What’s Special About “The Mandalorian”
Everyone is a fan of movies and TV shows. But when it comes to knowing behind the scenes only a few of us tend to show interest. If you did, you definitely know about Green screens and how important they are in almost every film now-a-days. But, this might bring a twist in that story.
We know how movies transformed from On stage dramas to the invention of camera which in turn helped people capture things thus leading to movies in theatres and big screens. Now, if we take a look at any movie that came before 2000 or even some that came after 2000 we tend to notice something called a “Screen”.
A Screen is exactly what it sounds like, its a cloth used to fake backgrounds in the earlier days of movie making. As we know back then movies were not made with huge budgets which limited the film team from going to different places for different shots so they had to find an alternate which turned out to be printing what they needed as the background onto a cloth which served as the background in the scene. It had its developments from static screens to moving screens in shots that involved vehicle movements. With all the technology kicking in we finally settled down with the current era of “Green Screens”. Green screens play a vital role in CGI and VFX. Now if you’re new to behind the scenes or videography here’s a little something to help carry on with a good understanding,
CGI — Computer Generated Imagery and VFX — Visual Effects. Both of these techniques are used to create animations and objects with the help of a computer software which then brings the movie to the big screens. Almost everything you see in Avengers is VFX. So, that would be an easy example.
Now that you have a good understanding of what CGI and VFX mean, let’s move on with the actual topic. Although green screens are used frequently and easily, the techniques involved don’t come at a fair pricing. You don’t get something for nothing, so the price you had pay was huge and the work involved was quite tedious as well. Which leads us to the core purpose of this article.
If you’re a fan of Star Wars then you might have already checked out “The Mandalorian”. Now, there is something special about this show not because of Star Wars but because of the Virtual Screens the team has chosen to use. Virtual Screens, yes. For starters they’ve made it in a way you’d feel like you’re surrounded by a pie shaped arena of screens. Just like the old days of using static and moving screens but with more advanced and a different process.
As Charmaine Chan said in a Video by Vox Media which you can watch here, usage of this idea has caused a change in the process of how a movie or a show is made. Traditionally it goes like this,
But with these virtual screens the process has been changed to something like this,
The working of these virtual screens are in the following way, the whole scene is planned out and rendered with the required VFX and is simulated in the screens behind the actors, hence the change in the process. Now, this virtual screens have made many changes not only in the sets but also in terms of the people working behind the screens, as Chan said in the video.
The processes like Color Corrections were made easy as in case of a Green or Blue Screen the reflections of the green or blue colors on the actors or the objects in the scene required a tedious amount of work with some sets having different shades of the screen which made it even more harder. But one of the most important works involved in working with these Virtual Screens was creating the sense of depth between the on-screen and off-screen objects.
Change is inevitable. The question is Can this possibly bring the green screen era to an End?
