The Mandalorian and Grogu Movie Features Jon Favreau Easter Egg

The 2019 premiere of The Mandalorian on Disney Plus kicked off a new era for Star Wars. Fans welcomed Baby Yoda, later officially named Grogu, along with the bond between the Force-sensitive foundling and the bounty hunter Din Djarin. Jon Favreau directed The Mandalorian and Grogu, which brings the TV series to the big screen. Polygon spoke to the visual effects team ahead of the film’s streaming debut on Disney Plus to learn how they made the first Star Wars movie in seven years.

Rotta the Hutt was based on an elephant seal

John Knoll serves as the senior visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic. He noted that designing Jabba the Hutt’s gladiator son Rotta was one of the biggest challenges of the production.

“We’ve seen these fat and sedentary versions of Hutts in the past, but this one is as an athlete that is fit and can move fast and speaks English,” Knoll says. “How does something with no legs move quickly? Does he move like an inchworm? Like a snake?”

The team settled on elephant seals as their primary reference. These four-ton animals charge each other to compete for territory on the beach during breeding season. Knoll watched National Geographic nature documentaries of these battles to model the fights between Rotta and the Twins.

“Whenever we are looking at animating creatures, we try to look to real-world analogs to help inform the decision,” he says. “You see what you can learn to help make the experience feel more plausible.”

Legacy Effects built a physical Rotta head for filming on set, but the character changed during post-production.

“Jon started to have some misgivings about it, and we all kind of thought, ‘You know, he’s right. It doesn’t look enough like Jabba’s son,’” animation supervisor Hal Hickel says. “I think we tried to make him too friendly. Since we already had a CG version of the character, we went and started working on the models and textures again, so that was quite a long journey.”

There’s a secret crossover with one of Favreau’s other films

Jon Favreau wrote, directed, and starred in the 2014 film Chef about a celebrity chef who runs a food truck. Roy Choi, the creator of the Kogi food truck, co-produced that film and designed the menus. Favreau tapped Choi again to develop the sandwich that Hugo Durant makes on a food truck on Shakari, and to collaborate with the props team on the truck layout. Disney showcased the truck at D23, and it will become a booth at Disney parks.

Hugo Durant is related to Rio Durant, the Ardennian pilot Favreau played in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Doug Chiang, the Lucasfilm executive creative director, led a team that adjusted the design of the alien’s eyes and face to resemble Martin Scorsese.

“Jon Favreau laughed out loud the first time we showed him those tests,” Hickel says. “We knew we were on the right track. Marty’s fast talking combined with this sort of nervous, fast-moving little chef with four arms puttering around his little food truck was just a super fun thing to do.”

The team used virtual reality to shoot the film for IMAX

John Knoll explained that streaming shows use large monitors to evaluate shot composition for home viewing. However, The Mandalorian and Grogu was filmed for IMAX, which follows different rules. Because large screens fill the viewer’s peripheral vision, filmmakers must ensure audiences do not need to turn their heads constantly to follow the action.

The crew built an Apple Vision Pro application to view live footage through virtual reality goggles. This tool displayed shots framed specifically for an IMAX screen. The team also used the app during post-production to refine editing choices.

“In the opening sequence with the big AT-ATs on the mountain cliffside, for The Mandalorian series, we would have been much more in the action, really close to the feet of the vehicles and the explosions,” Hickel says. “We watched it in IMAX and found we had to back up. It was a learning experience how to present the action so it didn’t just press you back in your seat and crush you with stuff you couldn’t even parse visually.”

The Mandalorian and Grogu is now available to stream on Disney Plus.

Source: Polygon