For as long as movies have existed, it seems like dedicated fans and aspiring filmmakers have always set out to mimic the exciting new techniques they’ve seen on the big screen. But how often do those same fans end up possibly surpassing the work they intended to replicate? The visual effects team over at Corridor Digital set out to do just that with The Mandalorian‘s Luke Skywalker. The only question is, did they succeed?
After the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian surprised audiences with its mind-blowing recreation of a young Luke Skywalker, many began to speculate about how Disney actually pulled it off. L.A. based visual effects (VFX) studio Corridor Digital went one step further by fully attempting to not only recreate the effect, but potentially even outdoing the original. They gathered their team, donned their COVID masks, and got to work.
Their first order of business was to figure out just how Disney achieved their impressive (albeit still not quite perfect) effect. Since Disney never revealed how they accomplished it, the Corridor team was left to use their extensive knowledge of digital effects to figure it out on their own. While there was likely some 3D modeling in play, they concluded that the main technology used was most likely a Deepfake of a younger Mark Hamill. It’s not the first time someone has used a Deepfake in Star Wars, but possibly the first time it’s been done officially.
For those unfamiliar, a Deepfake refers to training artificial intelligence to digitally replace a person’s face in a video with that of somebody else. It’s a long and tedious process, requiring those using it to not only gather a gigantic number of shots of the face they wish to recreate but to give the computer enough time to learn with the information given. Corridor Digital did both of these things, as well as filming one of their own team members as a Luke Skywalker stand-in, and the results may have been exactly what they set out to accomplish.
All their work seemed to pay off, as the final rendered footage not only looked arguably clearer and more realistic than the shots seen in The Mandalorian, but possibly even more expressive. The Corridor Digital crew dedicated over an entire week entirely to this project, which may explain why it turned out so well. Disney very likely relied more on digital shortcuts than the painstaking by-hand efforts that Corridor focused on, which the VFX team speculated may have been why the Luke Skywalker seen in the show appeared so stiff and just slightly blurry.
Corridor Digital’s re-creation of Luke Skywalker may have appeared nearly perfect at first glance, but looking through the scene again might reveal a few strange effects that betray its computer-generated trickery. At the same time, the original shot in The Mandalorian easily prompted gasps from audiences everywhere as they instantly recognized the young Jedi Master. But again, many viewers noticed the imperfections upon a second viewing. It’s difficult to say which team pulled it off better, but it’s very easy to say that visual effects have become absolutely mind-boggling.
The Mandalorian is now available on Disney Plus.
Source: Corridor Crew/YouTube
![\"IT電腦補習](\"http://itteacheritfreelance.hk/test/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo2-2.png\"){kind=logo}
www.itsec.hk
www.itsec.vip
www.itseceu.uk
Leave a Reply