'The Mandalorian' Season 2 Featurette Goes Behind The Magic Of The VFX
Remember The Mandalorian season 2? I'm sure you do, but it almost feels like that season came and went a full year ago, when in reality it wrapped-up in December. Since then, Disney+ viewers have moved on to obsess over WandaVision, and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is dropping tomorrow. But in case you forgot about old Mando, ILM has just released a behind-the-scenes video that highlights the show's VFX.
The Mandalorian Season 2 Featurette
I gave up on The Mandalorian midway through the first season because it just wasn't for me. But even I can appreciate the work that goes into realizing this series, particularly the special effects. Industrial Light and Magic is a legendary company at this point, and even as a kid I became obsessed with them – I had myself a very big, very heavy coffee table book about their work on various films, and I would pour over the pages daily, fascinated by the movie magic that went into creating entire worlds. So I'm glad that the company has continued to thrive and turn out great work.
Here's more info on the VFX work that went into The Mandalorian season 2:
Visual effects work on The Mandalorian was completed in all five of ILM's studios (San Francisco, Singapore, Vancouver, London, and Sydney) as well as a contingent of other vendors under ILM's supervision. The season's 8 episodes encompassed nearly 5,000 visual effects shots in addition to all of ILM's real-time effects work done for use during principal photography. The effects team leveraged virtually every trick in the book, from miniatures and motion control to traditional puppeteering, advanced animatronics, spectacular special effects, and photo-real CG. Here's a sampling of ILM's post visual effects work done for the series that garnered ILM 13 Visual Effects Society Award nominations.
Founded in 1975 by George Lucas, ILM is the leading effects facility in the world, serving the motion picture, commercial production, and attraction industries. ILM has created visual effects for over 325 feature films and has played a key role in seven of the top 10 worldwide box-office hits of all time and has contributed to 25 of the top 50.
One can assume that ILM will continue to work on the additional live-action Star Wars shows headed to Disney+. Not only will they have The Mandalorian season 2 (whenever that arrives), but they also have The Book of Boba Fett, Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, Rangers of the New Republic, Lando, and more, not to mention the future Star Wars movies in the work, like the mystery project that Taika Waititi is working on, and the Patty Jenkins movie Rogue Squadron.