In a recent interview Ewan McGregor revealed that they will be using the wraparound screen from The Mandalorian for the Obi-Wan series. It seems to have worked really well for The Mandalorian, so I'm not surprised that they are using it on other stuff to now. I wonder if we might eventually see it used for live theater? It seems like something that could really make live theater more immersive for both the audience and the actors.
Well obviously. I hope this show is good. The setting of it makes it sound like it won’t be very interesting
Wouldn't work quite the same for live theatre since it's main strength is the camera tracking aspect that allows it to give ONE particulate moving perspective the illusion of three dimensionality. That's why when you see BTS footage shot from a third perspective, you can see a "patch" of seemingly distorted imagery and parallax shift following the capture camera's FOV as it pans around the volume. Now a theatre doesn't have one moving perspective, it has several hundred stationary ones (AKA: the audience.) So you loose the illusion of depth and are just left with a very expensive rear projection alternative (which some productions already use.) It would however be ideal for fan films and other low budget/semi professional projects since it's all off the shelf technology. It's just a matter of how big a screen one can afford. Indeed I think someone one youtube is already giving it a go. A bit niche but it could make stop motion movies of the sort Studio Laikia make a lot more manageable if they can shoot the puppets in front of a pre-rendered background and not have to depend so much of bigatures and green screen work. Indeed, almost anything that was up until now just actors running around on a green screen stage would benefit greatly from this.
It is probably a step up from all the blue and green screen work McGregor did for Star Wars previously.
Yeah, that's pretty much the whole trick. Without that it's just a very expensive, high fidelity backdrop that'd only work if the camera was locked off, because the second you pan, dolly or truck the illusion is broken. What they're doing is combining game engine technology to create a real time rendered environment, and motion capture technology that tracks where the camera is in three dimensional space and adjusts the portion of the screen in it's FOV to simulate parallax. Note that it's only fully rendering what's right in front of the camera as it moves. the rest of the screens just seems to display a flat environment for the purposes of interactive lighting. It's actually looks rather disorienting to work on as if you're looking at the screen while the camera moves it has an almost fisheye lensing effect going on. For those still unsure, here's a video Epic put out some months back to showcase the basic technology. One weakness this highlights however is that it greatly depends on keeping a relatively short depth of field. A long lens would probably cause problems since this system works best with the background kept a little out of focus. So there are limitations.
Ah, I thought the big deal was just how quickly they were able to put the environments together and how much more reactive they could be, I didn't realize there was so much more to it.
The Late Show With Stepehen Colbert has given us a special preview of the opening credits for the Kenobi series.
As a Bostonian, I found it hard to believe that we could remotely resemble a desolate, lawless desert planet on the outer rim. Then I thought of Lynn, Chelsea, Lawrence, parts of Dorchester.......
It seems that filming will take place in Boston, England, per this tweet from a local Boston, Massachusetts news network. That does make more sense. London, where the Cassian show is filming, isn't far away, so there will likely be filming done there, too. And someone on the Star Wars Leaks subreddit mentioned that there's apparently a large, sandy nature reserve on the coast near Boston.
I would take the whole "Boston" thing with a grain of salt.........having worked on various productions around the UK, I do not know of ANYTHING or any reason that would draw them to film there. With the volume I suppose they could film on a soundstage just about anywhere but Boston is in Lincolnshire and not known for production. London is a 2.5 hour drive. Perhaps they are doing some location filming there but I can't see them having a base unit there.
Yeah, I can't see them doing location shooting anywhere in the UK if they're after a Tatooine stand-in. Especially not this time of year; I don't care how sandy it is. And I tend to agree that Boston seems like a random choice for soundstage filming when most of the motion picture grade facilities are all down in Greater London. Maybe it's a COVID thing and they figure it'll be easier to keep everyone in a bubble up there?
I believe they filmed a tv show with Rob Lowe there (Wild Bill) but yeah, I don't think there is much in the way of production facilities there.
Norfolk has October Films. We did a lot for Discovery ID there with true crime recreations at an old airbase but nothing on the scale that would be needed for this. Curious to see where it goes. My assumption was that they would just shift gears from the Casian Andor series to Kenobi in March.
There's a reason the area of the US it's in is called "New England." Actually, it's not uncommon for a lot of places in the US and Canada to be named after places in England. There's even a London in Canada.
US place names rule of thumb: if it doesn't sound 1) like a butchered version of a Native American name, or 2) Spanish; then it's probably already a name of a British, French or Dutch city or town. In fairness however, our Boston is such a nowhere town compared to it's namesake, I always think of the US city whenever I hear the name.
I'm not sure if I'd heard of our Boston before I saw Wild Bill, though I don't think I've ever been to that area.