W, something that also makes it shrink is that all the characters know each other and meet each other like there isn't 100 quintillion people in the galaxy
Loool yea that's a good point too, but at least that existed since the beginning. This is a fresh problem that Disney is making, without them fixing any of the new problems they've also created 😅
@@CGWHY Yep, one of my biggest gripes with The Mandalorian is how boring it gets sometimes when half the shots are just Din walking in a lifeless area from a far away camera and its its a fucking snoozefest when this is like 15 mins of the episode. I hope overtime it improves which I think it is slightly improving with each show although it isnt perfect yet.
I was going to make this point to. Absolutely good observations here as far as the shot compositions and lighting go, but the shrinking of Star Wars honestly began even during the prequel era. Everything had to be related, and everything had to revolve around Tatooine, playing on our familiarity with the OT rather than continuing to build outward. Between Tatooine and Geonosis you have a lot of desert areas, and every planet has a single ecological environment based on one you might fight on Earth. The bigger the universe gets, the less infinite it feels.
I’ve noticed that the concept art in the credits scenes is damn beautiful I can’t help but think “damn, the episode I just watched looks lifeless compared to this”
Andor had the same budget as Obi Wan Kenobi, did not use the volume at all, and looked phenomenal, and is really proof that these shows CAN look interesting
I couldn't get into Andor. I can't invest in a character I know is going to die soon. Pointless and unnecessary backstory, which seems to be all Disney can do with Star Wars (Like how the Solo movie had to explain his name, and worst of all, make the Kessel Run a real thing. They totally ruined the entire character of Han Solo with this ridiculous backstory, taking a shyster talking bullshit to a naive old man (the real story) and creating a plausible explanation for it, making Han an honest good guy. This is far more heinous a character assassination then Han shooting after Greedo). Watching Andor I just keep saying "is it near time he dies yet? Is he dead yet?"
@@johnpeace971 First of all, I disagree on a basic level. But second of all, it's irrelevant. I was talking about the budget, set, and cinematography of the show, stating that it looks 10 times better than the other shows, which have the same budgets
@@johnpeace971 Man, you must've hated the prequels then. Just three movies about a bunch of characters you knew were just going to die anyway. Knowing that definitely invalidates any interesting character development or world building, that could help you get further invested in the story or the characters in question.
I have been watching a lot of Better Call Saul lately and despite them having filmed so much of the New Mexico desert for over a decade (including Breaking Bad) every single location looks absolutely beautiful and unique every single time. Even the episode of Saul and Mike being stranded in the desert is shot entirely on location. There is zero excuse for how much featureless sand there is in Star Wars even using green screen.
@@user-dnf83n0s8sg9u I visited Albuquerque on a road trip last year and it was a blast running into locations I recognized from the show. I found the parking lot booth where Mike works in BCS and someone had drawn his face on a whiteboard in there. BB and BCS are textbook examples on how to bring a setting to life
@@campbell9825 That’s dope! - I love the west but I’ve never had the chance to go out there. Crazy about the toll booth haha, ABQ is probably full of shitposters hiding in plain view. Would love to check out the mini mall where Saul’s office was
You'd be surprised how many models, miniatures, and physical props were used in the prequals. More miniatures were created for each one of the prequels than for the entire original trilogy combined.
Another reason why I believe Andor is a modern masterpiece and arguably the best Star Wars project Disney has produced. Certainly the best thing on Disney+....
@@budwyzer77 Plenty of other stuff was great. TCW was Lucas but both Rebels and The Bad Batch are great shows. I still think Andor was the best but it does have some competition
@@budwyzer77I mean why. It's just the structure of a show like that. Its not automatically bad because it's structured in an episodic way with serialized stuff happening occasionally
The Batman is a great example of The Volume being used well. I remember due to covid a good portion of The Batman ended up being shot using The Volume.
This is definitely something you notice sub conciously whilst watching the disney+ shows, everything is framed the same way and you can tell from the cuts that they can only walk like 10 meters and then the shot cuts (it's painfully obvious in the obi wan show in the chase scenes) it makes everything feel cramped and enclosed
The Planets,the Vehicles, Lightsaber duals,Creatures,Various Aliens,Cool Characters and mostly the story... Almost everything in Modern Star Wars is shrinking..
@@CGWHY Ah, that explains a lot... This video was made before Andor. Great video though, I kinda felt alone in being bothered by this, especially because I don't believe this was really much of an issue in season 1 of the Mandalorian.
@@milddiffuse I was thinking the same thing, I didn't check the date and the entire video I was waiting for him to mention Andor and it's detailed sets
I think Andor is an exception. It has really varied environments. Yet another reason why I think it's the best Star Wars show ever, and possibly the best visual media in the entire line up.
fun fact in andor all of mon mothmas house scenes where made with the volume proving that if only a bit of effort is put in you can have a great backround
This is an excellent explanation of the blandness and lack of energy we are all noticing in these shows. The point about the sky was like a light bulb moment. That's why it feels fake, even when we can't explain exactly why.
the funny thing is that i did not really watch the newest star wars content but still understand your point perfectly well just from the videos about the sw content
I hope "the volume" will be a technology that becomes more available for smaller studios, and indie projects. I feel like this is the kind of technology that could really bridge the gap between high and low budget film making, allowing for indie film makers to be more ambitious, and to finally get something that isn't mass produced Perhaps we'll see a pivot in the film industry, like we're seeing a pivot in the games industry? Where the availability of technology has allowed indie developers to, in many ways, surpass AAA studios in both quality and innovation, despite having lower production value.
I've been thinking about this as I've watched Mandalorian and Book of Boba. Not to mention the new Trilogy which had more than it's fair share of sandy deserts. It's really annoying actually. I know Tattooine is significant as the planet that Anakin and Luke grew up on, and of course Return of the Jedi revisited the location, but why does it always come back to Tattooine even in the new TV shows? One of the Hutts in Book of Boba even said "Tattooine is a worthless rock" and I was like...finally someone said it! Why are so many of the characters coincidentally spending so much time there? It looks dreadful, and it seems like the only reason anyone goes there is necessity, or to get away with crime. There should be tons of other remote planets that are more pleasant (not to mention less dangerous) than friggin' Tattooine. But like you said, the characters keep ending up on sand planets. I could also nitpick about Star Wars planets being super homogenous- obviously our own planet has all these diverse locations that help to inspire people's imaginations to come up with locations for sci-fi and fantasy, but it does strike me as a little funny that Star Wars likes to portray every planet as 100% desert (Tattooine), 100% city (Coruscant), 100% forest or swamp (Dagobah, Endor) when realistically any planet that supports life would probably be similar to our own. Maybe it's just done for simplicity. But it is a little strange.
Tbf every star wars film has had a desert of one kind or another. TPM - Tatooine AOTC - Geonosis and Tatooine ROTS - Tatooine (at the end) ANH - Tatooine ESB - (this is the contentious one) Hoth can be considered a desert the same was Antarctica is. ROTJ - Tatooine TFA - Jakku TLJ - Crait (salt flats) TROS - Tatooine (end scene) AOTC is the only one to have two desert type planets in one film though.
@@byron2FZ TCW (movie) - Tatooine (if I remember correctly. I could be wrong) Solo - I think there was some desert planet at the end. I can't completely remember. Rogue 1 - Jedha (and Scarif if you count it) Edit: Also, ROTS had Utapau too.
Episode 3 has aged beautifully for a 20 year old movie. It and the OG Jurassic Park have held onto their CG's magic for longer than most of the movies involving CGI over the last 30 years.
I still think the prequels have some of the most artistic CG imagery ever created. It just looks so stunning. Yes the Phantom Menace was rougher, but it still holds up well in terms of the storytelling and immersion. By the time General Grievous showed up in Episode 3, I believe that they created the best looking CG character. Padme's funeral is one of the most visually stunning sequences in cinema.
This perfectly explains why I’ve been so bored watching the shows despite interesting things happening on screen, I remember showing my friends the mandalorian and the main takeaway being “man walks around desert on boring sky for many hours”
I swear, it looks like everything takes place on Tatooine in Disney canon. Your explanation really hammers in how Disney has abandoned worldbuilding for profit.
Unfortunately a lot of these clips of desert stuff you use as an example weren't even shot on the Volume, particularly a lot of the early Boba Fett with the Tuskan Raiders scenes. It still looks bland because it was shot on a small desert set outside surrounded by blue/green screens instead of a real desert, but they still had to shoot it in real sunlight because the Volume can't actually get that bright...
Andor uses the Volume in new ways. Like cars being flown through Coruscant and having all the reflections of the buildings on the hoof and bouncing inside the interior. There's the vistas from these massive penthouses, and there's often rain on the windows, not to obscure anything but to get more infinitely complex light reflections on camera.
The Volume is great for avoiding some of the most annoying difficulties with compositing backgrounds, like lighting. When using green screen, the light on set has an unavoidable, well, green hue. Using color correction tools, this can be negated, but never 100% perfectly. There's also the issue of light wrap, how the light from the background should bend around the subjects in the foreground. Again, there are tools, developed over decades, to correct for this, but they are not 100% perfect either. The Volume makes all of this irrelevant, because the background already has the color and light that it's supposed to have, so you get that matching and light-wrapping in camera. What the Volume demands to be used effectively is that all of the things you mention, the detail, the creativity in building out the world, in lighting, in camera movement and framing, all of it needs to be planned and executed in preproduction rather than post. The Volume needs to be set up to support whatever camera moves and whatever lighting the team has planned. Unfortunately, planning and executing things like this in preproduction puts the cost upfront, which studios don't like. They'd rather hold off on all expenses until the last minute to see what they can get away with not spending. Thus the fix-it-in-post mentality. So they go with the approach that you're complaining about. Bland, flat cinematography that, while much more adaptable, is also far more generic as a result. As in most things, it's not the technology (ie the Volume) that is to blame. It's the lack of artistic ambition, which is a far bigger problem in the modern corporate world of film/TV production. And now they even want to move toward AI creating their content, making even less room for unique creative vision.
this is so clear in mando s3, why did the mandalorians have to have a hideout in such a boring desert location? it just felt so lifeless and uninspired
Contrary to popular belief, the PT used way more practical models than the OT. It's just that Lucas used the PT to market his innovations in digital filmmaking, giving them this association that they're less practical. Nevertheless both the OT and PT hold up pretty well visually to this day, in great part because both used practical models. But the PT could push the boundaries further with the green screen and cgi innovations.
You should make a video about Andor, it looks real good and actually effort put into that project and it seems they don't use volume like in TBoBF and Kenobi or Mandalorian. They actually go into real places, film in real enviroments and put actual high effort into these sets and it just looks fantastic. Also it elevates the storytelling, in these other shows when something looks off the story itself breaks with it too.
Yea that's a really good idea! Thank you!! Just another example of the high quality of Andor. If they're released all the behind the scenes info and data then I'll drive into it 👍 - thanks!
@@CGWHY But the planets in Andor are not particularly interesting conceptually or visually. Coruscant we already know, and there is a lot of walking around in open spaces. Yeah, we get some highlands, and goats with extra horns stuck on them, but nothing that feels as inventive or bold as the OT or PT. More like 'grounded' and 'safe'. There's also a near complete lack of creatures, which Lucas always used to make the planets feel more alien and magical. Same with Kenobi, RO, Solo and the sequels. About the best we get is a boring camel thing. At least The Mandalorian hasn't forgotten the importance or creatures and aliens. There's a real lack of speed in most projects as well, especially Kenobi and Andor: way too much walking.
@@TaurusInvicta Really? I thought they were super bland compared to the planets Lucas created and what inhabited them. Andor is just a premium version of Obi-Wan Kenobi and RO and Solo, pointless nostalgia bait. People love to boast about the acting and dialogue and "themes" as if we haven't seen sacrifice, oppression, betrayal and loyalty in every single saga movie Lucas made. There's nothing new here, and it expands nothing. While RO, Solo and Kenobi's lack of quality just water down the Star Wars franchise, Andor dilutes it a different way; by having very little interest in the franchise or what made it distinctive or popular. You only have listen to people saying things like, 'It's just like Blade Runner!' or 'My friend doesn't like Star Wars, but loves Andor!' None of Andor's locations, characters, vehicles, creatures, catchphrases or planets have permeated pop culture. At best, it's niche TV for the niche EU/Legends fans, a subset of the fandom.
If they’re going to use the sand environments, they could do what Dune did and match the colour of the “green screen” with the colour of the setting, eg sand coloured screen. That movie looked amazing
I also noticide this in The Mandalorian S3E6: the episode where Mando and Bo-Katan are on the planet Plaizir-15, looking for the Mandalorian mercenaries. When they finally meet them, they are all sitting in the grass, while they have a fleeg with huge ships in the background.
They don't want people who have creative ways of telling stories, they want people with creative ways of making money. That's why the executives get top dollar and the writers are striking (and the companies removing content) over residuals.
Sorry I'm a bit late to the video but you made some fantastic points. I can't unsee it now!!! Now I understand why all the shots look the same. You can see a stark difference in Andor though!
Yea Andor looked brilliant 😅 - even though alot of it set was a "dumpy backwater planet", they actually infused the world with life and culture and made something really interesting that you could imagine yourself living in. Oh and there wasn't a grain on sand on the entire planet - which was refreshing 😂
I've just watched Mando 3, they expanded on Coruscant well, remember these are TV series not films budgets are pretty high now but they're still not films with larger budgets and shorter run times.
Sorry but I have to disagree with you at 4:23 when you were talking about the limitation to use only soft light coming from the screens you where showing a scene with harsh shadows, there nothing could stop the production to show a forest for example it is even easier since they can use small number of practical objects in foreground and then CGI the background, whatever you do in green screen you can also do using LEDs, these decisions seems to be more creative than technical limitations, also in the Mandalorian there was lot of interior detailed scenes and for some reason you overlooked infact the Mandalorian have an entire episode in forrest planet
The good thing is that visuals aren't everything and as long as the story is good the show can still be enjoyable. That being said, in my opinion the Book of Boba Fett and Kenobi did not really deliver on that either :( Hopefully Andor can change that. And there is also The Bad Batch which as an animated show can have much more freedom in terms of art direction.
Yea I suppose I agree with that - if the story was fantastic then I wouldn't mind it being set on a sand planet. - Dune is a good example of this. And yea, the games and animated shows are giving us a good window into more interesting landscapes, I hope we get some more creativity in the live action stuff soon too!
The first few episodes of Mandalorian I saw with the volume really impressed me. But it didn't take more than five, six episodes before it started to feel like a gimmick. After a while, your brain starts to automatically deconstruct the shot, looking for the seams. It became a distraction really quickly. For every shot my brain immediately looked for, and usually found, the edge of the floor and the start of the projection. The quality of the shot itself is of course a lot better, but I truly feel like the Star Wars streaming shows have the same vibe as those (often quite well done, considering) fan Star Trek shows, where they put amateur actors in cosplay uniforms, one physical captain's chair and clearly shot on a greenscreen set the size of someone's kitchen. It doesn't help of course that the stories (Andor being the obvious exception, and they only used the volume when it made sense) are so weirdly unfocussed and boring. The replay value of Mandalorian, Boba or Obi Wan is lower than, for example, a low budget British 1970s sci fi show like Blake's 7, that had embarrassingly cheaply created sets, absolutely pathetic special effects, but you just don't even see that after ten minutes because the stories and the acting are so engaging.
The green screen criticism of the prequels is misplaced. Kamino was not a 3D render. The water was rendered but the structures were miniatures built by the team that eventually went on to star in Mythbusters among others. They also made the Geonosis coliseum in miniature, and I believe parts of Coruscant were miniatures as well.
The Volume is new technology that every film maker wants to play with. They're still working out the kinks, and finding out how to best use it, and when to avoid using it. Of course TV shows may not actually have the luxury of being able to avoid using it.
I kinda miss the Star Wars planets being alien. Like Felucia, Coruscant, Mygeeto, Dathomir, even the more subtle ones like Geonosis which is technically a desert but you see these giant hives and stuff that make it look otherworldly and unique. And in the Mandalorian, literally every single planet looks like what someone on Earth would probably see looking out the window. Grassy fields, rocky fields, deserts, ice fields, forests with not a single alien plantlife or creature and it kinda loses its uniqueness to the world (Mandalore was cool though). Same goes for the movies. Crait was the only planet from Disney movies (even including Rogue One) that felt alien, and the Falcon hyperjumping scene from ROS also had some cool ideas, albeit a bit too fast to really immerse the viewer. But the rest were painfully mediocre. I don't even get what's the point of greenscreen and Unreal Engine virtual reality they so proudly promote when they don't even do interesting backdrops.
Prequel bashers generally do not target the special effects but the writing and the direction. The amount of physical props in the film is not relevant to the criticisms levelled at the prequels.
@@Carabas72 Most people seething about the prequels bash the Politics, the Cleanliness and SUPERCHOREOGRAPHED Jedi Fights and the "over use of Green screen" when it has more props than the other 3 movies combined.
@@terraincognitagaming That would be the writing and the direction I mentioned. The green screen overuse is a directorial choice. Lucas though he could pull that off, and he couldn't. Why do you keep going on and on about the damn props? Props have no relationship to the greenscreen, the choreography, or the political plot (I actually like the plot, even if you have to dig through a lot of nonsense to figure out what it actually is).
I think it is a bit strange to blame the volume for what is clearly an issue of bad art direction, lack of creative vision, and horrible writing. For instance, Obi Wan's biggest downfall was that it was paced horribly and the action didn't sell most of the time. I also think that it is simply the nature of TV to be a faster pace production with less time to get small details right compared to movies. It has always been this way and that is another huge reason why these shows turn out kind of bland. I am also a VFX artist and I do find it kind of strange for someone to be think we should move towards more heavy bluescreen use instead of forward into something new.
The shallow depth of field is a direct consequence of shooting on XR stages. As someone that's shot on them before, if you go *too* crisp the pixels can sometimes become noticeable. I would argue the benefits certainly outweigh the costs in this instance.
This video makes a good point. I think it’s improved a lot in the last year. Recent shows have started to expand the palette of environments in Star Wars. The variety of environments are partly to do with investment into the shows and the production demands of a TV series. When budgets are lower and there’s less appetite for risk, It’s compelling to go and film a large scene in a practical dessert, with local support available and enabling infrastructure like power and roads. As the shows have grown in budgets and confidence they have been able to expand out and do more interesting things. The investment into virtual studio, render engine broadcasting and active backdrop technology is also paying off. It helps narrow the gap between a practical location and a studio shoot. I hope they continue to go from strength to strength.
I think the much bigger problem is Disney's corporate structure. I feel many of these problems are much older than the volume. There may be an overreliance on it right now but you said it yourself: the volume CAN give very good results. I think the big issue with Disney and many other big studios is that everything is in a pipeline where all compartments are being kept seperate. If the directors on set are only there to get some shots in which are then just handed to the VFX people to figure out the VFX. Without someone who has the understanding what in the shots is needed for the VFX team to get good effects you're not getting good special effects, no matter the technology you use and artist's Disney slaves out. Similarly the flat lighting has been a big issue in the MCU since 2012 or something, this is also a choice so more things can be adjusted later on.
FINALLY!! I couldn't find this criticism anywhere. There is so much of the essential Star Wars aesthetic missing throughout all the Disney productions...
Personally, the ONLY thing that bothered me a lot was the scale of Mando and Boba's Book- we are shown huge cities in single shots yet action feels like entire damn planets have literally single towns and villages, all the time. We are shown that about 100-200 pirates are invading a whole planet which, somehow appears to have literally a single trade town. Number of Mandalorians left could be reasoned with, so whatever. But I just cant get over the fact that from what we are told, second largest city on Tattooine can be taken by another 100-200 Pyke guys and they have literally 3 droids too. Feels cheap all the time ngl it really feels that way. Its not just about scale but come on, thats dirty
unreal dev here the reason for lighting is the new particle system is 30% heavier then previous unreal 4/physx and thats just beginning of the hump your resources you literally do need a a6000 with 48 gb vram to play round and /pr min at 4090
Honestly I don't mind it. The Sequel trilogy introduced far too many planets, and new aliens for every planet. It felt like the story was on a conveyor belt, rather than being in one coherent galaxy.
Good points, but Star Wars has always been a test bed for new tech. Without the volume, we probably wouldn’t have such expansive shows at this budget. No VFX shot is perfect, but the smoke and mirrors are constantly improving. This new tech has helped create a Star Wars renaissance, just like the birth of ILM and it’s eventual spearheading of CG did respectively. Evolution in action and I love the franchise more than ever!
We all agree that their "universe" is so poor, not only on the imaging quality, but on the stort itself. Everyone is poor, every environment is poor, under-developed, on the verse of being collapsed, or post apocalypse. A very boring universe.
1899 is an awesome show which used a bigger volume with extensive sets in the foreground. Kind of like the hangar scene you were showing. Really does wonders if you just use the Volume merely as an extension of the set
I totally agree .The devil is in the nuances , we should go back to green screen and do it good, this time . Maybe stick to the volume in confined spaces like the hanger or inner big space ships , it seems to look good in this case .
I dont even think the Volume is inherently the problem. House of the Dragon also made extensive use of the Volume, and it looked great! it never felt as flat nor as empty and lifeless as basically every star wars Disney show. The problem is that disney is...well, lazy. They're not really interested in doing maximum-effort prestige TV, they just crank everything out as fast and cheap as possible, and it shows -- in set design, in the scripts, in their weirdly truncated episode runtimes. As with most special effects tech, the problem is in how they use it, not in the tech itself.
Watching this video after Mando season 3 and I’ve got to say: - the return to mandalore felt so so underwhelming due to the volume. There’s nothing interesting to it, and it felt much bigger in the clone wars tv show - the return of Ahmed best, although exciting, was shot it SUCH A WEIRD WAY The over reliance of the volume is becoming jarring
Nice vid, great to hear a technical explenation for comments on these fancy - at - first - sight - but - soulless - productions. Also thaught this vid would have like 32K likes?? lol
I think a hybrid solution would be really cool because the major advantage is virtual sets is light control and reflections. No one is seeing the green behind the actor, so they could easily add the green behind the actor and have the lights on the opposite side to create the reflections and tie the character to the scene. This shifts a lot of work to post again, but it's probably better that way because using virtual sets requires a lot of planning and less ability to adjust the scenes.
Obi-Wan being on Tatooine made sense. That's where he hid and watched over Luke. The Mandalorian didn't need to be on Tatooine. The Book of Boba Fett didn't need to exist. Jakku didn't need to be a desert planet. Jedha didn't need to be a desert planet. Pasaana didn't need to be a desert planet. The sheer lack of creativity is astonishing. Take a look at Geonosis. Technically, it's a desert planet. However, it has a unique look. First off, it's red, and it has the iconic rock pillars that fill in the landscape. Additionally, it came with a brand new original species, the geonosians. That's how creative George Lucas and his creative team were. Disney has no artistic vision. They just copy and paste "things you know" and move on. Nothing original or interesting.
The solution is to frame the volume with green screen elements to create a mid-ground and ceiling. Attach a few practical elements to the green screen shapes and then you have full visual range.
I knew it felt like a video game!!! I couldn’t place my finger on it. But even when I watched the first mando episode, I couldn’t explain why, but it felt like watching a video game play through.
I think it is a conscious choice to have a lot of open spaces in The Mandalorian because of its 'western' aesthetic. But it's true that the backgrounds could be more 3 dimensional, and we could have had more swamps or mountains or gas. The prequels were very much focused on the centre of the galaxy, and a raging war, hence the more elaborate and chaotic backgrounds and cities. BoBF and Kenobi look so cheap, though. And along with the sequels have made desert planets so bland. And in fairness, some of these projects were made during covid, so they relied on the Volume because it was easier than shooting on location, and lot of the budget must have gone on all the procedures and equipment for working on set with covid restrictions.
Afaik, it’s not usually a “dome”. It’s just a big box most of the time. The background is often curved, but there usually isn’t a dome ceiling. It’s often just another big flat screen that they don’t use much for actually capturing on camera, but just for casting the appropriate moving lighting to go along with what’s on the curved background screen.
same thing with costume design really like some stuff we've seen in the mandalorian and alike straight up look like Cosplay some animated characters just don't work in live action
I don't believe that more interesting environments would improve the quality of the stories. The cause of shitty writing is shitty writing. TFA, TLJ and TRS had all the tools, both imaginable and unimaginable, at their disposal, and their plot - what happens - still made no sense and the narrative - what it means - still was gobbledegook. Disney Star Wars has worse problems than a concerted effort to lower the cost of production. Which by the way is not what Disney is telling us. According to them they put vast sums of money into the production of these "Star Wars" shows that air on Disney+.
The star wars prequels had much better world building than any of the newer movies. Infact, they had the best world building of all the Star wars movies. The newer ones have been trying to separate themselves from the prequels, but I think the prequels are way over-hated.
No wonder I thought these look a bit weird, I was slowly getting tired of some of the shows look but I could put my tongue on it. Thank you for speaking for me.
Excellent points - video well made. Thank you!
Thank you for watching!
High ceiling and not being able to have dark scenes and..what? I'm not sure what you're talking about :)
Anakin was right
sand does get everywhere
Lol yea sand is a path to the dark side
#SaveAnakin2022 #StopTheSand
You clever son of a gun
Spider-Man 3.
W, something that also makes it shrink is that all the characters know each other and meet each other like there isn't 100 quintillion people in the galaxy
Loool yea that's a good point too, but at least that existed since the beginning.
This is a fresh problem that Disney is making, without them fixing any of the new problems they've also created 😅
@@CGWHY Yep, one of my biggest gripes with The Mandalorian is how boring it gets sometimes when half the shots are just Din walking in a lifeless area from a far away camera and its its a fucking snoozefest when this is like 15 mins of the episode. I hope overtime it improves which I think it is slightly improving with each show although it isnt perfect yet.
Yea I completely agree - it was so easy to find "boring" shots for this video 😅.
Although they do also have some artist value 🤷♂️
I was going to make this point to. Absolutely good observations here as far as the shot compositions and lighting go, but the shrinking of Star Wars honestly began even during the prequel era. Everything had to be related, and everything had to revolve around Tatooine, playing on our familiarity with the OT rather than continuing to build outward. Between Tatooine and Geonosis you have a lot of desert areas, and every planet has a single ecological environment based on one you might fight on Earth. The bigger the universe gets, the less infinite it feels.
@@maul42 TBF tatooine kind of had to be in the prequels and it definitely did build outwards
I’ve noticed that the concept art in the credits scenes is damn beautiful I can’t help but think “damn, the episode I just watched looks lifeless compared to this”
That art is the only reason I still watch the Mandolorian
It proves the studio’s creative decisions are sacrificed for efficiency and cost
Take a look at some old Legends art sometime. Shit was mind-blowing.
@@jaffarebellion292 I have the original art copies by ralph mcquire and yes they’re freakin awesome
@@datgio4951 They just don't draw 'em like they used to, do they?
Andor had the same budget as Obi Wan Kenobi, did not use the volume at all, and looked phenomenal, and is really proof that these shows CAN look interesting
I couldn't get into Andor. I can't invest in a character I know is going to die soon. Pointless and unnecessary backstory, which seems to be all Disney can do with Star Wars (Like how the Solo movie had to explain his name, and worst of all, make the Kessel Run a real thing. They totally ruined the entire character of Han Solo with this ridiculous backstory, taking a shyster talking bullshit to a naive old man (the real story) and creating a plausible explanation for it, making Han an honest good guy. This is far more heinous a character assassination then Han shooting after Greedo). Watching Andor I just keep saying "is it near time he dies yet? Is he dead yet?"
@@johnpeace971 First of all, I disagree on a basic level. But second of all, it's irrelevant. I was talking about the budget, set, and cinematography of the show, stating that it looks 10 times better than the other shows, which have the same budgets
@@officialmonarchmusic Sorry. felt a need to rant about unnecessary hole filling
@@johnpeace971 Man, you must've hated the prequels then. Just three movies about a bunch of characters you knew were just going to die anyway. Knowing that definitely invalidates any interesting character development or world building, that could help you get further invested in the story or the characters in question.
I have been watching a lot of Better Call Saul lately and despite them having filmed so much of the New Mexico desert for over a decade (including Breaking Bad) every single location looks absolutely beautiful and unique every single time. Even the episode of Saul and Mike being stranded in the desert is shot entirely on location. There is zero excuse for how much featureless sand there is in Star Wars even using green screen.
The New Mexico board of tourism owes a lot to those two shows
@@campbell9825 BB and BCS actually generated millions for the city of Albuquerque. I believe this is why they put up the statues of Jesse and Walt
@@user-dnf83n0s8sg9u I visited Albuquerque on a road trip last year and it was a blast running into locations I recognized from the show. I found the parking lot booth where Mike works in BCS and someone had drawn his face on a whiteboard in there. BB and BCS are textbook examples on how to bring a setting to life
@@campbell9825 That’s dope! - I love the west but I’ve never had the chance to go out there. Crazy about the toll booth haha, ABQ is probably full of shitposters hiding in plain view. Would love to check out the mini mall where Saul’s office was
You'd be surprised how many models, miniatures, and physical props were used in the prequals.
More miniatures were created for each one of the prequels than for the entire original trilogy combined.
All that and they still look like sterile CGI trash
You know that the bew movies are the sequel tho right?
And yet they still sucked
@@sussysimon He means the prequels...
Another reason why I believe Andor is a modern masterpiece and arguably the best Star Wars project Disney has produced. Certainly the best thing on Disney+....
I don't think it's even arguable. Rogue One plodded along until the excellent third act and everything else has been mediocre to terrible.
@@budwyzer77 Plenty of other stuff was great. TCW was Lucas but both Rebels and The Bad Batch are great shows. I still think Andor was the best but it does have some competition
@@officialmonarchmusic easily best live action though everything you listed is animated.
@Monarch Music "Great" stuff doesn't need "skip guides". Filoni fails on this count.
@@budwyzer77I mean why. It's just the structure of a show like that. Its not automatically bad because it's structured in an episodic way with serialized stuff happening occasionally
The Batman is a great example of The Volume being used well. I remember due to covid a good portion of The Batman ended up being shot using The Volume.
This is definitely something you notice sub conciously whilst watching the disney+ shows, everything is framed the same way and you can tell from the cuts that they can only walk like 10 meters and then the shot cuts (it's painfully obvious in the obi wan show in the chase scenes) it makes everything feel cramped and enclosed
yep and as a result, the entire scene is completely boring.
The Planets,the Vehicles, Lightsaber duals,Creatures,Various Aliens,Cool Characters and mostly the story... Almost everything in Modern Star Wars is shrinking..
Hopefully Andor will look much better since it’s shot on practical sets. What I’ve seen so far has looked really good
Yea Andor is shaping up to be good - one of the few Star Wars projects I've been excited for in a long time!
@@CGWHY Ah, that explains a lot... This video was made before Andor. Great video though, I kinda felt alone in being bothered by this, especially because I don't believe this was really much of an issue in season 1 of the Mandalorian.
@@milddiffuse I was thinking the same thing, I didn't check the date and the entire video I was waiting for him to mention Andor and it's detailed sets
Andor just proved that filming in that dome takes away so much from the final product.
I think Andor is an exception. It has really varied environments. Yet another reason why I think it's the best Star Wars show ever, and possibly the best visual media in the entire line up.
Because they actually built real sets for Andor or shot in already existing places. The whole of Ferrix was actually built in the UK.
The reason Andor was good was that they used practical sets and not the volume (and the writers actually cared).
fun fact in andor all of mon mothmas house scenes where made with the volume proving that if only a bit of effort is put in you can have a great backround
This is an excellent explanation of the blandness and lack of energy we are all noticing in these shows. The point about the sky was like a light bulb moment. That's why it feels fake, even when we can't explain exactly why.
the funny thing is that i did not really watch the newest star wars content but still understand your point perfectly well just from the videos about the sw content
I hope "the volume" will be a technology that becomes more available for smaller studios, and indie projects. I feel like this is the kind of technology that could really bridge the gap between high and low budget film making, allowing for indie film makers to be more ambitious, and to finally get something that isn't mass produced
Perhaps we'll see a pivot in the film industry, like we're seeing a pivot in the games industry? Where the availability of technology has allowed indie developers to, in many ways, surpass AAA studios in both quality and innovation, despite having lower production value.
I like your idea :)
I've been thinking about this as I've watched Mandalorian and Book of Boba. Not to mention the new Trilogy which had more than it's fair share of sandy deserts.
It's really annoying actually. I know Tattooine is significant as the planet that Anakin and Luke grew up on, and of course Return of the Jedi revisited the location, but why does it always come back to Tattooine even in the new TV shows? One of the Hutts in Book of Boba even said "Tattooine is a worthless rock" and I was like...finally someone said it! Why are so many of the characters coincidentally spending so much time there? It looks dreadful, and it seems like the only reason anyone goes there is necessity, or to get away with crime. There should be tons of other remote planets that are more pleasant (not to mention less dangerous) than friggin' Tattooine. But like you said, the characters keep ending up on sand planets.
I could also nitpick about Star Wars planets being super homogenous- obviously our own planet has all these diverse locations that help to inspire people's imaginations to come up with locations for sci-fi and fantasy, but it does strike me as a little funny that Star Wars likes to portray every planet as 100% desert (Tattooine), 100% city (Coruscant), 100% forest or swamp (Dagobah, Endor) when realistically any planet that supports life would probably be similar to our own. Maybe it's just done for simplicity. But it is a little strange.
Tbf every star wars film has had a desert of one kind or another.
TPM - Tatooine
AOTC - Geonosis and Tatooine
ROTS - Tatooine (at the end)
ANH - Tatooine
ESB - (this is the contentious one) Hoth can be considered a desert the same was Antarctica is.
ROTJ - Tatooine
TFA - Jakku
TLJ - Crait (salt flats)
TROS - Tatooine (end scene)
AOTC is the only one to have two desert type planets in one film though.
Nvm, I forgot about that desert planet in TROS where they find the crashes ship. That makes that and AOTC the only ones with two deserts
@@byron2FZ
TCW (movie) - Tatooine (if I remember correctly. I could be wrong)
Solo - I think there was some desert planet at the end. I can't completely remember.
Rogue 1 - Jedha (and Scarif if you count it)
Edit: Also, ROTS had Utapau too.
Episode 3 CG honestly looks better than a lot of modern movies, especially from Marvel. The clones look damn good.
Episode 3 has aged beautifully for a 20 year old movie. It and the OG Jurassic Park have held onto their CG's magic for longer than most of the movies involving CGI over the last 30 years.
I still think the prequels have some of the most artistic CG imagery ever created. It just looks so stunning. Yes the Phantom Menace was rougher, but it still holds up well in terms of the storytelling and immersion. By the time General Grievous showed up in Episode 3, I believe that they created the best looking CG character. Padme's funeral is one of the most visually stunning sequences in cinema.
I mean Obi-Wan had that shaddy city planet. And even showed us alderan
This perfectly explains why I’ve been so bored watching the shows despite interesting things happening on screen, I remember showing my friends the mandalorian and the main takeaway being “man walks around desert on boring sky for many hours”
I swear, it looks like everything takes place on Tatooine in Disney canon. Your explanation really hammers in how Disney has abandoned worldbuilding for profit.
Unfortunately a lot of these clips of desert stuff you use as an example weren't even shot on the Volume, particularly a lot of the early Boba Fett with the Tuskan Raiders scenes. It still looks bland because it was shot on a small desert set outside surrounded by blue/green screens instead of a real desert, but they still had to shoot it in real sunlight because the Volume can't actually get that bright...
Andor uses the Volume in new ways. Like cars being flown through Coruscant and having all the reflections of the buildings on the hoof and bouncing inside the interior. There's the vistas from these massive penthouses, and there's often rain on the windows, not to obscure anything but to get more infinitely complex light reflections on camera.
The Volume is great for avoiding some of the most annoying difficulties with compositing backgrounds, like lighting. When using green screen, the light on set has an unavoidable, well, green hue. Using color correction tools, this can be negated, but never 100% perfectly. There's also the issue of light wrap, how the light from the background should bend around the subjects in the foreground. Again, there are tools, developed over decades, to correct for this, but they are not 100% perfect either. The Volume makes all of this irrelevant, because the background already has the color and light that it's supposed to have, so you get that matching and light-wrapping in camera.
What the Volume demands to be used effectively is that all of the things you mention, the detail, the creativity in building out the world, in lighting, in camera movement and framing, all of it needs to be planned and executed in preproduction rather than post. The Volume needs to be set up to support whatever camera moves and whatever lighting the team has planned. Unfortunately, planning and executing things like this in preproduction puts the cost upfront, which studios don't like. They'd rather hold off on all expenses until the last minute to see what they can get away with not spending. Thus the fix-it-in-post mentality.
So they go with the approach that you're complaining about. Bland, flat cinematography that, while much more adaptable, is also far more generic as a result. As in most things, it's not the technology (ie the Volume) that is to blame. It's the lack of artistic ambition, which is a far bigger problem in the modern corporate world of film/TV production. And now they even want to move toward AI creating their content, making even less room for unique creative vision.
The next time they film Tatooine, they should go to an actual desert.
this is so clear in mando s3, why did the mandalorians have to have a hideout in such a boring desert location? it just felt so lifeless and uninspired
remember the phrase "quality over quantity?"
we need that here.
Contrary to popular belief, the PT used way more practical models than the OT. It's just that Lucas used the PT to market his innovations in digital filmmaking, giving them this association that they're less practical. Nevertheless both the OT and PT hold up pretty well visually to this day, in great part because both used practical models. But the PT could push the boundaries further with the green screen and cgi innovations.
Even the Desert can look way more interesting than what they've depicted.
You should make a video about Andor, it looks real good and actually effort put into that project and it seems they don't use volume like in TBoBF and Kenobi or Mandalorian. They actually go into real places, film in real enviroments and put actual high effort into these sets and it just looks fantastic. Also it elevates the storytelling, in these other shows when something looks off the story itself breaks with it too.
Yea that's a really good idea! Thank you!!
Just another example of the high quality of Andor.
If they're released all the behind the scenes info and data then I'll drive into it 👍 - thanks!
How does it break the story?
@@CGWHY But the planets in Andor are not particularly interesting conceptually or visually. Coruscant we already know, and there is a lot of walking around in open spaces. Yeah, we get some highlands, and goats with extra horns stuck on them, but nothing that feels as inventive or bold as the OT or PT. More like 'grounded' and 'safe'. There's also a near complete lack of creatures, which Lucas always used to make the planets feel more alien and magical. Same with Kenobi, RO, Solo and the sequels. About the best we get is a boring camel thing. At least The Mandalorian hasn't forgotten the importance or creatures and aliens. There's a real lack of speed in most projects as well, especially Kenobi and Andor: way too much walking.
@@TaurusInvicta Really? I thought they were super bland compared to the planets Lucas created and what inhabited them. Andor is just a premium version of Obi-Wan Kenobi and RO and Solo, pointless nostalgia bait. People love to boast about the acting and dialogue and "themes" as if we haven't seen sacrifice, oppression, betrayal and loyalty in every single saga movie Lucas made.
There's nothing new here, and it expands nothing. While RO, Solo and Kenobi's lack of quality just water down the Star Wars franchise, Andor dilutes it a different way; by having very little interest in the franchise or what made it distinctive or popular. You only have listen to people saying things like, 'It's just like Blade Runner!' or 'My friend doesn't like Star Wars, but loves Andor!'
None of Andor's locations, characters, vehicles, creatures, catchphrases or planets have permeated pop culture. At best, it's niche TV for the niche EU/Legends fans, a subset of the fandom.
@@Ruylopez778 No goddamn way you called Andor pointless nostalgia bait 💀💀💀
If they’re going to use the sand environments, they could do what Dune did and match the colour of the “green screen” with the colour of the setting, eg sand coloured screen. That movie looked amazing
I also noticide this in The Mandalorian S3E6: the episode where Mando and Bo-Katan are on the planet Plaizir-15, looking for the Mandalorian mercenaries.
When they finally meet them, they are all sitting in the grass, while they have a fleeg with huge ships in the background.
EVERY planet has sand. Man, Anakin would hate the newer films
the sand is getting everywhere. I hate sand
They don't want people who have creative ways of telling stories, they want people with creative ways of making money. That's why the executives get top dollar and the writers are striking (and the companies removing content) over residuals.
Sorry I'm a bit late to the video but you made some fantastic points. I can't unsee it now!!! Now I understand why all the shots look the same. You can see a stark difference in Andor though!
Yea Andor looked brilliant 😅 - even though alot of it set was a "dumpy backwater planet", they actually infused the world with life and culture and made something really interesting that you could imagine yourself living in.
Oh and there wasn't a grain on sand on the entire planet - which was refreshing 😂
@@CGWHY Absolutely. Felt like a living, breathing galaxy again. I dare say it reignited my love for Star Wars a bit. A scary thought...
“I hate sand.”
I've just watched Mando 3, they expanded on Coruscant well, remember these are TV series not films budgets are pretty high now but they're still not films with larger budgets and shorter run times.
Sorry but I have to disagree with you at 4:23 when you were talking about the limitation to use only soft light coming from the screens you where showing a scene with harsh shadows, there nothing could stop the production to show a forest for example it is even easier since they can use small number of practical objects in foreground and then CGI the background, whatever you do in green screen you can also do using LEDs, these decisions seems to be more creative than technical limitations, also in the Mandalorian there was lot of interior detailed scenes and for some reason you overlooked infact the Mandalorian have an entire episode in forrest planet
The good thing is that visuals aren't everything and as long as the story is good the show can still be enjoyable.
That being said, in my opinion the Book of Boba Fett and Kenobi did not really deliver on that either :(
Hopefully Andor can change that.
And there is also The Bad Batch which as an animated show can have much more freedom in terms of art direction.
Yea I suppose I agree with that - if the story was fantastic then I wouldn't mind it being set on a sand planet. - Dune is a good example of this.
And yea, the games and animated shows are giving us a good window into more interesting landscapes, I hope we get some more creativity in the live action stuff soon too!
Excellent video bro, I would pick practical sets over the volume any day.
The first few episodes of Mandalorian I saw with the volume really impressed me. But it didn't take more than five, six episodes before it started to feel like a gimmick. After a while, your brain starts to automatically deconstruct the shot, looking for the seams.
It became a distraction really quickly. For every shot my brain immediately looked for, and usually found, the edge of the floor and the start of the projection.
The quality of the shot itself is of course a lot better, but I truly feel like the Star Wars streaming shows have the same vibe as those (often quite well done, considering) fan Star Trek shows, where they put amateur actors in cosplay uniforms, one physical captain's chair and clearly shot on a greenscreen set the size of someone's kitchen.
It doesn't help of course that the stories (Andor being the obvious exception, and they only used the volume when it made sense) are so weirdly unfocussed and boring.
The replay value of Mandalorian, Boba or Obi Wan is lower than, for example, a low budget British 1970s sci fi show like Blake's 7, that had embarrassingly cheaply created sets, absolutely pathetic special effects, but you just don't even see that after ten minutes because the stories and the acting are so engaging.
The green screen criticism of the prequels is misplaced. Kamino was not a 3D render. The water was rendered but the structures were miniatures built by the team that eventually went on to star in Mythbusters among others. They also made the Geonosis coliseum in miniature, and I believe parts of Coruscant were miniatures as well.
The Volume is new technology that every film maker wants to play with. They're still working out the kinks, and finding out how to best use it, and when to avoid using it.
Of course TV shows may not actually have the luxury of being able to avoid using it.
"overdependency" is the key word. Otherwise, it's an amazing technology.
Who would have thought a giant 365° LED screen doesn’t look as good as real life… I’m so shocked….
I hate when a planet is reduced to a single city like Navarro… the only planet I think that truly feels like a whole planet is Naboo… Coruscant MAYBE
we have seen far more locations on coursant then naboo lol
Anakin warned us about sand.
I kinda miss the Star Wars planets being alien. Like Felucia, Coruscant, Mygeeto, Dathomir, even the more subtle ones like Geonosis which is technically a desert but you see these giant hives and stuff that make it look otherworldly and unique.
And in the Mandalorian, literally every single planet looks like what someone on Earth would probably see looking out the window. Grassy fields, rocky fields, deserts, ice fields, forests with not a single alien plantlife or creature and it kinda loses its uniqueness to the world (Mandalore was cool though). Same goes for the movies. Crait was the only planet from Disney movies (even including Rogue One) that felt alien, and the Falcon hyperjumping scene from ROS also had some cool ideas, albeit a bit too fast to really immerse the viewer. But the rest were painfully mediocre. I don't even get what's the point of greenscreen and Unreal Engine virtual reality they so proudly promote when they don't even do interesting backdrops.
Animation never has this problem 💪
So true
I like how prequel bashers still to this day, dont understand that Episode 1, had more physical props than the original trilogy COMBINED.
Prequel bashers generally do not target the special effects but the writing and the direction. The amount of physical props in the film is not relevant to the criticisms levelled at the prequels.
@@Carabas72 Most people seething about the prequels bash the Politics, the Cleanliness and SUPERCHOREOGRAPHED Jedi Fights and the "over use of Green screen" when it has more props than the other 3 movies combined.
@@terraincognitagaming
That would be the writing and the direction I mentioned.
The green screen overuse is a directorial choice. Lucas though he could pull that off, and he couldn't.
Why do you keep going on and on about the damn props? Props have no relationship to the greenscreen, the choreography, or the political plot (I actually like the plot, even if you have to dig through a lot of nonsense to figure out what it actually is).
Sand is coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere in modern Disney Star Wars.
I think it is a bit strange to blame the volume for what is clearly an issue of bad art direction, lack of creative vision, and horrible writing. For instance, Obi Wan's biggest downfall was that it was paced horribly and the action didn't sell most of the time. I also think that it is simply the nature of TV to be a faster pace production with less time to get small details right compared to movies. It has always been this way and that is another huge reason why these shows turn out kind of bland. I am also a VFX artist and I do find it kind of strange for someone to be think we should move towards more heavy bluescreen use instead of forward into something new.
The shallow depth of field is a direct consequence of shooting on XR stages. As someone that's shot on them before, if you go *too* crisp the pixels can sometimes become noticeable. I would argue the benefits certainly outweigh the costs in this instance.
I had been looking for a breakdown of “why” the volume has lead to so much of recent Disney productions looking the same and this was so well done!
This video makes a good point.
I think it’s improved a lot in the last year. Recent shows have started to expand the palette of environments in Star Wars.
The variety of environments are partly to do with investment into the shows and the production demands of a TV series.
When budgets are lower and there’s less appetite for risk, It’s compelling to go and film a large scene in a practical dessert, with local support available and enabling infrastructure like power and roads.
As the shows have grown in budgets and confidence they have been able to expand out and do more interesting things.
The investment into virtual studio, render engine broadcasting and active backdrop technology is also paying off. It helps narrow the gap between a practical location and a studio shoot.
I hope they continue to go from strength to strength.
This was made before Andor; which didn’t use the volume, and looked amazing
In Star Wars the same small group of people are involved in every major event that happens in their Universe.
YES! that's what it is! something has always been bothering me about these shots but I couldn't put my finger on it. thanks for explaining
I think the much bigger problem is Disney's corporate structure. I feel many of these problems are much older than the volume.
There may be an overreliance on it right now but you said it yourself: the volume CAN give very good results.
I think the big issue with Disney and many other big studios is that everything is in a pipeline where all compartments are being kept seperate.
If the directors on set are only there to get some shots in which are then just handed to the VFX people to figure out the VFX.
Without someone who has the understanding what in the shots is needed for the VFX team to get good effects you're not getting good special effects, no matter the technology you use and artist's Disney slaves out.
Similarly the flat lighting has been a big issue in the MCU since 2012 or something, this is also a choice so more things can be adjusted later on.
Ah yes, my favorite Star Wars planets: Tatooine, Tatooine again, a planet that looks exactly like Tatooine but isn't Tatooine, Tatooine again again...
Seems like Geonosis is the only other desert world that feels unique
FINALLY!! I couldn't find this criticism anywhere. There is so much of the essential Star Wars aesthetic missing throughout all the Disney productions...
i guess anakin was warning us of the future of star wars
Personally, the ONLY thing that bothered me a lot was the scale of Mando and Boba's Book- we are shown huge cities in single shots yet action feels like entire damn planets have literally single towns and villages, all the time. We are shown that about 100-200 pirates are invading a whole planet which, somehow appears to have literally a single trade town. Number of Mandalorians left could be reasoned with, so whatever. But I just cant get over the fact that from what we are told, second largest city on Tattooine can be taken by another 100-200 Pyke guys and they have literally 3 droids too. Feels cheap all the time ngl it really feels that way. Its not just about scale but come on, thats dirty
"You're telling stories using tools, you're not using tools to tell stories"
- George Lucas
I had no idea about any of this! It’s fascinating! Your video is great and easy to understand without being overly simplified.
No matter what you can't deny Nevarros wordbuilding tho.
Wow, why isn't anyone else talking about this. Great points and sharp thinking to consider.
I've had issues with the look of Star Wars shows for a while but could never put them into words. Well done mate
at this point im convinced that disney are gonna get reva sevander and rey to lez out in the next movie
unreal dev here the reason for lighting is the new particle system is 30% heavier then previous unreal 4/physx and thats just beginning of the hump your resources
you literally do need a a6000 with 48 gb vram to play round and /pr min at 4090
andor and the bad batch are on non desert planets
So, basically we've come right back around to classic Dr Who gravel pit planets of yesteryear? Wonderful, truly pushing the medium forward 😂
Honestly I don't mind it. The Sequel trilogy introduced far too many planets, and new aliens for every planet. It felt like the story was on a conveyor belt, rather than being in one coherent galaxy.
This is why I appreciate the Jedi Games by respawn, they always come up with something new, Koboh, Tanalor, Bogano, Zeffo, etc.
Good points, but Star Wars has always been a test bed for new tech. Without the volume, we probably wouldn’t have such expansive shows at this budget. No VFX shot is perfect, but the smoke and mirrors are constantly improving.
This new tech has helped create a Star Wars renaissance, just like the birth of ILM and it’s eventual spearheading of CG did respectively. Evolution in action and I love the franchise more than ever!
We all agree that their "universe" is so poor, not only on the imaging quality, but on the stort itself. Everyone is poor, every environment is poor, under-developed, on the verse of being collapsed, or post apocalypse. A very boring universe.
I appreciate this perspective, great work!
1899 is an awesome show which used a bigger volume with extensive sets in the foreground. Kind of like the hangar scene you were showing. Really does wonders if you just use the Volume merely as an extension of the set
I totally agree .The devil is in the nuances , we should go back to green screen and do it good, this time . Maybe stick to the volume in confined spaces like the hanger or inner big space ships , it seems to look good in this case .
if it's hard to CG a forest floor, why not go to a forest?
I dont even think the Volume is inherently the problem.
House of the Dragon also made extensive use of the Volume, and it looked great! it never felt as flat nor as empty and lifeless as basically every star wars Disney show.
The problem is that disney is...well, lazy. They're not really interested in doing maximum-effort prestige TV, they just crank everything out as fast and cheap as possible, and it shows -- in set design, in the scripts, in their weirdly truncated episode runtimes.
As with most special effects tech, the problem is in how they use it, not in the tech itself.
Watching this video after Mando season 3 and I’ve got to say:
- the return to mandalore felt so so underwhelming due to the volume. There’s nothing interesting to it, and it felt much bigger in the clone wars tv show
- the return of Ahmed best, although exciting, was shot it SUCH A WEIRD WAY
The over reliance of the volume is becoming jarring
Nice vid, great to hear a technical explenation for comments on these fancy - at - first - sight - but - soulless - productions. Also thaught this vid would have like 32K likes?? lol
On a long enough timeline every Star Wars planet becomes Tatooine
I think a hybrid solution would be really cool because the major advantage is virtual sets is light control and reflections. No one is seeing the green behind the actor, so they could easily add the green behind the actor and have the lights on the opposite side to create the reflections and tie the character to the scene. This shifts a lot of work to post again, but it's probably better that way because using virtual sets requires a lot of planning and less ability to adjust the scenes.
Obi-Wan being on Tatooine made sense. That's where he hid and watched over Luke. The Mandalorian didn't need to be on Tatooine. The Book of Boba Fett didn't need to exist. Jakku didn't need to be a desert planet. Jedha didn't need to be a desert planet. Pasaana didn't need to be a desert planet. The sheer lack of creativity is astonishing.
Take a look at Geonosis. Technically, it's a desert planet. However, it has a unique look. First off, it's red, and it has the iconic rock pillars that fill in the landscape. Additionally, it came with a brand new original species, the geonosians. That's how creative George Lucas and his creative team were.
Disney has no artistic vision. They just copy and paste "things you know" and move on. Nothing original or interesting.
The solution is to frame the volume with green screen elements to create a mid-ground and ceiling. Attach a few practical elements to the green screen shapes and then you have full visual range.
I knew it felt like a video game!!! I couldn’t place my finger on it. But even when I watched the first mando episode, I couldn’t explain why, but it felt like watching a video game play through.
I think it is a conscious choice to have a lot of open spaces in The Mandalorian because of its 'western' aesthetic. But it's true that the backgrounds could be more 3 dimensional, and we could have had more swamps or mountains or gas. The prequels were very much focused on the centre of the galaxy, and a raging war, hence the more elaborate and chaotic backgrounds and cities. BoBF and Kenobi look so cheap, though. And along with the sequels have made desert planets so bland. And in fairness, some of these projects were made during covid, so they relied on the Volume because it was easier than shooting on location, and lot of the budget must have gone on all the procedures and equipment for working on set with covid restrictions.
Afaik, it’s not usually a “dome”. It’s just a big box most of the time. The background is often curved, but there usually isn’t a dome ceiling. It’s often just another big flat screen that they don’t use much for actually capturing on camera, but just for casting the appropriate moving lighting to go along with what’s on the curved background screen.
These are the kind of things that once you know about them, you can never un-see them.
same thing with costume design really like some stuff we've seen in the mandalorian and alike straight up look like Cosplay some animated characters just don't work in live action
I don't believe that more interesting environments would improve the quality of the stories. The cause of shitty writing is shitty writing.
TFA, TLJ and TRS had all the tools, both imaginable and unimaginable, at their disposal,
and their plot - what happens - still made no sense and the narrative - what it means - still was gobbledegook.
Disney Star Wars has worse problems than a concerted effort to lower the cost of production. Which by the way is not what Disney is telling us.
According to them they put vast sums of money into the production of these "Star Wars" shows that air on Disney+.
The star wars prequels had much better world building than any of the newer movies. Infact, they had the best world building of all the Star wars movies. The newer ones have been trying to separate themselves from the prequels, but I think the prequels are way over-hated.
I hate Kathleen… fuck that bitch
No wonder I thought these look a bit weird, I was slowly getting tired of some of the shows look but I could put my tongue on it. Thank you for speaking for me.
I’ve been wondering why Mando s3 looks soulless (in a “WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE” meaning). That explains a lot.
This is why I like that Andor doesn't use the Volume