Peyton Reed Discusses Directing ‘The Mandalorian’ and Knowing When to Use the Volume
In a recent interview with Collider for the next MCU installment Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Director Peyton Reed discussed learning how best to use the Volume during his time on set directing episodes 2 and 8 of The Mandalorian season 2.
Self-proclaimed Star Wars fan, Reed described how he was brought on for season 2:
“I had gone down to visit [Jon] Favreau on the set of Season 1 Mandalorian because everyone was talking about the Volume technology… I love Star Wars and I love Favreau, so when Season 2 came about Jon called and said, ‘Would you like to come down and do an episode?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ It was the second episode of Season 2 that I originally signed on for, and Jon had written a rough script, and then I fleshed the script out, and we worked on it together.”
Favreau is known for fostering a collaborative space in the making of The Mandalorian, so it’s no surprise to learn that Reed worked with Favreau on fleshing out the script. It is perhaps surprising that Reed was tapped for this horror-leaning episode in the first place, given his portfolio in comedy. Nevertheless, it is an excellent episode that artfully brings to life a horde of scary space spiders first drawn by Ralph McQuarrie.
Explaining how he signed on to direct the finale, Reed said:
“Then that was the first one we shot for Season 2. It wasn’t the first episode aired, but it was the second episode. It was the first one we shot and they were psyched about it, and they had this finale coming up, which all he [Favreau] said was, ‘There’s going to be sort of a big swing in the finale.’ I was like, ‘What you got going on?’ And he said it’s going to be a very emotional episode and then he talked me through what it was about, and I read the script, and I was like, ‘Absolutely, I’m doing this.’ We already started working on the script and formulating Quantumania, but it was still early on and we had time, and I was like, ‘I cannot pass up this chance.’”
It’s interesting to learn that Reed had already begun work on Quantumania and effectively paused on that in order to squeeze in the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian. For Star Wars fans in the industry, when Luke comes knocking, you answer.
Reed explained how his experience with the Volume informed his decisions on how and when to use it for Quantumania effectively:
“What was great about The Mandalorian is, shooting these great location backdrops and then putting them up there, and it feels very photo-real, but we were [going to] be creating digital backdrops – some based on real photography – but it was a different thing altogether. We also wanted a lot of movement within those screens. We ended up using the Volume technology, [and] it was great for certain environments, but not necessarily right for other ones. There’s also just size and shape. Sometimes our sets are too big for the Volume, so we would use partial sets. So it was definitely one of the tools we used in our toolkit, and the actors love it because they get to see a version of what they’re [going to] see in the movie. The interactive lighting is obviously great, but it’s great, the actors love it. It’s not always the right tool, but I liked it because we wanted to create all these different parts of the Quantum Realm that had to look and feel differently. So it was cool to have some that were and some that weren’t.”
In a post Kenobi and Andor world, it’s encouraging to see directors use the Volume in an enthusiastic but measured way. We don’t want to see this technology replace on-location sets, but neither should we discard it. Now that the Volume has been around for a few years, and we have a better understanding of its limitations, I expect it will increasingly become a valued tool in a filmmaker’s toolkit.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hits theaters February 17. Read the full original article here.
When she isn't watching her friends and family's eyes glaze over at the mention of The Clone Wars, she's at the park with her dog, Melvin, or on the couch with a book in one hand and a drink in the other. Physically, she lives in Ohio; spiritually, she lives in Naboo.
