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What I was learning to do from a little bit with Elf,

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a little more with Zathura, and a lot more with Iron Man was,

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if I could shoot things right, the CG's gonna look a lot better.

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And there was this illusion, I think sometimes people still have it,

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that you could just do anything later.

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Like, "Oh, we'll fix it in post", or "we'll, you know, we'll paint that out",

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or "we'll fix it in the DI", like...and you can do a lot of stuff,

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but you can't do everything.

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Things like interactive light, and things that you can't fake later effectively,

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which is what people associate with effects

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that don't look good in older movies is you're laying in something,

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you're trying to create a shadow on something that's real after the fact,

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never looks great,

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or interactive light on people.

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With Jungle Book, we started saying, "Okay, what could we do here"?

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Let's create our sets digitally, a complete jungle,

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but let's have video wall panels that we would use to create interactive light.

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And so if elephants were passing, we'd have shadows casting on the kid.

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But on the set, all you would see was a lot of blue and one little patch of set

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that he would walk on with foliage growing out of it.

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And if something cast a shadow on him, we would bring that in.

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It should have gone quickly.

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And it was convincing 'cause the interactive light was great,

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the planning was great, execution was great.

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The problem was, it would take forever,

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because that blue screen, if you got to the set and said,

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It looked like this in pre-vis,

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but he looks better if we raise the camera a foot and a half and look down at him,

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well, now you gotta move all that blue screen.

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It took twice as long as it should've.

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So I was thinking, "What's the dream stage to build"?

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So all that, I sort of put that in my...

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It was in the back of my head,

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and I was hired to do The Lion King

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after Jungle Book was a success.

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So we pre-animated the whole film.

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We created the whole environment, like we did on Jungle Book, virtually.

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Except in this case, all of this consumer-facing VR equipment came out.

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Jon?
Yep.

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Suggestion to start up a little bit higher and then come down.

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Okay.

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Three, two, one. Go.

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Ooh!

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Really good.

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Yeah, I chased him down.

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We didn't need any of the motion builder,

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any of the motion capture, expensive stuff that's really just developed for film.

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But instead, using game engine technology.

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And so now people were gonna be operating cameras within VR

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where there's no latency, they're looking at the real thing.

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And now we're at a place where I was taking on

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doing a show for Disney+, The Mandalorian.

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We had a whole team and all of ILM.

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And I had worked with ILM before

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and I knew a lot of the people there.

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There was this sense of, "Hey, let's push this and see what innovations we can come up with".

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And also, these video walls that we were using,

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now these video walls were becoming bigger

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and finer pixel pitch and less expensive.

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It just got me thinking,

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How do you take advantage of all these innovations with technology?

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What'd we learn on Lion King and Jungle Book?

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"How do you apply it to The Mandalorian"?

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When I was involved from the very beginning, we got storyboards

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of what the show was gonna look like. At least, episode one.

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And the information I had at the time

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was that Jon wanted to build upon the technology from The Lion King.

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And at the time, I...

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Who's this "Jon"? He sounds fascinating.

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And totally unrealistic.

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So I was invited down to see it.

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And obviously seeing a film crew here effectively shooting in VR

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was a big eye-opener.

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Trying to figure out what it was that you were doing on The Lion King

75
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and how to solve these environmental problems

76
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on a Star Wars show with eight episodes,

77
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I think the first art department meeting I was invited to,

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I was doing it remotely.

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And so I think Doug Chiang was down here with Andrew Jones, of course,

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and I was watching it remotely from San Francisco.

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And I think Andrew made a reference to "The Backlot".

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Right.

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And I think at that point, you wanted to effectively set the table and say,

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"I want to be clear about what I'd like to try and do on this show".

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And then we got in a room,

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you know, you, Kathy, myself, you were in there,

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and we had Rob Bredow, we had a lot of people from ILM,

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but then we also brought in Kim Libreri,

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who used to work at ILM and now is at Epic.

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Yep.
And Unreal.

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And there were other people, and Magnopus,

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who I'd worked with on Jungle Book and I worked on Lion King with,

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and there was a bit of a think tank

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to figure out if we could pull this thing off.

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The Mandalorian is the first production ever to use real-time rendering

96
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and video wall in-camera set extensions and effects,

97
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that was, again, necessity was the mother of invention

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because we were trying to figure out how to do the production

99
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here in the timeframe at the budget level,

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but still get the whole look we're used to seeing.

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Jon, one of the things it makes me think about,

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it fascinates me to think back on Indian in the Cupboard that we did,

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where we used a lot of Translite,

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and blue screen, but a lot of Translite.

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I'm just curious, what has been this evolution

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of the use of screens, really, as a way

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to inform what Mandalorian...

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Back to King Kong.
Yeah.

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There was front screen projection.

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Yeah.
In 1933.

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Yeah.
You have Fay Wray in a little...

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And then you have all the stop motion.

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And that was projected...
Yeah.

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In-camera, right?
Into a little screen in the set.

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Then eventually, the next big breakthrough,

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that technique was being used, and then Kubrick did a lot of really

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cool front screen projection in 2001.
Mmm-hmm.

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That's the one I think of.

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I'm skipping a few.
Dawn of Man sequence.

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That's why you have the glint in the eyes of

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whatever the big cat was.

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The leopard.
The leopard?

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I was like, "What a cool effect that is".

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But that was just the front.

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It's so bright and they have the reflective screen.

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But I had always thought that Dawn of Man was shot in a real environment.

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It wasn't. That was indoors.

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It was just like what we were doing.

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Yeah.

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But because of the luminance levels and,

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well, maybe you guys could speak better to that.

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Why did that Kubrick sequence seem like such a breakthrough?

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It was done with a really high taste level.

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They took a lot of time to really get those set-ups right.

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And they worked with the technology.

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You notice that all the foregrounds, none of them are hard-lit

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because if you tried to simulate sunlight,

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really wouldn't work with the front projection screens.

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What would happen if they had done the sunlight is then,

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the bright sunlight would've, um, reflected off the screen

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and you would have seen halos around everyone.

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So they put all the sunlight in the background on the projected part of it

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and the foregrounds were as if they were in shadow.

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Which is exactly what we did on The Volume.

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One of the most exciting things that I had

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the pleasure of experiencing on this was working in the LED Volume.

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Which essentially is this big room of TV screens

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and a ceiling as well, which, basically, you show the environment,

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you project it, or you screen the environment on these TVs.

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It's a 75-foot diameter circle with a ceiling

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that is an LED screen, or thousands of LED screens, LED panels,

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and we put content up on that that we can then photograph

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so that everything was in-camera.

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The great joy of working in The Volume is that

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you weren't working in a green screen environment.

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We were trying to capture everything in-camera.

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The sets that you see on the screen are photographs

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of locations that have been digitally recreated and pasted together on geometry,

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very photorealistic geometry

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and, uh, with real textures from the photographs

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to really trick you into thinking this is all real.

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What we did that was very different on this project was that

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it was content that was motion-tracked from the camera

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so it had a positional data from the camera,

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so you could have perspective and parallax change as the camera moved,

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and so the content on the wall would change as the camera was changing.

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We created this real world.

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So it virtually was like shooting in a real environment,

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but it was actually content.

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The ability to shoot a 10-hour dawn, a 12-hour dawn is extraordinary.

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To shoot any sequence where you say,

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Oh, this world's not quite right. Let's just move it a little bit,

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let's just change this a little bit,

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it's mind-blowing what that tool is.

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The beginning of The Volume was just gonna be to have

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enough of the design to be interactive light

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and then to have a green screen that could follow the person around

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or be behind them so I didn't have to wait to light screens.

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Then as we started to look more deeply into the game engine technology

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and started doing tests, and we actually did tests in here

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when we were doing Lion King with just a regular TV set,

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and putting a TV set in front using all the tracking information

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that we were using for the VR for Lion King.

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And we saw if we fed that back into the screen,

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it was fast enough that you could move it around and...

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We had a model head of a lion in front of this piece of architecture,

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and it looked weird when you're...

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On the outside it's smearing and doing weird stuff,

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but when you looked through the lens, it was perfect.

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And so that was the proof of concept,

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and other people have been thinking about doing things like that,

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but it takes a show to commit a certain amount of resources

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and also have somebody, honestly, like Kathy Kennedy...

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Yeah.

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Who can go in and who was in charge of ILM and also in charge of Lucasfilm,

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and then me, who was frustrated and wanting a breakthrough like this to happen

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with the vision for how that could be done

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and dealing with people who had been thinking about versions of it.

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And as we had talked about before,

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and George Lucas was messing around in that space

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since the prequels with set extensions on green screen.

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So everybody was hitting it from slightly different angle,

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and everybody came together.

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And then also to have a group of filmmakers, to be honest with you,

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who were up for it and who weren't frustrated by the limitations,

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but saw the opportunities in it.

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I think we're talking about The Volume and the technology,

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but, at least for me, I found what it did was that it put me back in a set.

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Yes.

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You know, it put me back where the rules are,

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you know, what you understand.

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And so I was walking into a set with my actors

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and we're talking and we're moving and we're figuring out

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the world and the scenes as if it was built.

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And so the freedom of that was invaluable,

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but that all came through the, you know,

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the process of knowing how this was gonna look and what you were going for.

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And so when I got on set, it didn't feel like,

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Oh, my God, what this...I'm strapped in by...

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00:11:56,380 --> 00:12:00,010
Creatively, it felt like I was free to sort of really create.

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And Jon, you sort of pushed that even more,

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'cause I'd sort of be like,

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"Well, you know, this is kind of how we were doing it in pre-vis and I'm going that way".

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And you're like,

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"Okay, yeah, cool...but let's try, maybe just a...let's just do something else".

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And I'm like, "Oh, okay, we can do that? We just spent all this money doing..."

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You're like, "Let's just go".

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But that got everybody prepared.

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Yeah, it gets you prepared...

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'Cause there's story and also building the assets.

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Yeah.

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For example, on the episode when you're on the space station...

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Mmm-hmm.

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To create Volumes based on where

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you wanted to stage action was invaluable.

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Yeah.

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But what, you know, Bill Burr was saying didn't matter as much

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and we could change that and we could alter what's going on within it

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as long as we gave our visual effects people and our art department enough time

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to build it so that you could play in it.

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Exactly.

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That's what we were learning is,

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like, we have to schedule what we have, because The Volume, I mean, it was like...

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For people who have never been there,

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if you think of this table top like the stage,

246
00:13:05,910 --> 00:13:09,740
and the outside of it is all video walls and the top is a video wall.

247
00:13:10,580 --> 00:13:12,960
Everything that was on the floor

248
00:13:13,040 --> 00:13:17,920
or inside of the video walls has to be there.

249
00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:21,050
If it was dirt there, it's dirt here that matches.

250
00:13:21,590 --> 00:13:26,470
And if we had furniture in front of it or cargo, we put that there.

251
00:13:26,550 --> 00:13:28,470
And even if we had the Razor Crest,

252
00:13:28,550 --> 00:13:30,970
we had a Razor Crest that could fit inside The Volume,

253
00:13:31,060 --> 00:13:32,930
or half of it, and we'd have half on the wall.

254
00:13:33,020 --> 00:13:35,810
And everything was planned so that whatever's on the floor

255
00:13:35,890 --> 00:13:37,400
would continue into the wall.

256
00:13:37,480 --> 00:13:39,360
And then wherever you moved the camera,

257
00:13:39,440 --> 00:13:40,650
everything on the stage was correct,

258
00:13:40,740 --> 00:13:43,940
everything in the background had parallax like in a video game,

259
00:13:44,030 --> 00:13:46,740
because we were using a game engine to render it in real-time.

260
00:13:47,360 --> 00:13:50,080
You damage one of my droids, you'll pay for it.

261
00:13:50,160 --> 00:13:52,080
Just keep them away from my ship.

262
00:13:52,160 --> 00:13:54,960
Yeah? You think that's a good idea, do ya?

263
00:13:55,040 --> 00:13:57,250
I don't think I could sit here and explain

264
00:13:57,330 --> 00:14:00,750
what it is that's so fundamental about a game engine.

265
00:14:00,840 --> 00:14:04,510
I'll give my version, and then Jon'll give the right answer.

266
00:14:06,630 --> 00:14:11,600
It's real-time, so the visual that anybody playing a video game,

267
00:14:11,680 --> 00:14:15,730
are looking at are being calculated in milliseconds.

268
00:14:16,390 --> 00:14:19,940
So, if you move right or you move left in a scene, or you turn around

269
00:14:20,020 --> 00:14:22,360
and you see a view in an environment never seen before,

270
00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:24,530
it's happening in milliseconds, it's real-time.

271
00:14:24,610 --> 00:14:26,070
For the audience to understand,

272
00:14:26,150 --> 00:14:29,660
it's like being inside the Battle of Hoth, from Empire Strikes Back,

273
00:14:29,740 --> 00:14:31,490
but the battle is happening around you,

274
00:14:31,580 --> 00:14:33,030
'cause you planned the battle.

275
00:14:33,120 --> 00:14:33,870
How a video game works.

276
00:14:33,950 --> 00:14:37,460
Except now we're setting cameras as though we're taking that video game reality

277
00:14:37,540 --> 00:14:39,670
and we're doing a cinematic experience based on it.

278
00:14:39,750 --> 00:14:41,420
Then we're gonna control it.

279
00:14:43,800 --> 00:14:46,260
And set. Action.

280
00:14:47,470 --> 00:14:53,060
Sometimes you'd walk into that Volume and not realize where the screens were.

281
00:14:53,140 --> 00:14:54,220
Because you'd have...

282
00:14:55,220 --> 00:14:56,930
You'd have these sets that were built

283
00:14:57,020 --> 00:14:59,690
and all these people in them and characters and stuff,

284
00:15:00,190 --> 00:15:03,520
and it would, even to the human eye, you'd get deceived

285
00:15:03,610 --> 00:15:08,610
and you wouldn't be able to figure out where the practical stuff ended

286
00:15:08,700 --> 00:15:10,740
and where the LED screens began.

287
00:15:11,870 --> 00:15:14,030
So even to the human eye, it was believable.

288
00:15:17,080 --> 00:15:20,370
The hangar was the biggest one, for me, that we did in Rick's episode six,

289
00:15:20,460 --> 00:15:23,840
where you're in this hangar looking out at the stars

290
00:15:23,920 --> 00:15:26,340
and you feel all this construction and equipment.

291
00:15:26,420 --> 00:15:28,300
The ship wasn't part of the deal.

292
00:15:28,380 --> 00:15:32,340
Well, the Crest is the only reason I let you back in here.

293
00:15:32,430 --> 00:15:34,140
After a while, I would sit there and go,

294
00:15:34,220 --> 00:15:38,180
"I'm gonna try to guess what's real here", because you can't tell,

295
00:15:38,270 --> 00:15:40,520
because the boxes in the foreground blend so well...

296
00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:42,100
It's crazy.
It was amazing.

297
00:15:42,190 --> 00:15:43,770
We used to do our walkthroughs.

298
00:15:43,860 --> 00:15:46,230
Maybe we're shooting on the backlot one particular day,

299
00:15:46,320 --> 00:15:49,320
after wrap, we would come to The Volume to prep for the next day.

300
00:15:49,400 --> 00:15:52,240
Often, the art department and the set dec has got everything counted,

301
00:15:52,320 --> 00:15:53,950
it looks great, the screens are white.

302
00:15:54,030 --> 00:15:55,450
So, we turn the screens on,

303
00:15:55,530 --> 00:15:57,870
and all of a sudden, the set appeared there.

304
00:15:57,950 --> 00:16:01,710
I remember we were having a conversation about something, and off in the screen,

305
00:16:01,790 --> 00:16:04,790
there was an effects pass of some smoke

306
00:16:04,880 --> 00:16:07,050
because there's some weld happening on the screen.

307
00:16:07,130 --> 00:16:08,340
I remember somebody shouting,

308
00:16:08,420 --> 00:16:10,380
"There's a fire! There's a fire!"

309
00:16:11,180 --> 00:16:14,180
We had a funny one like that where we were doing this talk.

310
00:16:16,010 --> 00:16:19,180
It was being sent to Disney people.
The Disney conference.

311
00:16:19,270 --> 00:16:21,060
You were on the other side of the line.

312
00:16:21,140 --> 00:16:23,560
We were two little director's chairs set up in this hangar.

313
00:16:23,650 --> 00:16:27,150
We were talking and this whole thing was going on, and we were in The Volume.

314
00:16:27,230 --> 00:16:31,610
And later we found out, you told us, nobody realized we were in The Volume.

315
00:16:31,700 --> 00:16:34,410
They thought they were looking at this giant set

316
00:16:34,490 --> 00:16:36,030
they spent all this money on.

317
00:16:36,120 --> 00:16:38,330
Yeah, we were TV.
Absolutely. It looked fantastic.

318
00:16:38,410 --> 00:16:39,410
Here are the cool ones.

319
00:16:39,490 --> 00:16:42,540
To me, here are the cool ones that I thought were mind-blowing.

320
00:16:43,210 --> 00:16:46,630
There was something about that Jawa camp for Chapter 2.

321
00:16:49,380 --> 00:16:52,840
When they're all sitting, 'cause that was how they did it back in...

322
00:16:52,930 --> 00:16:55,590
Where was it, Morocco?
Tunisia.

323
00:16:55,680 --> 00:17:00,390
Tunisia, there were just some treads and everything else was framed out.

324
00:17:01,430 --> 00:17:04,980
And so we built one tread and we extended everything that way.

325
00:17:06,060 --> 00:17:09,780
One of the ones I thought was really aesthetically gorgeous

326
00:17:09,860 --> 00:17:12,190
and held up very well was in your episode.

327
00:17:12,780 --> 00:17:14,760
When you have Ming-Na. No, Ming-Na.
The hangar?

328
00:17:14,780 --> 00:17:18,030
Oh, in the cliff and the foreground...
Yeah. And Jake.

329
00:17:18,120 --> 00:17:20,910
In front of the Dune Sea, and he's on the bike.

330
00:17:20,990 --> 00:17:22,910
And it's just a silhouette.

331
00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:28,250
It really got that balance of bright and dark and silhouette.

332
00:17:33,220 --> 00:17:35,380
There's an extraordinarily long list

333
00:17:35,470 --> 00:17:38,720
of all the advantages of shooting in an environment like this.

334
00:17:38,800 --> 00:17:42,810
In a simple sense, it's a large lighting box.

335
00:17:42,890 --> 00:17:45,440
The lighting on the subject is actually real.

336
00:17:45,520 --> 00:17:48,400
It's not something that we have to imagine

337
00:17:48,480 --> 00:17:51,650
what it would be like and create that artificially.

338
00:17:51,730 --> 00:17:53,690
You could actually put a subject in that space

339
00:17:53,780 --> 00:17:55,990
and they would be lit by the LED Volume.

340
00:17:56,070 --> 00:17:59,120
You have all the ambient light, and reflections, more importantly.

341
00:17:59,200 --> 00:18:01,990
And so we have a very reflective character to take advantage of that

342
00:18:02,080 --> 00:18:03,330
because that helps sell it.

343
00:18:03,410 --> 00:18:06,750
The main character, his helmet is basically a big mirror,

344
00:18:06,830 --> 00:18:10,420
so you've got the benefit of actually having the environments

345
00:18:10,500 --> 00:18:13,170
reflected in his helmet and being able to see that,

346
00:18:13,260 --> 00:18:16,510
instead of putting that in later on, which is just a big hassle.

347
00:18:16,590 --> 00:18:18,090
When you have green screen,

348
00:18:18,180 --> 00:18:20,010
first you knock the green out of reflections,

349
00:18:20,100 --> 00:18:21,310
then put another reflection,

350
00:18:21,390 --> 00:18:23,600
map another reflection on top of those surfaces.

351
00:18:23,680 --> 00:18:26,890
So people avoid reflective surfaces when you're on a green screen stage,

352
00:18:26,980 --> 00:18:28,100
whereas we embrace it.

353
00:18:31,860 --> 00:18:35,360
Most DPs do what they're trained to do, which is light what's in front of them,

354
00:18:35,440 --> 00:18:38,950
and if they have a set with actors

355
00:18:39,030 --> 00:18:42,200
and then a window with a blue screen out there

356
00:18:42,280 --> 00:18:44,410
that isn't four stops overexposed,

357
00:18:44,490 --> 00:18:48,210
then they light what's in front of them and you end up with something that,

358
00:18:48,290 --> 00:18:52,000
when you put the four stop brighter thing out the window,

359
00:18:52,090 --> 00:18:54,880
doesn't look right or isn't pleasing.

360
00:18:55,340 --> 00:18:58,090
And then you're trying to artificially recreate that balance.

361
00:18:58,180 --> 00:19:01,430
Right. So our video wall allows them to actually see that and stop for it,

362
00:19:01,510 --> 00:19:03,390
change the exposure for what they're seeing.

363
00:19:03,470 --> 00:19:06,230
As they would in a real environment.

364
00:19:06,310 --> 00:19:11,900
We talk about The Volume as being this super cutting-edge means of film-making.

365
00:19:11,980 --> 00:19:15,900
But one of the great things about it is how it enables different departments

366
00:19:15,980 --> 00:19:19,910
to work in a more traditional way

367
00:19:19,990 --> 00:19:22,030
than, for instance, on a blue screen where

368
00:19:22,120 --> 00:19:24,830
the DP doesn't really know what the background's gonna be

369
00:19:24,910 --> 00:19:28,540
so they're kind of coming up with lighting that we hope is gonna match later.

370
00:19:28,620 --> 00:19:30,750
Now they can see it all in-camera,

371
00:19:30,830 --> 00:19:33,790
actor, background, adjust lighting accordingly.

372
00:19:33,880 --> 00:19:37,550
The actor is immersed in the imagery.

373
00:19:37,630 --> 00:19:39,840
You've got stuff you can cut with immediately.

374
00:19:39,930 --> 00:19:41,590
It's not just actors on blue screen.

375
00:19:41,680 --> 00:19:43,720
Every department, even set dec, it's like...

376
00:19:43,800 --> 00:19:47,470
'Cause we'll have, obviously, physical builds in front of the screen

377
00:19:47,560 --> 00:19:49,730
and the two need to live in the world together.

378
00:19:49,810 --> 00:19:53,110
You can just look through the camera, or even just stand there and say,

379
00:19:53,190 --> 00:19:56,280
"Oh, yeah, we should touch this up or adjust this a little bit", or whatever.

380
00:19:56,360 --> 00:19:59,900
And that's all the way, you know, those departments work...

381
00:19:59,990 --> 00:20:02,030
It's emulating what you see in a real location.

382
00:20:02,110 --> 00:20:07,410
This technology, it allows you to go into the cutting room the next day,

383
00:20:07,490 --> 00:20:12,330
or even sometimes that day, look at it and pop right back in

384
00:20:12,420 --> 00:20:15,960
and pick up something you might've missed very easily.

385
00:20:16,040 --> 00:20:19,630
Because it's just putting back onto the screens what you had.

386
00:20:19,720 --> 00:20:22,470
You have the lighting set and you're up and running.

387
00:20:22,550 --> 00:20:25,930
That was a big benefit because we picked up many shots and split our team,

388
00:20:26,010 --> 00:20:29,140
and I could shoot the second unit for the other directors

389
00:20:29,220 --> 00:20:31,140
and they would have a little list of shots.

390
00:20:31,230 --> 00:20:36,360
And I'd just take Richard with me or one of the other camera operators

391
00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:38,400
and we'd just do these shots really quickly.

392
00:20:38,480 --> 00:20:42,780
And, you know, we could change The Volume within the half-hour

393
00:20:42,860 --> 00:20:44,280
to be a completely different set,

394
00:20:44,360 --> 00:20:47,080
and if we weren't shooting the ground we didn't need to change it,

395
00:20:47,160 --> 00:20:50,790
'cause you'd still get depth and parallax on the screen and the reflection needed.

396
00:20:50,870 --> 00:20:54,710
And so all those tools, too, it is relative to animation,

397
00:20:54,790 --> 00:20:58,380
which was a good comfort zone for me doing live-action the first time.

398
00:20:58,920 --> 00:21:01,630
Seeing three-dimensional objects on the screen

399
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:03,760
and the parallax and the virtual blocking and...

400
00:21:03,840 --> 00:21:07,640
It made sense in a way because of the way George taught me to see Clone Wars

401
00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:10,560
and the animation and virtual blocking techniques.

402
00:21:10,970 --> 00:21:15,100
Creatively, the actors had one of the biggest responses to this whole thing.

403
00:21:16,690 --> 00:21:20,070
Ready, and door!

404
00:21:22,110 --> 00:21:25,780
Now, we have a room where there are things that you can see.

405
00:21:25,860 --> 00:21:29,700
Where I can climb up on top of my TIE fighter and see the horizon.

406
00:21:31,540 --> 00:21:32,540
It's interactive.

407
00:21:33,870 --> 00:21:37,080
I can now feel the power of that sun coming up.

408
00:21:37,170 --> 00:21:38,880
There could be nothing else in the room,

409
00:21:38,960 --> 00:21:42,300
and now you can put a set in there with gravel and dirt and a spaceship.

410
00:21:42,380 --> 00:21:45,760
So I have something concrete and physical to look at and feel and touch.

411
00:21:45,840 --> 00:21:50,100
Wow, what a difference. What a difference a day makes.

412
00:21:54,230 --> 00:21:56,730
There was nothing like being in a lava tunnel.

413
00:21:56,810 --> 00:22:01,110
Actually, it's so disorienting because usually as an actor,

414
00:22:01,190 --> 00:22:03,150
you're standing there and you're pretending.

415
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:07,160
But here we are and you look at the wall, and literally,

416
00:22:07,240 --> 00:22:10,030
the wall is moving, as you would be moving on the boat.

417
00:22:10,120 --> 00:22:14,450
And you look down the end of the tunnel, and the tunnel is growing in size...

418
00:22:14,540 --> 00:22:17,040
The opening, or the exit is growing.

419
00:22:17,120 --> 00:22:19,630
And you look behind you and the exit is shrinking

420
00:22:19,710 --> 00:22:23,630
and the lava is flowing and the ceiling is moving and so...

421
00:22:23,710 --> 00:22:25,380
And we had a projector on you.

422
00:22:25,470 --> 00:22:27,220
That was a trick we learned on Jungle Book.

423
00:22:27,300 --> 00:22:29,100
That was hard to get used to...

424
00:22:29,190 --> 00:22:29,930
It was!

425
00:22:30,010 --> 00:22:33,220
For me, it was hard to get used to. I was like, "Oh, I hope I..."

426
00:22:33,310 --> 00:22:35,270
Felt like you were moving.
You don't want...

427
00:22:35,350 --> 00:22:38,100
I get motion-sick sometimes, so I was like...

428
00:22:38,190 --> 00:22:40,190
I just didn't want to fall overboard in the lava.

429
00:22:40,270 --> 00:22:41,270
No.

430
00:22:41,360 --> 00:22:43,650
It's a valuable thing to know as actors.

431
00:22:43,730 --> 00:22:44,740
I'm a delicate flower.

432
00:22:44,820 --> 00:22:48,070
How you feel being inside The Volume

433
00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:50,990
with something to look at, as opposed to green screen.

434
00:22:51,070 --> 00:22:54,370
'Cause a lot of people ask, "How do the actors feel about this"?

435
00:22:54,450 --> 00:22:56,910
So you guys could each speak to that, I think.

436
00:22:57,000 --> 00:22:59,290
I gotta tell you, I found it

437
00:23:00,460 --> 00:23:02,790
as liberating as anything I've ever worked on.

438
00:23:02,880 --> 00:23:06,840
Because as soon as you accepted it, you were in the environment.

439
00:23:06,920 --> 00:23:08,510
You didn't have to pretend anymore.

440
00:23:08,590 --> 00:23:10,470
And now it was really about

441
00:23:11,550 --> 00:23:15,640
whatever context at the time, you could immediately buy in.

442
00:23:15,720 --> 00:23:17,850
You didn't have to create it in your mind.

443
00:23:17,940 --> 00:23:20,770
Also, when you think about it, if you've got four of us in the boat

444
00:23:20,850 --> 00:23:22,360
and we're going down the...

445
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:25,440
Your four people, if you don't actually see the same thing,

446
00:23:25,530 --> 00:23:29,110
have four different concepts of what is going on.

447
00:23:29,570 --> 00:23:33,080
So now we're really a team in the boat.

448
00:23:33,740 --> 00:23:37,080
It's like, you don't have to guess, man. This is what's happening.

449
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:40,750
So if somebody refers to something, it's a buy-in immediately.

450
00:23:41,210 --> 00:23:43,290
And a buy-in that you are all in sync with.

451
00:23:43,380 --> 00:23:45,250
That, to me, was amazing.

452
00:23:45,590 --> 00:23:46,840
I must be destroyed.

453
00:24:05,270 --> 00:24:08,530
The great irony is that George Lucas,

454
00:24:08,610 --> 00:24:11,360
way over 20 years ago,

455
00:24:11,450 --> 00:24:13,950
was saying, like...I was hearing him saying, he's like,

456
00:24:14,030 --> 00:24:17,490
"One day, we're gonna be able to make these movies in our garage".

457
00:24:19,160 --> 00:24:24,540
"And it will look like just as real as traveling a zillion miles away".

458
00:24:24,630 --> 00:24:27,210
The first time that I stepped on to The Volume,

459
00:24:27,300 --> 00:24:29,840
I was like, "Oh, my gosh, this is George's garage".

460
00:24:30,260 --> 00:24:33,970
When George came by the set and looked at the wall we had built,

461
00:24:34,050 --> 00:24:36,560
and we're so happy that I'm getting ready to tell him,

462
00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:38,390
We're the first people ever to do this.

463
00:24:38,470 --> 00:24:40,640
People talk about it, but nobody's actually done it.

464
00:24:40,980 --> 00:24:42,350
"You didn't have a video wall".

465
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:45,480
He says, "No, not a video wall", but it was what the prequels were.

466
00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:48,530
He told me that it's what he was building, or wanting to build...

467
00:24:48,610 --> 00:24:49,350
Right.

468
00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:50,650
At the base of the hill from the Ranch.

469
00:24:50,740 --> 00:24:51,480
Yeah.

470
00:24:51,570 --> 00:24:52,650
That he never was able to do.

471
00:24:52,740 --> 00:24:55,530
It's a virtual production.
That's exactly what he was setting up.

472
00:24:55,620 --> 00:24:58,660
He was a little bit ahead of what the technology could deliver.

473
00:24:58,740 --> 00:25:01,410
He always was 10 years ahead of his time.

474
00:25:01,500 --> 00:25:03,040
Once we got digital,

475
00:25:03,120 --> 00:25:07,090
we could actually, especially with blue screen,

476
00:25:07,170 --> 00:25:10,920
we could shoot the stuff, do it in blue screen,

477
00:25:11,010 --> 00:25:13,590
and do all that stuff, and then just do it later.

478
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:15,590
Now you can do it on set, which is even better.

479
00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:19,600
Okay, let's swim it back and forth a bit. We're gonna go left.

480
00:25:21,180 --> 00:25:23,770
What's cool is other filmmakers are coming through,

481
00:25:23,850 --> 00:25:25,900
other people that are curious about the stuff.

482
00:25:25,980 --> 00:25:29,070
Now that you see somebody could do it, it becomes easier to emulate,

483
00:25:29,150 --> 00:25:32,400
because this technology is pretty readily available.

484
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:35,200
There's nothing proprietary here.

485
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:38,370
It's all stuff that you can...you know, it's game engine technology,

486
00:25:38,450 --> 00:25:41,830
it's video screens, it's positional camera data.

487
00:25:41,910 --> 00:25:43,330
It's things that are kind of...

488
00:25:43,410 --> 00:25:46,080
It's just combined in a way nobody's done it before.

489
00:25:46,170 --> 00:25:48,340
You have to have an understanding of how to do it.

490
00:25:48,420 --> 00:25:50,710
That's also what's fun is that our team,

491
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:54,630
our AD team, our directors, we're experimenting

492
00:25:54,720 --> 00:25:57,300
with this new combination of technologies for the first time.

493
00:25:57,390 --> 00:25:59,720
All these young directors will be able to go out there

494
00:25:59,810 --> 00:26:02,890
and now they know how to do it, and so they can move forward

495
00:26:02,980 --> 00:26:06,230
and try to move the ball forward technologically as well.