Mando is losing its luster for me

I think there's a difference between interacting with, and focusing on.
I wouldn't be bothered by the former, but the latter kinds of loses me.

For example: if they made a show called, "Stormtroopers".
I'd be really quite pleased they finally got around to serving up a bunch of fans a plate of what they've been asking for, but I personally would have zero inherent interest in watching it.

Just as I have zero inherent interest in watching a show about a bunch of X-Wing pilots.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I've already kind of covered this, but essentially, if you swing a camera onto something and place the climactic tension on it, then it's focused on.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It doesn't have to be at the expense of the lead. I've written that before a few times.
It has to be:
A) Not something I'm interested in.
B) Something that doesn't directly support Mando.
C) Something that's put in as a 'general Star Wars universe interest' item.
D) Is what the camera is focused on and the climactic tension centers around.

That has nothing to directly do with dropping the quality of Mando's narrative capability itself.
I've said it before, if someone likes these side subjects and objects, then it will never be a problem at all.

If, however, you are the person who is 'asexual' about Elvis, Tyson's vest, and that really bada** pen, then it doesn't do anything for you.
It's basically flat-line time for me.

And that's not because I'm unfamiliar with older TV programming, which brings me to....

I'm not seeing the relevance in bringing this up in this discussion as I am 42 years old this spring and grew up in a backwood remote island in Alaska where our local programming was all from the 60's and 70's for years.

I grew up as a little kid watching the Lone Ranger, Zorro, Star Trek original series, B/W Perry Mason, Lost in Space, Dukes of Hazard, Dr. Who etc... on a black and white 15 inch screen with rabbit ears, the ones that the case itself was also black and white. In fact, that's what I was watching when I first saw Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
When we did get color TV and the programming grew I was watching Matlock, new Perry Mason, Magnum P.I., Cheers, MASH, Star Trek Next Gen, Knight Rider, Quantum Leap, Airwolf, The A-Team, Murder She Wrote, etc...

Today, we watch Murder She Wrote, Star Trek Next Gen, and Dr. Who almost daily, and Magnum P.I. makes a regular appearance on our screen.

I am among the first to champion the episodic serial, and I've written about it repeatedly on the forum, along with praising the Romp and the desire for a return to Romp and pure heroism.

Whether this was episodic or continual has absolutely no bearing on my point.
Look, if you, as a person, only find Fletcher of interest, then you're going to think the technique of one-off's where they let Dennis Stanton lead the way around, or any of the others, as not a good technique regardless how many times someone tries to explain the merits of the approach.

It's really that simple.
Does Mando have a structural flaw that threatens to undermine the general audience quality of the show?
HEEEELL NO!

Does Mando have a structural weakness in ONE CORNER that HAPPENS to be a corner that bothers ME PERSONALLY?

Yes. Yes it does.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Not really, no.
B through D just sum to A.

That said, I still watch it. I'll still watch it.
Because even with its lackluster moments for me and (likely) dropping of pastiche expressionism, it's still FAR fricken better quality programming than 95+% of content out there...including films.

Besides, my kids love it and Star Wars with your kids is just magic.

It's not like Mando is a show where every episode is an antagonistic interpersonal melodrama...which so many da*n shows have now turned to doing.

I swear a ton of writers have forgotton that their medium is a visual one and not just a dialogue container you can play like a dang radio drama while you fiddle with your phone.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

No, no. Mando is not.

My point in that comment was that regardless of anything being uninteresting in terms of where they're choosing to focus, the show is FAR better than most shows out there because a ton of shows have forgotten that theirs is a visual medium and not just a spot to shove dialogue and talking heads.

Mando is far from a dialogue container for talking heads. That's why it's still worth gold in my book over most content out there regardless if I'm personally getting bored of them focusing on a bunch of stuff I don't really care about, and they're not using the artform I would prefer them to use.

They are still bothering to treat it as a visual medium of art pretty much every single episode.

Regardless of everything else, in my book, that deserves high praise.


Cheers,
Jayson

 

Yes. 2015 Kennedy Center honors.
http://www.justjared.com/2015/12/29/kennedy-center-honorees-2015-meet-the-five-legends/

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Mando's actually the reason that I declared, "The reign of the $50 million dollar movie is dead."

Why would you spend $50 million on a crap-shoot film when you can yank that in on a streaming platform like Netflix and bypass the entire costly theatrical distribution system, and then...why even do that when you can at least afford to run a limited series film from anywhere around $9 million to $15 million per episode, and get more quality budget per hour more easily because of the return on investment to the streaming company - unlike a traditional production studio looking to recoup all costs out of just your film and all almost entirely banked on the first month of weekends.

And Mando specifically is a head snapper because it's dropping the cost on some episodes down to around $13 million.
$13 million for that quality?
And that stagecraft system will only get cheaper. Most of that cost is just in that system currently, and right now that's sort of exchanging the cost between traveling everywhere (as in Game of Thrones...there's no excuse for the bloated costs on shows like "The Morning Show"...that's just crack talk).

I have pals on the VFX side of the industry and they've been slowly working towards breaking into production as well, and they are playing with the new stagecraft platform and looking at how that can move them along.

That was simply impossible before. Just straight up impossible for a VFX company to in-house production development.

Now? Hey middle budget studios...you better watch the F out because VFX studios are far more fitted to do COVID style production, and use high-tech advantages like stagecraft, and they don't have to hire new departments or outsource to accomplish it - this is their back yard! All they have to do is afford some camera gear, logistically branch out to hiring talent, and brush up their direction and production shoot chops....which is FAR easier than a middle budget production studio trying to learn VFX or pay someone to do it for them!

Not to mention, a Hollywood AAA film grade VFX studio operates at about the same cost as a middle budget production studio.
Middle budget production studio...you're screwed!

Cheers,
Jayson

 

The actual biggest leap forward wasn't the projection system, nor the LED system, nor the real-time rendering. All of those already existed, and were in use on AAA VFX films.

What was radically new, however, is the parallax.

With automatically tracking camera lens conditional parallax, holy s*** balls.
I was watching this tech sort of unfold a bit before Mando hit and I was just ape-s*** blown away watching Unreal demo it.

Some folks in VFX were sort of, "Eh...we'll see..." (and to a degree rightly so, because so many new toys are all promise and no delivery - or so expensive or complex that it's not really worth it), but I was simply blown just because of that parallax alone.

The rest was just kind of added cheese, but that parallax! WTF! DUDE!?

That is the real-time on-stage VFX equal, screw it, that's the VFX as a whole equal of Einstein's Special Relativity!

We don't have General Relativity yet, but it's now a matter of time until automatic objects are tracked onto people. At first that will be clunky and need a lot of manual correction to clean it up, but after it gets in there a bit, it'll be just BOOM - wide open.

Need a WWI Rifle? Coming right up! Need a lightsaber? Check! Need a jetpack? Rodger that!

It'll be nearly like the scene in The Matrix when Neo loads up on guns in the infinite white room because of the data jack.

All you'll need is some sort of facsimile to anchor to as a reference point and boom, it'll live-render the rest and angle it automatically, AND light it right all without requiring hundreds of man-hours of manual VFX work.

Hell, a stormtrooper's helmet in the future, and indeed their whole outfit, could just end up being virtually blasted on them in real time now that they've cracked parallax!

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I think so.

That reminds me...there is one group that's not a fan, come to think of it.
DPs/cinematographers.

There's things they love: any natural light time you desire - you can do sunsets in a half day instead of at least 2 days (and easily more if the weather doesn't line up).

But there's things they hate: constantly fiddling with the lighting and having to check on that parallax's read of the light, and the set up time for any solution is just tediously long. I forget who it was, but one cinematographer said it was like being at NASA doing practice runs for launches.
Nothing's simple.

You can't just grab your tungstens, and whip up a shot, nail it, and move.

It's also harder for them a bit because there's nearly zero inspiration...that is, accidental. Everything is tightly controlled so perfectly that you almost never have a moment where you see a chance of light dancing around.

You never catch light in there. You dictate it.

Sort of the difference between digital computer music and analog synth music.

Overall they find it impressive and super luxurious, but I gather that after a while they feel a little less human artist and more lighting drone, and just start craving the open air/natural studio again.

Cheers,
Jayson