Mike Jutan's World

ILM StageCraft wins a Technical Emmy Award!

2023-02-20T12:12:00.003-08:00

Wow, sure has been a long time since I've made a blog post -- the ongoing shareability of small articles or videos on Facebook plus the extreme businesses of having young children means I don't get to blogging much anymore! Wanted to share here though some recent (ish!) news from last November. Our team at ILM, the ILM StageCraft R&D Team, has recently been awarded an Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Award for our work in virtual production. Check it out!

ILM StageCraft is an end-to-end virtual production tool suite that bridges the gap between practical physical production methodologies and traditional digital post-production visual effects by providing the ability to design, scout and light environments in advance of the shoot and then capture that vision in camera during principal photography. StageCraft brings together a real-time engine, a real-time renderer, high-quality color management, physical camera equipment, LED displays, motion-capture technologies, synchronization methodologies and tailored on-set user interfaces to digitally create the illusion of 3D backgrounds for live-action sets.

Our work on the Mandalorian Season 2

2021-04-02T00:09:00.003-07:00

Today ILM released a fantastic behind-the-scenes video showcasing a bunch of the project I've had the joy of being a part of over the last several years at ILM. There's some awesome pieces here, and I'll let the video speak for itself!

Unbelievably, the headline at Gizmodo about our work is... well... unbelievable! "The Mandalorian Season 2 Was Made With the Most Powerful Filmmaking Tool ILM Has Ever Created"... that's quite a statement indeed. I am so proud of my colleagues and all of the hardworking folks behind the scenes on this. It is such a pleasure and a highlight of my career to get to work on this technology.

Mark Rober’s epic birthday celebration for a young cancer survivor

2020-09-30T02:28:00.005-07:00

Mark Rober’s science YouTube channel is pure awesome, but this time he REALLY knocks it out of the park to give a surprise birthday party to a young cancer survivor. What a legend.

https://youtu.be/BHiWygziyso

TechCrunch: "How ‘The Mandalorian’ and ILM invisibly reinvented film and TV production"

2020-02-29T11:08:00.002-08:00

Another quick post to share one my of favourite articles about StageCraft that went out last week. TechCrunch does a fabulous breakdown on what tech we made, how it works, and what the benefits are to the Film and TV industries.

Super solid article here and worth the quick read!
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/how-the-mandalorian-and-ilm-invisibly-reinvented-film-and-tv-production/

The awesome Ian Failes also posted a great summary article as well, with a really fun headine:
"You are going to flip when you see this video of how 'The Mandalorian' was made" :)
https://beforesandafters.com/2020/02/21/you-are-going-to-flip-when-you-see-this-video-of-how-the-mandalorian-was-made/

The Virtual Production of The Mandalorian, Season One

2020-02-20T11:32:00.002-08:00

Guess what?? The Mandalorian was [mostly] filmed indoors... there is NO on-location work done for this show. *mind-blowing sounds ensue*

This is the crazy new way of making movies and TV that I've been working on here at ILM as part of the StageCraft Virtual Production Engineering team for the past 5 years!! The talent and inventiveness and sheer badassery of everyone who touched this project is yet another reason why working at ILM rocks so much.

Check it out!!!!!!