It might have seemed strange when I previously posted a video of Jon Favreau discussing digital transformation of Hollywood-style movie making, but I don’t think many people understand the incredible power poised by large-scale, direct-view LED wall surfaces. Neither do many people appreciate, even in the design industry, the radical potential of real-time rendering solutions such as the Unreal Engine. Both come together in a dramatic way in the featurette from Industrial Light & Magic showing how they shot the Star Wars series “The Mandalorian” on a largely virtual set.

While the movie “First Man” used a similar setup, the Mandalorian used a much larger and far more encompassing LED screen setup. Just watching the video, it is incredibly disorienting when the screen setup suddenly changes. The screen itself is providing the majority of the lighting in the space, for hyper realistic light effects. It is architecture literally becoming a portal to the virtual world, such as I describe as one of the 6 key areas of innovation driving architectural experience design forward in the next decade.