For the first time, ILM’s groundbreaking virtual production technology transports fans inside the Star Wars galaxy.
By Clayton Sandell
Patricia Burns steps up to her mark.
Dressed in the sleek all-black uniform worn by the Third Sister Reva Sevander from Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022), she ignites her doubled-bladed red lightsaber and waits for her cue.
A nearby stagehand counts her down and calls “Action!”
As a crane-mounted camera swoops in, Burns crouches next to R5-D4, a red and white astromech droid, swinging her lightsaber with a fierceness only a Jedi-hunting Inquisitor could conjure. Behind her, a massive wall of LED screens displays the pristine moving image of a busy Rebel hangar.
Monitors around the stage show what the camera sees in real-time: an epic, trailer-worthy shot that makes Burns the star of her own Star Wars story.
“Oh, it was awesome,” Burns tells ILM.com as she walks off the stage, grinning. “A chance of a lifetime.”
At D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, Burns and hundreds of others had the unique chance to perform on a StageCraft volume— Industrial Light & Magic’s cutting-edge virtual production technology used on dozens of projects including The Mandalorian (2019 – present), Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2023 – present) and The Batman (2022).
For the first time ever, the ILM crew assembled a volume— something normally sequestered on an off-limits studio soundstage— inside the Anaheim Convention Center just for fans attending D23.
“I think everybody is blown away by the scale of this, and how immersive it actually is when you get to see it here on the show floor,” says Rob Bredow, senior vice president, creative innovation for Lucasfilm and chief creative officer of ILM.
During the three-day event, a rotating trio of scenes appeared on the volume’s giant LED panels: an Imperial hangar created for The Mandalorian, a Rebel hangar from Ahsoka (2023) and a vibrant city street on the planet Daiyu seen in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“You’re looking at over 18-and-a-half million pixels of LED wall and a live-tracked camera,” Bredow tells ILM.com. “Wherever the camera looks, we get a high-fidelity version with exactly the right perspective for the illusion of creating an immersive environment. It looks impressive enough here at the convention center but when we collaborate with the production designer and the art department on one of our productions that’s when the technology really sings. It’s a powerful tool in the filmmaker’s toolbox that we can deploy when building standing sets on a stage or traveling the cast and crew to a far-flung location isn’t feasible.”
For D23, ILM wanted to demonstrate a fully functioning StageCraft volume exactly like the ones used on a real set.
“It’s very fun to not be faking it,” Bredow quips.
ILM virtual production supervisor Ian Milham says transporting the volume from a studio lot to the convention center took a herculean scheduling and logistical effort involving a busy team of artists, engineers, and crew members. And several large trucks.
“Everybody agreed, ‘yes, we’re really going to do it’,” Milham explains. “But that meant we had to get our real gear and our real crew here. It also meant we couldn’t be making a movie with it at that time.”
The challenge was worth it, Milham says, because it gave the filmmakers a chance to finally show off their pride in StageCraft to a wider audience.
“Film sets are amazing places,” says Milham. “But it’s not like there’s a lot of chances to really share our success. So we’re really happy to be able to show the public for the first time the cool results, but also what it takes to pull off something like this and how much teamwork and technology it takes to do it.”
ILM virtual production supervisor Sonia Contreras co-hosted several StageCraft presentations with Bredow. The pair challenged the D23 audience to look at several scenes and guess which elements were created with practical set pieces and props, and which ones were generated by the volume.
“I got about a third of them right,” laughs Ryan Schwartz, who watched the demonstration with his wife Katie and sons Zachary and Jonathan. Katie says she fared slightly better, guessing about half correct.
“I’ve been following ILM for a long time, and I still try and figure it out,” Ryan tells ILM.com. “They’re so amazing in their craft that it’s so hard to really piece together what is real and what is digitally done.”
Contreras says the D23 StageCraft experience is extremely special because even some ILM employees still haven’t been able to see the volume work in person.
“I would hope that people take away that there’s a lot of brains that go into making this happen,” Contreras says, pointing to the setup’s real-time rendering, camera tracking, processing power, and an aptly named “Brain Bar” crew working behind the scenes to help make the scenery so seamlessly realistic.
“The ‘wow’ factor is when you get to see what’s actually happening, all the different things that are getting coordinated in order to make that image work,” Contreras says. “It’s really cool to be able to show it to everybody.”
Lucasfilm senior vice president and executive design director Doug Chiang made a special appearance in front of a packed crowd on Saturday to talk about StageCraft’s contribution to the long history of visual effects filmmaking.
“We rarely get to share it or talk about it, because it’s an evolving technology, and it is just a tool,” says Chiang. “But at an event like this, where we can actually finally get under the hood and share the magic with the audience, it’s just terrific.”
Frequent ILM collaborator Legacy Effects also pulled the curtain back to show how their crew helps create a Star Wars galaxy full of creatures, aliens, and droids.
“When you’ve got leaders like Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, who just embrace everyone’s contributions, it inspires you to do the best work that you can,” says Legacy Effects co-founder and special effects veteran Alan Scott.
At D23, Scott and the Legacy team explained how they bring life to characters like the silver professor droid Huyang (voiced by David Tennant) and Murley the Loth-cat for Ahsoka. The production relies on a combination of practical puppets along with digital versions inserted later, depending on the requirements of each shot.
“There are things that I think practical can do very well, especially when it comes to the interaction with the performers,” Scott tells ILM.com. “Then there’s a responsibility that says, ‘that would be better if it was done with visual effects.’”
Bredow hopes that revealing how some of the Star Wars magic is made might inspire others, especially kids, to consider working in visual effects.
“Many people don’t even realize there are these very artistic and very technical and very creative jobs that have to do with working behind the scenes of film and television production,” Bredow explains. “So this is one of the fun things to do. To connect with fans, to connect with people who might want to make this a career.”
Cosplaying as Bastila Shan from the Knights of the Old Republic (2003) video game, Star Wars fan Carly King says she was most impressed by StageCraft’s powerful mix of creativity and engineering.
“It just looked so good on the screen. It’s so interesting to see how this whole conglomeration of electronics and technology comes together. It’s an incredible thing,” King says. “It’s one thing to watch Star Wars, but it’s another thing to be in it.”
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Clayton Sandell is a television news correspondent, a Star Wars author and longtime fan of the creative people who keep Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound on the leading edge of visual effects and sound design.
