The Filmumentaries Podcast

· Season 1 · Episode 157 · Latest episode

Ep 157 | ILM’s John Knoll on The Mandalorian and Grogu — motion control, stop motion and gaussian splats

controleffectsgrogu · 45 min
John Knoll is Chief Creative Officer at ILM and visual effects supervisor on The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first time Mando and Grogu have been on a cinema screen. He describes two forces pulling against each other. It had to feel like it came from the same group of people who made the series, which meant keeping the handcrafted approach — puppets, creatures in rubber masks, motion control miniatures, stop motion.

But roughly forty-five per cent of the film is IMAX, and you compose and cut differently for a hundred-foot screen. Fewer quick cuts, more headroom, room around the frame for peripheral vision. IMAX had sent ILM a document about all this years ago. John decided simulating the room beat following the notes, so they built an Apple Vision Pro app that puts you in an IMAX auditorium, seats and all, looking at the live feed off the video taps.

They used it on set to check composition, and later to check animation and action scenes before they were finished. The stop motion went to Tippett, who spent the better part of a year animating a two-minute fight between Mando and two droids. The Razor Crest is a forty-eight inch miniature, double the size of the one built for the series, and John finally got to shoot it in an LED volume — built in part from panels salvaged off a decommissioned StageCraft stage.

He’d been chasing that since season one, when he tried building a foam core enclosure and projecting onto it. It sort of worked, right up until Favreau wanted the flight path changed. We also cover Rotta the Hutt, who turned out to be the hardest thing in the film. A Hutt who moves fast reads as funny on the page and is difficult to put on screen. Does he move like a snake, an inchworm, a snail? They landed on elephant seals, and then on a barrel roll.

Plus the cameras — a Sony ILX-LR1 for daylight exteriors at the Ranch, and a Canon 5D Mark IV out of ILM’s equipment cupboard for the interiors. Gaussian splats for the Razor Crest interior, shot in twenty minutes and used from any angle he wanted. Keeping a coherent look across five vendors with Doug Chiang riding the designs through post. And two shots containing an original 1976 Y-wing, on loan from the Lucas Museum for a single day, with two museum staff watching the whole time.

This podcast is completely independent and made possible by listener support. If you’d like to help me keep making these episodes, you can join my Patreon community here: https://patreon.com/jamiebenning

Watch more on YouTube:
Check out the Filmumentaries YouTube channel for behind-the-scenes clips and extra content: https://youtube.com/filmumentaries

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Ep 157 | ILM’s John Knoll on The Mandalorian and Grogu — motion control, stop motion and gaussian splats
The Filmumentaries Podcast
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Twice monthly conversations between film historian Jamie Benning and the craftspeople that helped create the movies we love. From visual effects and editing to sound design and art direction.

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