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Disney Plus' Mandalorian was brought to life with help from the Unreal Engine
Here's a unique bit of trivia for you. In the credits for the Disney Plus show 'The Mandalorian,' you might spot a credit for Epic Games. Wondering what on earth they had to do with this show? Turns out series creator Jon Favreau integrated Unreal Engine tech during the filming process to help bring everything together.
“We used the V-cam system where we get to make a movie essentially in VR, send those dailies to the editor, and we have a cut of the film that serves a purpose that previs would have.
We got a tremendous percentage of shots that actually worked in-camera, just with the real-time renders in engine, that I didn’t think Epic was going to be capable of. For certain types of shots, depending on the focal length and shooting with anamorphic lensing, there’s a lot of times where it wasn’t just for [actor interactivity]. We could see in camera, the lighting, the interactive light, the layout, the background, the horizon. We didn’t have to mash things together later.
And it would fool people. I had people come by the set from the studio who said, ‘I thought you weren’t building this whole set here,’ and I said, ‘No, all that’s there is the desk.’ Because it had parallax in perspective, it looked, even from sitting right there, if you looked at it casually, you thought you were looking at a live action set.”