Thor: Love and Thunder is the first MCU project to swap out the greenscreen in favour of The Mandalorian's Volume technology, even bringing in The Mandalorian's cinematographer to help out directly.
Lucasfilm's VFX unit Industrial Light & Magic is aiding director Taika Waititi by providing a "training program that's part of the company's diversity initiatives" while also lending a hand in executing the technology. If you don't know, The Volume is a wraparound screen that can be changed on the fly to pre-designed backgrounds, making for more immersive scenes with realistic lighting. It's also a lot more COVID friendly.
According to The Mandalorian showrunner and Iron Man director Jon Favreau, The Volume makes for a "much more contained set" as "you can limit the number of people". Previously, the MCU relied on blue and green screens, but this shift in technology should make Love and Thunder distinct from the over-ten-year-long history of MCU films. It makes sense that this would be the film to start that trend given that Taika Waititi also directed The Mandalorian's first season finale, getting hands-on experience with the tech.
"In the old days, we had greenscreen, which created our environment behind us," Moff GIdeon actor Giancarlo Esposito told Collider. "And now this world creates all of our solar system, our sky, our Earth, but it's really being projected through a computer. So I find that your imagination has to fill in the rest.
"And so it's a different style of acting – you're looking around the room, you may have some props to stand on, or the vehicle that you arrived in, whether it be my TIE Fighter or something else, but there's nothing else there, except what's projected."
Love and Thunder is currently the first and only MCU project to use The Volume, but it could very well usher in a new standard going forward. But upcoming projects like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Moon Knight still use green and blue screen.
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