SPOILER Mandalorian S1E5

Ok then all I will say is the money is not well spent compared to GoT Season 8. Also I dont want them to remake things. Episode 5 was cute to be on Tatooine, but I would have been far more happy with it had it been on another location. Nothing required the episode to be on Tatooine. So many other terrains available in California that havent been used over and over and over again like Tatooine.

 

Just one of many in the Kings throne room, you hardly see my face let alone my fingernails

 

I've watched the episode numerous times now.
Peli Motto (Bay 35 mechanic) decides to do something at the end of the episode I think. Maybe she tells someone from the New Republic of what she just witnessed.
The "walking boots" at the end: a bounty hunter, tracking Fennec possibly from the Mid-Rim, wears spurs. Still think it's Cad Bane but I don't know how long Duros live and the info on them is pretty scant. Plus Filoni was the one who brought him back for Clone Wars for Lucas.
I think the ship is a modified Z-95 Headhunter or something similar.

The whole episode was what someone mentioned earlier, a love letter to Star Wars. My daughter exclaimed as the Razor Crest landed "That's like where the Falcon was parked!", proud dad moment.

 

I disagree here.
It's ridiculously well spent.

Unlike GoT, Mando goes to very different locations almost every episodes and decks it out in exotic worlds of futuristic designs.
If you tried to push for this before the technology they were using, at the caliber 1:1 they are doing it, it would cost far more than $15 per episode.

And you may not have enjoyed Tatooine, but more than a few Star Wars fans have remarked over their delight of seeing Tatooine, and I know anecdotally, it was a hit with my family (look one post above mine for an example). Just to do that physically would have cost a ridiculous amount, considering the physical locations and set builds involved.

Even if you take Tatooine out, it doesn't much matter. It would cost a ton of money to set hop like they're doing if you were to do it physically.
GoT spent a ton of money just going places physically. Six different countries to shoot everything, and they also only stayed at those six countries perpetually once they had them locked in.

Mando isn't doing that. We're not revolving around the same locations over and over in a political tug of war.
We're journeying all over the place and everything has to look different episode to episode except for times where he revisits a location for a specific reason (like going back to collect his reward).

Mando has been shot in two locations: California, and New York.
And from that we've gotten to an ice planet, two different desert planets (which don't look like each other, so that's a bit of a trick), and a forested planet.
Inside of these locations, we've gone to quite a number of specific locations which you wouldn't be able to get out of one location - most of the time, a fictional single "world" or "nation" is pieced together from multiple real physical locations, so even though we might see one "desert" world, it would be multiple physical locations spread out (like ANH's Tatooine is not one simple location to put together, but spread out over 9 physical locations across two countries - one being two different States in the Unites States).

That is a TON of shot locations just for one world.
Episode IV took about 20 locations to shoot.

ANH has in it about as many worlds as we've seen, actually, fewer.
Which means we'd be at least already be looking at half that amount of locations minimum for what we've gotten so far, and glaciers to shoot a movie on like they did in ESB are becoming increasingly more rare of an option to both find and be permitted access to do that.

And GoT's famous battle episode...
11 weeks of night shoots in temperatures dropping below 30 degrees. ~750 crew members worked every night, often trudging through rain and mud.

There's a reason GoT took so long to come out. The final season took a year and three quarters to appear on screens.
That's what the $15 million per episode was being spent on for GoT.

Tons of locations and expensive massive extras costs in deplorable conditions, among many other things. It wasn't all just Dragons (though Dragons are spendy).

They are almost, but not quite equivalent with the primary difference being that with the approach that Mando is taking, you get much more nimbleness without requiring such a massive physical logistics nightmare. The result is that you can shoot incredibly faster and accomplish far more than you could if you attempted it physically!

Mando started principle photography in October 2018 and wrapped in February 2019.
That is insanely fast; 4 months!

GoT final season, which is monetarily the closest to Mando, was 9 months for just principle photography.

That is a massive jump in speed, and both have multiple locations. However, Mando has more locations that are not reused, due to the nature of his wondering the wilderness style of character arc.

If you attempted to physically make this today, again, it wouldn't cost anywhere close to $15 million per episode. It would cost you probably double that just by adding the physical layer to it of traveling around with multiple crews across a dozen physical locations, and the amount of set work would be massive if they didn't rely on CGI to create a bunch of it (as it is, they do actually still create partial physical sets - the trend these days is shipping containers act as modular frames and they rapidly slap together the exterior with wood and plaster, etc... over the top of those containers, slap down some giant blue mats and sheets and call it a day.
It's just usually that's done on a film, and it's not really that fast of a process...just fast-er than full set builds.

This, on the other hand, is moving at nearly sitcom principle photography speeds, but we're not using a multi-cam set up.
The typical single cam drama moves at a rate of about 6 to 8 months average for 40 minute-ish episodes (the TV version of an "hour").

We're hovering at around 35-ish minutes, which is a bit shy of the "hour" of normal dramas, but we're moving way faster in production speed, and we're far more nimble in design of locations and story flexibility than the typical drama.

What exactly should we see more?
We've had aliens, blaster fights, sci-fi vehicles, spaceships, spaceship battles, monsters, monster battles, magic, multiple planets, and a fully digital CGI toddler walking character (Jar Jar!...way smaller, and often probably not involving motion tracking because unlike Jar Jar, babyoda is too small to really model on a human walking around...so that means nearly 100% created by VFX crews for everything like an animation for a Pixar film, but live action).

And that's just in 5 episodes! What should we be getting? I'm a little lost here because I'm trying to figure out what a science fantasy story has that hasn't been shown to us aside from laser swords?

The production cost is high, indeed, but holy cow they are getting a LOT for that dollar. It would literally be impossible to make what we have seen of Mando for $15 million per episode using more practical location methods and just dropping in CGI in spots like GoT.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Wow I stopped right here.

We have visited a flat icy location with a couple of single story structures. One was a cantina, the other(s) we didnt even go into. In the landscape were some equipment that looks like moisture vaporators. Also a couple of speeders (these at least moved) and ships.
We visited Navarro multiple times and looks mostly like Mos Eisley with different shade of color. Landscape looks volcanic. Interior is another cantina, some halls and very little tech.
We then visited where Baby Yoda was. Again a more dessert like planet with some rock formations which you can be found in CA, AZ, NV all driving distance to LA.
We then visited the green planet on Episode 4. Got some huts, another cantina and some pools.
We then visited Tatooine.

If we didnt see speeders hovering, a few spacecraft and laser blasts you would think we are in a galaxy that is technologically primitive. Have we seen a building that is more then 1 story tall?

I dont want to fight about this. I just 100% disagree that Mandalorian looks like it cost more then GoT season 8. Also lets not forget acting talent. We have had a handful of people on the show with more then a couple of lines of dialogue. I also think Pedro Pascal only did voice work or 90% voice work. Who else got a decent paycheck and remember they are paid per episode.

Carl Weathers is in Ep1 and Ep3
Werner Herzog is in Ep1 and Ep3
Gina Carano is in Ep4
Ming-Na Wen is in Ep5

Who else was paid more then the minimum pay required by the Screen Actors Guild?

 

You should read the rest of what I wrote.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

OK I did and you made more of a argument for me then against me. Mandalorian simply does not like $15 million per episode. Baby Yoda toddling around is nothing compared to the CGI used for the Dragons (And Ghost). 3 Dragons and 1 Direwolf. The sets in GoT are far more elaborate and detailed then any of the sets in Mandalorian. Does any wall in Mandalorian have any sort of art on the wall. Not for art sake, but rather to make it easier and cheaper to use a room to represent another room.

The ice planet was a flat white landscape with some wind and snow with a couple of structures and static ships that werent shown in detail. We did have a monster that was on screen a few seconds. Even the Mandalorian rifle took cuts to keep cost down. There is no visible blast. You have it shoot then person shot turn to dust. Didnt come up with a colored blast moving towards target.

What should we see more? How about sets that look different other then color. How about a local that has buildings more then 1 story tall. How about a location that actually looks like it has a population. How about a location that truly looks technological advanced. How about if we have a space battle have more then 2 ships.

Honestly I am surprised people like being back on Tatooine. To me it was the worst kind of fan service. Nothing that occurred required the use of Tatooine. Nothing.

 

I love them too. Will make a really good RL bike
I just wait to have the 3d model for printing.
I wander if magnetic suspension will work on them too

 

No, the ship is not any of the starfighters. If you look my post with both ships next to each other - new ship on top of Razor Crest, the new ship is slightly bigger than Razor Crest, by wingspan I mean. On one of the other shots it is visible that the body is much longer than the wings. And Razor Crest is a gunship or troop transport, much bigger than starfighters. Engine front grill is not rounded but rectangular with rounded corners and there is a separation in the middle going vertical. There is a hole in the middle of the hull, kind of like MIG15 but is not round.

I looked the scene again and again, no chance to get a clear shot of the ship. It is always blurry. I have the following theory:

They don't want to show us the ship, Razor Crest had many shots crystal clear, this ship not. Because:

1) They want to re-use the ship for another scene. Then of course with different color scheme or some details changed it become a different ship.

2) They did a lousy job on the model. It's possible that they didn't had the time or didn't want to spend more money to make it detailed. Then it's just a blurry image of a spaceship. In the past they used to use models, you know scaled models as example Revell, models of aircrafts and ships to build their futuristic spaceships, kind of cut and paste, engines from this one, body from another, etc.

I think the mechanic from Bay 35 did not decided to do anything, she was just grateful to receive all those money. Probably she thought she will never see any money from Mando. I think she is in desperate situation too, Tatooine is not very popular at that time.

Length to wingspan ratio:



two ships next to each other:



Engine front





Back side:




I have a couple of pictures here to demonstrate my idea:

The model itself looks to me like the hull is a Ferrari from 60's cockpit with short wings and engines from ww2 bomber. Very classical arrangement. Remains the question what is this hole in the middle of the nose cannot be air intake





Back side of the hull looks like cowling from Cesna, of course without the propeller:



Engine front looks similar to this, Avro Lancaster tail turret:



Engine back side is not very clear, but can be taken from X-wing model, separated of course , cover the tube and add some blue light:



I hope you enjoy the pictures!

 

This is what I was trying to explain, though.

You are comparing apples to oranges, which is totally fair from a viewer perspective.

I'm conveying the production perspective.

Mando's technology is bleeding edge.
No other TV show is using anything it's using, or doing it this way.

They will, but they aren't yet.

Mando is basically doing for TV what Episode 1 did for film on the industry side.
Everyone is taking note.

My VFX friend is impressed, to say the least.
Not because the VFX is better than something, but because it's on par in rendered quality at a production speed and method that is truly game changing.

Right now there are limitations because it's new, but trust me - what we have seen so far would have cost more to do the way GoT did it.

It might have looked bigger and better, perhaps, but it would have cost a hell of a lot more, and been slower.

It also wouldn't've pushed the boundaries of production.

I fully expect season 2 and 3 to expand and flex out more because the process is now more familiar.

It's the difference of ship battles in ANH vs. ROTJ.

We're at ANH level with a whole new method, and it is productively kicking ass.
Unreal is poised to be set up as a sort of new ILM.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

So you are saying that we got this filler episode because say a location say along the Pacific Coast of California wasnt done because it couldnt be done by November. Maybe that is the case so they did episode on Tatooine because they could take the assets for Narvarro change the colors, and send out a helicopter to Death Valley and film some desert sequences.

It still disappoints me. The Mandalorian as much as I enjoy it has looked to much like a fan film then a 1st class production. Then my biggest fear is that the Obi-Wan series is going to look just like this. Think it will be very difficult to differentiate much of the locations from each other. I pin my hopes that Cassian series will actually show more of the galaxy.

 

No, not at all.

We got Tatooine because the technology they're using allowed them to literally go right back to Tatooine in ways physically visiting actually wouldn't allow. As someone else already noticed, they literally reused scenes from ANH and altered the gamma settings.

We got Tatooine because they wanted to go to Tatooine for the fans who would love it (and we did), and they likely wanted to test the Stagecraft system's ability to insert new content production into old set footage.
Before, to do that, you would either have to physically recreate everything as close as possible and always get something wrong because it was years ago, and/or would have to rely on CGI rotoscoping (link for what this is) every moving character and newly shot component into the old footage you are using as your "set".

It's been done before, like Forest Gump, but it's always taken a lot of work and just a ton of manual labor hours to accomplish more than a simple and small scene. You wouldn't dream of saying, "Oh, we'll just rotoscope a quarter of an episode into that location from the old one."

The reason we don't see a lot of California set reliance is actually for the same reason that we don't in ANH. Cost.
Even if they went all practical, they wouldn't have shot it all in California.
It was actually cheaper to fly everyone to Tanzania...everyone and all of the gear and set pieces!! ... than it was to shoot it in California for ANH.
The choice wasn't because California didn't have what Lucas wanted. It was because it was too expensive.

Permits for shooting in California are INSANE! Absolutely INSANE!
And union rules about work hours and cost on varying work hours are equally insane. So spending hours trafficking to an expensive permit location in California where you are leaving expensive sets up for days on end, which requires around the clock additional security staffing because it's not a studio set compared to being able to just go to the regular studio and whip up the on-site location in a virtual digital projection with some physical support components and being able to start filming earlier each day and shoot longer each day than an actual on-site location, and not have to worry about equipment trafficking when things are found to be needed, or break, and not having to juggle the timelines as much for union rules because you're on a studio lot and not worrying about the travel time as work-time cost from the set site...there's no comparison here on the production side.

Studios have always preferred studio sets. They just always looked like crap before.
Like...not "Oh gee, that's not as stunning as it could have been"...no...actual crap.
To get it to not look like crap, you had to rely on a ton of CGI and massive walls of green screens everywhere, and then you ran into the issue of the actors not always looking like they personally felt the presence of their fictional location because there was nothing there to see, and you ran into gamma matching issues between the practical and VFX groups because the lighting on set was done in a way that makes it harder on VFX to pin down what the lighting direction and match is (happens ALL THE TIME...Indiana Jones Crystal Skull) so they are forced to "A for effort" because no one put a lighting reference object in front of a camera to follow, or the VFX guys were cut short on time on a scene so they just didn't do as nice of a job as they could have matching between the two (Black Panther final fight scene).

Now there is. The actors can literally see their set even though it's being projected digitally, and they can imagine themselves much more easily into that world and environment and react to it much better than a wall of green that someone tells them something's happening on. Furthermore, the lighting is literally being recorded by the entire system so the VFX teams have a reference all the time, and the lighting itself in the projection unit can be exactly dialed in to match the practical lighting right on set, which radically reduces the challenge of blending the CGI environment with the practical environment, and a bunch of it was being done on set and saved in the memory which is then shipped off to the VFX studios for bundling with the footage and alterations they do, which makes it way more efficient on the VFX side for production runs.

If you haven't, seriously do check out that video on Stagecraft that I posted. Yes, it's overly hyping itself, but the basic nuts and bolts are like that - it's really game changing for the shooting production side (for the VFX side, it doesn't change much in their methods - they're workflow doesn't really change a whole lot - just a bit easier and fewer chances of gamma flaws, guessing, and rotoscoping...it's more a leg up for the principle photography side of things and the actors).

It will expand. It's brand new technology that hasn't flexed itself much past infancy, but dude...this technology is absolutely brilliant. It's like the invention of the green screen and rear projection slammed together, but better because it also supports VR so the elements in the projection can be manipulated and altered in near real time, and so can the gamma levels and environmental parameters of the virtual set.

Keep in mind that my original tangent was that the issue wasn't an issue of money being low; but a difference of production logistics wielding a new and boundary breaking technology and method for set and "on-site" production shooting.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Ok so they didnt shoot in California. So were none of the out doors sets actual photographers going out to locations and take shots and none of them in California?

I know how they did a lot of the filming to make it easier and to do more of simply in a studio. My point is what they put up on the screens surrounding the actors is boring as blast. Like I said going back to Tatooine did nothing with the story. Sure the fan service for some was great. That wheres off after the 1st viewing.

 

No. They don't shoot anything. They render it digitally using the unreal engine...watch the video. It shows how the environments are created.
It's not just footage in a projector. If it were that, it wouldn't cost so much. Watch the promo video. You'll get a much better understanding.

If you're frustrated with the choices of where to go, that is not due to the technological limitations, as you can see from watching the promo video. That has been their specific story choices.
They openly chose to crawl into Tatooine because ... dude ... it was fun!

I'm sorry it was a sour lemon for you, but me and a bunch of others had a blast with that!


Also, it likely served a real test of stepping back into old footage virtually recovered sets, which, as I mentioned before, has never been easy and a right pain in the arse to accomplish. This technology makes doing something like that WAY easier, and Mando was a great candidate for testing that approach because you can absolutely bet that Obi Wan is going to have a very real need to restepping back into sets and locations that are in ANH and the Prequels, and it would be a LOT better for the production and the quality output to be able to have the actor step back into those sets virtually and interactively, rather than either a green screen they can't interact with or see, or a rear projection film gimmick which won't look very good.

But yeah...if you're just saying that you are bored with the choice of locations...that is not an issue of money or technology. That is a matter of you disagreeing with their aesthetic choice. They are specifically picking these spots and doing so for their choice of reasons relating to the story.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Why. Oh my god why? Was it so great to say oh look the cantina? Oh look a bantha? Oh my a Tusken Raider? A speeder bike. I just dont understand. Maybe if they had gone to Tattooine and discovered something it would be interesting. Instead we get tan buildings just like the gray buildings on Navarro. Yawn.

Let me add if this was a show with say 15+ episodes I wouldnt be so negative about Tatooine. Particularly since they are only 30ish minutes long, not close to an hour. Seems so much the story is running out of time with likely 90 minutes or so left.

 

Swoop Bikes were the novelty of ROTJ and they have enchanted me since.

Are you building one? Hover technology has come a long way.

 

How does anyone know what is a filler episode without seeing the whole series?

 

Good point. I feel each episode has been instrumental in Mando’s development as a protagonist. Ep5 showed why he cannot return to Guild/Bounty Hunting. If he does chase down bounties it will have to be independent contracts.

 

Because Tatooine is Star Wars' home and heart. It's in every series, and I enjoyed seeing home and what it's like right after the fall of the Empire.

It was fun.

If you hated it so much that it gritted your teeth, I'm sorry.
There will be lots more content to come, but I really enjoyed it and so did the rest of my family, and based on this thread, a good number of other folks did as well.

If the series is boring you...I don't know...don't watch and wait for a different series? I don't mean that in a dirtbag snarky way, but just...I mean...when GoT started to bore me, I stopped watching it. I don't wait around for things to "pick up" much beyond a couple of episodes at most, and from the way you're speaking, it's like you haven't enjoyed a whole lot in five episodes; maybe a few tidbits or so?

And yes, it was fun and put a smile on me to see the Cantina. I enjoyed seeing a droid running the place, and I smiled watching them sit in the same booth as Han and Greedo. It was fun, indeed, but the episode also served a good purpose in the story telling because it set up Tatooine's status in this place where it was a smuggler's hub during ANH, it is now clearly desolate of such operations; likely due to Jabba being dead.

There's far fewer smugglers and people clamoring around Mos than there were before. It's a skeleton of itself.

That was interesting to me.
And the show was interesting in terms of Mando because it explored more of his character and how he relates to others, and how he's softening and changing.
His relation with the garage keeper was rather interesting, and his interest in coaching the greenhorn even though Mando was no longer validly capable of being in the guild was interesting.

And anytime I get to watch Star Wars swoops or speederbikes fly around, I'm delighted!

It was a good Western episode, and I really did enjoy it.

Again, sorry that you didn't.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I posted somewhere else not sure if this was the thread or not. I said if there were like 15+ episodes then I would give it like an 8 out of 10, but with so little time to develop the season I give it a 3. Turns out Mandalorian is basically a 4 hour movie broken into parts. With that taking 30 minutes out for filler to me harmed the season. I want a story not a nostalgia session when time is so precious.