The creator of Star Wars: The Mandalorian, Jon Favreau, explains how his previous blockbuster, Disney's The Lion King, helped develop new technologies and VFX processes that he was able to adopt for Disney+'s hit show.
"In The Lion King, we built a tool set, basically a 'multiplayer VR filmmaking game,' using the Unity game engine," Jon Favreau explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "We built a bunch of tools working with [lead VFX house] MPC and [tech developer] Magnopus and Unity, and we developed a way by which you could actually create environments and set up cameras and shots within VR."
"In The Mandalorian, we used a lot of the same tools to plan the entire production, working with the Unreal engine [from Epic Games]," the director continued. "But Lion King was a much different production because there was no actual photography. For Mandalorian, we take that cut, and instead of going right to animation and render like we did on Lion King, we build sets and a digital environment that we project onto a video wall. We partnered with Unreal and [VFX house] ILM and put together this system for The Mandalorian. All the people that we worked with then took that technology, and they're doing their versions of it. They're all slightly different, but basically we did research and development for The Mandalorian, and now everybody is building on the innovation that we collectively did and making that available to other people who might be curious about this process as well."
These new systems have proven so effective, they've been embraced by the companies who helped create them, being continuously tweaked and improved in different ways. These updates have subsequently been made available, giving those who might be curious about the technical process an opportunity to use them for their own projects.
Created by Jon Favreau, The Mandalorian stars Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, Emily Swallow, Omid Abtahi, Werner Herzog and Nick Nolte. The first four episodes are streaming now on Disney+.