Janet Lewin, Senior Vice President Lucasfilm VFX General Manager ILM, has shared some of her proudest moments came on a film that has no attachment to any current franchise.
“For me, my personal highlights have been working with Dennis Muren and Ang Lee on Hulk,” Lewin told ComicBook.com. “That was an opportunity to really get close with a filmmaker who moved up to ILM to be a part of the filmmaking process. I learned so much from that experience.”
All roads at ILM do tend to lead back to Star Wars, and that’s exactly where Lewin found herself two years after Ang Lee’s Hulk.
“I think being a part of the reboots for Star Wars after having been a producer on Revenge of the Sith with George was this beautiful full circle opportunity to bring the franchise back to life in a new way,” Lewin continued. “That was really, really exciting and inspiring for me.”
oday, Star Wars has expanded its galactic forces into serialized television, premiering live-action streaming shows for the first time in Lucasfilm’s history. Lewin stressed that shows like The Mandalorianare history-making far beyond their mere existence: they are game-changers in how they are made.
“I think The Mandalorian is another example of a highlight and an evolution in the way we approach filmmaking,” Lewin said. “To be a part of Mandalorian Season 1 and implement the StageCraft Volume and partner with Jon Favreau and his incredible filmmaking team was also just an incredible opportunity for me.”
The Mandalorian‘s implementation of StageCraft, also known as the Volume, has been a long time coming. Concepts for a virtual production stage had been floated around Lucasfilm for years, and once StageCraft launched for the Pedro Pascal-led bounty hunter series, studios could not wait to get their hands on it. Films from The Batman to Thor: Love and Thunder have used the Volume to bring their larger-than-life landscapes to the big screen.
While the Volume expedites the post-production process, it still brings its fair share of challenges.
“I think it’s made it harder and easier, but I will say that basically, the whole paradigm shift is moving visual effects ahead of production. In order for it to really pay off, you need to have all of your designs accomplished, pre-vis, and the final content that you’re going to be projecting in high resolution, real-time, in the Volume all needs to be done before you shoot,” Lewin said. “That’s a big investment in time and resources to get it lined up before the shoot, but on the day, the director, the DP, the visual effects supervisor, production designer, everybody can make creative choices with the actual real content, not just talking with sticks and arrows on a blue screen. When it works well, you get all of these shots in-camera that require very little post-production. That can be a huge savings of visual effects labor and time, but more to the point that it’s just better looking. It’s higher quality results because the filmmakers are there making those decisions as a collaborative team. They’re not handing off downstream and losing the intent of the work.”
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