause there's story
and also building the assets.

231
00:12:28,207 --> 00:12:29,791
- Yeah.
- For example,

232
00:12:29,875 --> 00:12:32,377
on the episode when
you're on the space station...

233
00:12:32,461 --> 00:12:33,462
Mmm-hmm.

234
00:12:33,545 --> 00:12:35,422
To create Volumes based on where

235
00:12:35,506 --> 00:12:37,883
you wanted to stage action was invaluable.

236
00:12:37,966 --> 00:12:40,928
- Yeah.
- But what, you know, Bill Burr was saying

237
00:12:41,011 --> 00:12:43,096
didn't matter as much

238
00:12:43,180 --> 00:12:47,142
and we could change that and we could
alter what's going on within it

239
00:12:47,226 --> 00:12:50,687
as long as we gave our visual effects
people and our art department enough time

240
00:12:50,771 --> 00:12:53,190
- to build it so that you could play in it.
- Exactly.

241
00:12:53,273 --> 00:12:54,942
That's what we were learning is,

242
00:12:55,025 --> 00:12:59,655
like, we have to schedule what we have,
because The Volume, I mean, it was like...

243
00:13:00,030 --> 00:13:02,533
For people who have never been there,

244
00:13:02,616 --> 00:13:05,827
if you think of this table top
like the stage,

245
00:13:05,911 --> 00:13:09,748
and the outside of it is all video walls
and the top is a video wall.

246
00:13:10,582 --> 00:13:12,960
Everything that was on the floor

247
00:13:13,043 --> 00:13:17,923
or inside of the video walls
has to be there.

248
00:13:18,006 --> 00:13:21,051
If it was dirt there,
it's dirt here that matches.

249
00:13:21,593 --> 00:13:26,473
And if we had furniture in front of it
or cargo, we put that there.

250
00:13:26,557 --> 00:13:28,475
And even if we had the Razor Crest,

251
00:13:28,559 --> 00:13:30,978
we had a Razor Crest
that could fit inside The Volume,

252
00:13:31,061 --> 00:13:32,938
or half of it,
and we'd have half on the wall.

253
00:13:33,021 --> 00:13:35,816
And everything was planned
so that whatever's on the floor

254
00:13:35,899 --> 00:13:37,401
would continue into the wall.

255
00:13:37,484 --> 00:13:39,361
And then wherever you moved the camera,

256
00:13:39,444 --> 00:13:42,739
everything on the stage was correct,
everything in the background had parallax

257
00:13:42,823 --> 00:13:43,949
like in a video game,

258
00:13:44,032 --> 00:13:46,743
because we were using a game engine
to render it in real-time.

259
00:13:47,369 --> 00:13:50,080
You damage one of my droids,
you'll pay for it.

260
00:13:50,163 --> 00:13:52,082
Just keep them away from my ship.

261
00:13:52,165 --> 00:13:54,960
Yeah? You think that's a good idea, do ya?

262
00:13:55,043 --> 00:13:57,254
I don't think I could
sit here and explain

263
00:13:57,337 --> 00:14:00,757
what it is that's so fundamental
about a game engine.

264
00:14:00,841 --> 00:14:04,511
I'll give my version,
and then Jon'll give the right answer.

265
00:14:06,638 --> 00:14:11,602
It's real-time, so the visual
that anybody playing a video game,

266
00:14:11,685 --> 00:14:15,731
are looking at are being calculated
in milliseconds.

267
00:14:16,398 --> 00:14:19,943
So, if you move right or you move left
in a scene, or you turn around

268
00:14:20,027 --> 00:14:22,362
and you see a view in an environment
never seen before,

269
00:14:22,446 --> 00:14:24,531
it's happening in milliseconds,
it's real-time.

270
00:14:24,615 --> 00:14:26,074
For the audience to understand,

271
00:14:26,158 --> 00:14:29,661
it's like being inside the Battle of Hoth,
from Empire Strikes Back,

272
00:14:29,745 --> 00:14:31,496
but the battle is happening around you,

273
00:14:31,580 --> 00:14:33,874
- 'cause you planned the battle.
- How a video game works.

274
00:14:33,957 --> 00:14:37,461
Except now we're setting cameras as though
we're taking that video game reality

275
00:14:37,544 --> 00:14:39,671
and we're doing a cinematic experience
based on it.

276
00:14:39,755 --> 00:14:41,423
Then we're gonna control it.

277
00:14:43,800 --> 00:14:46,261
And set. Action.

278
00:14:47,471 --> 00:14:53,060
Sometimes you'd walk into that Volume
and not realize where the screens were.

279
00:14:53,143 --> 00:14:54,228
Because you'd have...

280
00:14:55,229 --> 00:14:56,939
You'd have these sets that were built

281
00:14:57,022 --> 00:14:59,691
and all these people in them
and characters and stuff,

282
00:15:00,192 --> 00:15:03,529
and it would, even to the human eye,
you'd get deceived

283
00:15:03,612 --> 00:15:08,617
and you wouldn't be able to figure out
where the practical stuff ended

284
00:15:08,700 --> 00:15:10,744
and where the LED screens began.

285
00:15:11,870 --> 00:15:14,039
So even to the human eye,
it was believable.

286
00:15:17,084 --> 00:15:20,379
The hangar was the biggest one, for me,
that we did in Rick's episode six,

287
00:15:20,462 --> 00:15:23,841
where you're in this hangar
looking out at the stars

288
00:15:23,924 --> 00:15:26,343
and you feel all this construction
and equipment.

289
00:15:26,426 --> 00:15:28,303
The ship wasn't part of the deal.

290
00:15:28,387 --> 00:15:32,349
Well, the Crest is the only reason
I let you back in here.

291
00:15:32,432 --> 00:15:34,142
After a while,
I would sit there and go,

292
00:15:34,226 --> 00:15:38,188
"I'm gonna try to guess what's real here,"
because you can't tell,

293
00:15:38,272 --> 00:15:40,524
because the boxes in the foreground
blend so well...

294
00:15:40,607 --> 00:15:42,109
- It's crazy.
- It was amazing.

295
00:15:42,192 --> 00:15:43,777
We used to do our walkthroughs.

296
00:15:43,861 --> 00:15:46,238
Maybe we're shooting
on the backlot one particular day,

297
00:15:46,321 --> 00:15:49,324
after wrap, we would come to The Volume
to prep for the next day.

298
00:15:49,408 --> 00:15:52,244
Often, the art department and the set dec
has got everything counted,

299
00:15:52,327 --> 00:15:53,954
it looks great, the screens are white.

300
00:15:54,037 --> 00:15:55,455
So, we turn the screens on,

301
00:15:55,539 --> 00:15:57,875
and all of a sudden,
the set appeared there.

302
00:15:57,958 --> 00:16:01,712
I remember we were having a conversation
about something, and off in the screen,

303
00:16:01,795 --> 00:16:04,798
there was an effects pass of some smoke

304
00:16:04,882 --> 00:16:07,050
because there's some weld
happening on the screen.

305
00:16:07,134 --> 00:16:08,343
I remember somebody shouting,

306
00:16:08,427 --> 00:16:10,387
"There's a fire! There's a fire!"

307
00:16:11,180 --> 00:16:14,183
We had a funny one like
that where we were doing this talk.

308
00:16:16,018 --> 00:16:19,188
- It was being sent to Disney people.
- The Disney conference.

309
00:16:19,271 --> 00:16:21,064
You were on the other side of the line.

310
00:16:21,148 --> 00:16:23,567
We were two little director's chairs
set up in this hangar.

311
00:16:23,650 --> 00:16:27,154
We were talking and this whole thing
was going on, and we were in The Volume.

312
00:16:27,237 --> 00:16:31,617
And later we found out, you told us,
nobody realized we were in The Volume.

313
00:16:31,700 --> 00:16:34,411
They thought they were looking
at this giant set

314
00:16:34,494 --> 00:16:36,038
they spent all this money on.

315
00:16:36,121 --> 00:16:38,332
- Yeah, we were TV.
- Absolutely. It looked fantastic.

316
00:16:38,415 --> 00:16:39,416
Here are the cool ones.

317
00:16:39,499 --> 00:16:42,544
To me, here are the cool ones
that I thought were mind-blowing.

318
00:16:43,212 --> 00:16:46,632
There was something
about that Jawa camp for Chapter 2.

319
00:16:49,384 --> 00:16:52,846
When they're all sitting,
'cause that was how they did it back in...

320
00:16:52,930 --> 00:16:55,599
- Where was it, Morocco?
- Tunisia.

321
00:16:55,682 --> 00:17:00,395
Tunisia, there were just some
treads and everything else was framed out.

322
00:17:01,438 --> 00:17:04,983
And so we built one tread
and we extended everything that way.

323
00:17:06,068 --> 00:17:09,780
One of the ones I thought
was really aesthetically gorgeous

324
00:17:09,863 --> 00:17:12,199
and held up very well was in your episode.

325
00:17:12,783 --> 00:17:14,761
- When you have Ming-Na. No, Ming-Na.
- The hangar?

326
00:17:14,785 --> 00:17:18,038
- Oh, in the cliff and the foreground...
- Yeah. And Jake.

327
00:17:18,121 --> 00:17:20,916
In front of the Dune Sea,
and he's on the bike.

328
00:17:20,999 --> 00:17:22,918
And it's just a silhouette.

329
00:17:23,001 --> 00:17:28,257
It really got that balance
of bright and dark and silhouette.

330
00:17:33,220 --> 00:17:35,389
There's an
extraordinarily long list

331
00:17:35,472 --> 00:17:38,725
of all the advantages of shooting
in an environment like this.

332
00:17:38,809 --> 00:17:42,813
In a simple sense,
it's a large lighting box.

333
00:17:42,896 --> 00:17:45,440
The lighting on the subject
is actually real.

334
00:17:45,524 --> 00:17:48,402
It's not something that we have to imagine

335
00:17:48,485 --> 00:17:51,655
what it would be like
and create that artificially.

336
00:17:51,738 --> 00:17:53,699
You could actually put a subject
in that space

337
00:17:53,782 --> 00:17:55,993
and they would be lit by the LED Volume.

338
00:17:56,076 --> 00:17:59,121
You have all the ambient light,
and reflections, more importantly.

339
00:17:59,204 --> 00:18:01,999
And so we have a very reflective character
to take advantage of that

340
00:18:02,082 --> 00:18:03,333
because that helps sell it.

341
00:18:03,417 --> 00:18:06,753
The main character,
his helmet is basically a big mirror,

342
00:18:06,837 --> 00:18:10,424
so you've got the benefit of actually
having the environments

343
00:18:10,507 --> 00:18:13,177
reflected in his helmet
and being able to see that,

344
00:18:13,260 --> 00:18:16,513
instead of putting that in later on,
which is just a big hassle.

345
00:18:16,597 --> 00:18:18,098
When you have green screen,

346
00:18:18,182 --> 00:18:20,017
first you knock the green
out of reflections,

347
00:18:20,100 --> 00:18:21,310
then put another reflection,

348
00:18:21,393 --> 00:18:23,604
map another reflection
on top of those surfaces.

349
00:18:23,687 --> 00:18:26,899
So people avoid reflective surfaces
when you're on a green screen stage,

350
00:18:26,982 --> 00:18:28,108
whereas we embrace it.

351
00:18:31,862 --> 00:18:35,365
Most DPs do what they're trained to do,
which is light what's in front of them,

352
00:18:35,449 --> 00:18:38,952
and if they have a set with actors

353
00:18:39,036 --> 00:18:42,206
and then a window
with a blue screen out there

354
00:18:42,289 --> 00:18:44,416
that isn't four stops overexposed,

355
00:18:44,499 --> 00:18:48,212
then they light what's in front of them
and you end up with something that,

356
00:18:48,295 --> 00:18:52,007
when you put the four stop brighter thing
out the window,

357
00:18:52,090 --> 00:18:54,885
doesn't look right or isn't pleasing.

358
00:18:55,344 --> 00:18:58,096
And then you're trying
to artificially recreate that balance.

359
00:18:58,180 --> 00:19:01,433
Right. So our video wall allows them
to actually see that and stop for it,

360
00:19:01,517 --> 00:19:03,393
change the exposure
for what they're seeing.

361
00:19:03,477 --> 00:19:06,230
As they would in a real environment.

362
00:19:06,313 --> 00:19:11,902
We talk about The Volume as being this
super cutting-edge means of film-making.

363
00:19:11,985 --> 00:19:15,906
But one of the great things about it is
how it enables different departments

364
00:19:15,989 --> 00:19:19,910
to work in a more traditional way

365
00:19:19,993 --> 00:19:22,037
than, for instance, on a blue screen where

366
00:19:22,120 --> 00:19:24,831
the DP doesn't really know
what the background's gonna be

367
00:19:24,915 --> 00:19:28,544
so they're kind of coming up with lighting
that we hope is gonna match later.

368
00:19:28,627 --> 00:19:30,754
Now they can see it all in-camera,

369
00:19:30,838 --> 00:19:33,799
actor, background,
adjust lighting accordingly.

370
00:19:33,882 --> 00:19:37,553
The actor is immersed in the imagery.

371
00:19:37,636 --> 00:19:39,847
You've got stuff
you can cut with immediately.

372
00:19:39,930 --> 00:19:41,598
It's not just actors on blue screen.

373
00:19:41,682 --> 00:19:43,725
Every department, even set dec,
it's like...

374
00:19:43,809 --> 00:19:47,479
'Cause we'll have, obviously,
physical builds in front of the screen

375
00:19:47,563 --> 00:19:49,731
and the two need to
live in the world together.

376
00:19:49,815 --> 00:19:53,110
You can just look through the camera,
or even just stand there and say,

377
00:19:53,193 --> 00:19:56,280
"Oh, yeah, we should touch this up
or adjust this a little bit," or whatever.

378
00:19:56,363 --> 00:19:59,908
And that's all the way, you know,
those departments work...

379
00:19:59,992 --> 00:20:02,035
It's emulating what you see
in a real location.

380
00:20:02,119 --> 00:20:07,416
This technology, it allows you to
go into the cutting room the next day,

381
00:20:07,499 --> 00:20:12,337
or even sometimes that day, look at it
and pop right back in

382
00:20:12,421 --> 00:20:15,966
and pick up something
you might've missed very easily.

383
00:20:16,049 --> 00:20:19,636
Because it's just putting back
onto the screens what you had.

384
00:20:19,720 --> 00:20:22,472
You have the lighting set
and you're up and running.

385
00:20:22,556 --> 00:20:25,934
That was a big benefit because we
picked up many shots and split our team,

386
00:20:26,018 --> 00:20:29,146
and I could shoot the second unit
for the other directors

387
00:20:29,229 --> 00:20:31,148
and they would have
a little list of shots.

388
00:20:31,231 --> 00:20:36,361
And I'd just take Richard with me
or one of the other camera operators

389
00:20:36,445 --> 00:20:38,405
and we'd just do these shots
really quickly.

390
00:20:38,488 --> 00:20:42,784
And, you know, we could change
The Volume within the half-hour

391
00:20:42,868 --> 00:20:44,286
to be a completely different set,

392
00:20:44,369 --> 00:20:47,080
and if we weren't shooting the ground
we didn't need to change it,

393
00:20:47,164 --> 00:20:50,792
'cause you'd still get depth and parallax
on the screen and the reflection needed.

394
00:20:50,876 --> 00:20:54,713
And so all those tools, too,
it is relative to animation,

395
00:20:54,796 --> 00:20:58,383
which was a good comfort zone for me
doing live-action the first time.

396
00:20:58,926 --> 00:21:01,637
Seeing three-dimensional objects
on the screen

397
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:03,764
and the parallax
and the virtual blocking and...

398
00:21:03,847 --> 00:21:07,643
It made sense in a way because of the way
George taught me to see Clone Wars

399
00:21:07,726 --> 00:21:10,562
and the animation
and virtual blocking techniques.

400
00:21:10,979 --> 00:21:15,108
Creatively, the actors had one of the
biggest responses to this whole thing.

401
00:21:16,693 --> 00:21:20,072
Ready, and door!

402
00:21:22,115 --> 00:21:25,786
Now, we have a room
where there are things that you can see.

403
00:21:25,869 --> 00:21:29,706
Where I can climb up on top
of my TIE fighter and see the horizon.

404
00:21:31,542 --> 00:21:32,543
It's interactive.

405
00:21:33,877 --> 00:21:37,089
I can now feel the power
of that sun coming up.

406
00:21:37,172 --> 00:21:38,882
There could be nothing else in the room,

407
00:21:38,966 --> 00:21:42,302
and now you can put a set in there
with gravel and dirt and a spaceship.

408
00:21:42,386 --> 00:21:45,764
So I have something concrete and physical
to look at and feel and touch.

409
00:21:45,848 --> 00:21:50,102
Wow, what a difference.
What a difference a day makes.

410
00:21:54,231 --> 00:21:56,733
There was nothing like
being in a lava tunnel.

411
00:21:56,817 --> 00:22:01,113
Actually, it's so disorienting
because usually as an actor,

412
00:22:01,196 --> 00:22:03,156
you're standing there
and you're pretending.

413
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:07,160
But here we are and you look at the wall,
and literally,

414
00:22:07,244 --> 00:22:10,038
the wall is moving,
as you would be moving on the boat.

415
00:22:10,122 --> 00:22:14,459
And you look down the end of the tunnel,
and the tunnel is growing in size...

416
00:22:14,543 --> 00:22:17,045
The opening, or the exit is growing.

417
00:22:17,129 --> 00:22:19,631
And you look behind you
and the exit is shrinking

418
00:22:19,715 --> 00:22:23,635
and the lava is flowing
and the ceiling is moving and so...

419
00:22:23,719 --> 00:22:25,387
And we had a projector on you.

420
00:22:25,470 --> 00:22:27,222
That was a trick
we learned on Jungle Book.

421
00:22:27,306 --> 00:22:29,933
- That was hard to get used to...
- It was!

422
00:22:30,017 --> 00:22:33,228
For me, it was hard to get used to.
I was like, "Oh, I hope I..."

423
00:22:33,312 --> 00:22:35,272
- Felt like you were moving.
- You don't want...

424
00:22:35,355 --> 00:22:38,108
I get motion-sick sometimes,
so I was like...

425
00:22:38,192 --> 00:22:40,194
I just didn't want to fall overboard
in the lava.

426
00:22:40,277 --> 00:22:41,278
No.

427
00:22:41,361 --> 00:22:43,655
It's a valuable thing
to know as actors.

428
00:22:43,739 --> 00:22:44,740
I'm a delicate flower.

429
00:22:44,823 --> 00:22:48,076
How you feel being inside The Volume

430
00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:50,996
with something to look at,
as opposed to green screen.

431
00:22:51,079 --> 00:22:54,374
'Cause a lot of people ask,
"How do the actors feel about this?"

432
00:22:54,458 --> 00:22:56,919
So you guys could each
speak to that, I think.

433
00:22:57,002 --> 00:22:59,296
I gotta tell you, I found it

434
00:23:00,464 --> 00:23:02,799
as liberating as anything
I've ever worked on.

435
00:23:02,883 --> 00:23:06,845
Because as soon as you accepted it,
you were in the environment.

436
00:23:06,929 --> 00:23:08,514
You didn't have to pretend anymore.

437
00:23:08,597 --> 00:23:10,474
And now it was really about

438
00:23:11,558 --> 00:23:15,646
whatever context at the time,
you could immediately buy in.

439
00:23:15,729 --> 00:23:17,856
You didn't have to create it in your mind.

440
00:23:17,940 --> 00:23:20,776
Also, when you think about it,
if you've got four of us in the boat

441
00:23:20,859 --> 00:23:22,361
and we're going down the...

442
00:23:22,444 --> 00:23:25,447
Your four people,
if you don't actually see the same thing,

443
00:23:25,531 --> 00:23:29,117
have four different concepts
of what is going on.

444
00:23:29,576 --> 00:23:33,080
So now we're really a team in the boat.

445
00:23:33,747 --> 00:23:37,084
It's like, you don't have to guess, man.
This is what's happening.

446
00:23:37,167 --> 00:23:40,754
So if somebody refers to something,
it's a buy-in immediately.

447
00:23:41,213 --> 00:23:43,298
And a buy-in that you are all
in sync with.

448
00:23:43,382 --> 00:23:45,259
That, to me, was amazing.

449
00:23:45,592 --> 00:23:46,844
I must be destroyed.

450
00:24:05,279 --> 00:24:08,532
The great irony
is that George Lucas,

451
00:24:08,615 --> 00:24:11,368
way over 20 years ago,

452
00:24:11,451 --> 00:24:13,954
was saying, like...
I was hearing him saying, he's like,

453
00:24:14,037 --> 00:24:17,499
"One day, we're gonna be able
to make these movies in our garage."

454
00:24:19,168 --> 00:24:24,548
"And it will look like just as real
as traveling a zillion miles away."

455
00:24:24,631 --> 00:24:27,217
The first time that
I stepped on to The Volume,

456
00:24:27,301 --> 00:24:29,845
I was like, "Oh, my gosh,
this is George's garage."

457
00:24:30,262 --> 00:24:33,974
When George came by the set
and looked at the wall we had built,

458
00:24:34,057 --> 00:24:36,560
and we're so happy
that I'm getting ready to tell him,

459
00:24:36,643 --> 00:24:38,395
"We're the first people ever to do this.

460
00:24:38,478 --> 00:24:40,647
"People talk about it,
but nobody's actually done it.

461
00:24:40,981 --> 00:24:42,357
"You didn't have a video wall."

462
00:24:42,441 --> 00:24:45,485
He says, "No, not a video wall,"
but it was what the prequels were.

463
00:24:45,569 --> 00:24:48,530
He told me that it's what
he was building, or wanting to build...

464
00:24:48,614 --> 00:24:50,657
- Right.
- At the base of the hill from the Ranch.

465
00:24:50,741 --> 00:24:52,659
- Yeah.
- That he never was able to do.

466
00:24:52,743 --> 00:24:55,537
- It's a virtual production.
- That's exactly what he was setting up.

467
00:24:55,621 --> 00:24:58,665
He was a little bit ahead
of what the technology could deliver.

468
00:24:58,749 --> 00:25:01,418
He always was 10 years ahead of his time.

469
00:25:01,502 --> 00:25:03,045
Once we got digital,

470
00:25:03,128 --> 00:25:07,090
we could actually,
especially with blue screen,

471
00:25:07,174 --> 00:25:10,928
we could shoot the stuff,
do it in blue screen,

472
00:25:11,011 --> 00:25:13,597
and do all that stuff,
and then just do it later.

473
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:15,599
Now you can do it on set,
which is even better.

474
00:25:15,682 --> 00:25:19,603
Okay, let's swim it back and forth a bit.
We're gonna go left.

475
00:25:21,188 --> 00:25:23,774
What's cool is other filmmakers
are coming through,

476
00:25:23,857 --> 00:25:25,901
other people that are curious
about the stuff.

477
00:25:25,984 --> 00:25:29,071
Now that you see somebody could do it,
it becomes easier to emulate,

478
00:25:29,154 --> 00:25:32,407
because this technology
is pretty readily available.

479
00:25:33,408 --> 00:25:35,202
There's nothing proprietary here.

480
00:25:35,285 --> 00:25:38,372
It's all stuff that you can... You know,
it's game engine technology,

481
00:25:38,455 --> 00:25:41,834
it's video screens,
it's positional camera data.

482
00:25:41,917 --> 00:25:43,335
It's things that are kind of...

483
00:25:43,418 --> 00:25:46,088
It's just combined in a way
nobody's done it before.

484
00:25:46,171 --> 00:25:48,340
You have to have an understanding
of how to do it.

485
00:25:48,423 --> 00:25:50,717
That's also what's fun is that our team,

486
00:25:50,801 --> 00:25:54,638
our AD team, our directors,
we're experimenting

487
00:25:54,721 --> 00:25:57,307
with this new combination
of technologies for the first time.

488
00:25:57,391 --> 00:25:59,726
All these young directors
will be able to go out there

489
00:25:59,810 --> 00:26:02,896
and now they know how to do it,
and so they can move forward

490
00:26:02,980 --> 00:26:06,233
and try to move the ball forward
technologically as well.