Just got caught up on Mandalorian and had some general thoughts about tackling season 3.
This may not be necessary for what you might be thinking about right now, but I think there are some tools that could be useful in really transforming season 3 content to fit whatever mold you might have in mind.
For starters, as the season progresses I really am digging the idea of separating Din and Grogu for a longer period of time. I do think there will be times where it will be a headache to remove Grogu from certain shots, but there are techniques that can be used accomplish that.
- After Effects’ content aware fill can help with masking Grogu out of certain shots.
- Sort of like the VFX AG-83 used to cover up Grogu with a bomb in BOBF, he can be covered up with rocks or other objects.
- There have been shots in the season where simply cropping the shot could get the job done. Using a 4K source or upcaling software would be useful for these type of shots.
- There are definitely shots that you’ll just have to cut out completely. A lot of shots of Din in the N1 fall into this category, especially in the newest episode.
Overall, I could see it being possible though. It might be ambitious, but considering everyone thought having them separated for at least some period of time was a no brainer, I feel like making this change would be pretty transformative, a lot like TFA: Restructured with Starkiller Base.
Another tool that could be useful, even if you used it sparingly, are the new voice AI tools that are being made. Considering a majority of our main characters are wearing helmets, this could be really helpful for scene/plot restructuring, or even crafting more interesting lines. I’ve really felt the writing has been lacking this season, like video game NPCs, so this could be fun to play around with.
This YouTuber, Dewit, posted this video today with an example of Din Djarin.
I’m curious if there would be enough voice samples that could be used to do this for the Armorer and Bo Katan.
I actually think it would be useful to apply this to the existing Luke scenes as well. I know his voice is already AI generated, but I feel like the software has already improved a lot since his featured episodes were released, and his line could be given more emotion and sound bit more realistic if they were remade. This would also allow you to change what Luke tells/teaches Grogu to fit a more Legends-esque version of the character.
Dewit also has an interesting example for Luke at the end of this video It does sound a bit more like “Mark” than “Luke”, probably because he trained it on interviews rather than the films, but I feel like it has more emotion than how he sounds in the Mandalorian. Perhaps if the AI was trained on his lines from the OT, specifically from ROTJ, it would fit more closely with Mark’s “Luke” voice.
I can’t recall if you used it or not, but it would be nice to use Shamook’s deepfake of Luke for the Season 2 finale if you haven’t already used it. Also, not a big deal, but it always sort of bugged me that Luke didn’t even really introduce himself to Din before leaving with the child. A simple “I’m Luke Skywalker” would’ve been nice.
(Also? Since you’re a legends fan too, it could be cool to make Luke’s training planet Yavin by adding the red gas giant to the sky in an establishing shot or something.)
And this idea could even be applied to Boba Fett for any BOBF content that maybe could’ve used a certain line here or there from
Boba.
Anyway, what JarJar Bricks has been doing for TROS: Ascendant has been pretty crazy, but you are still limited mostly to using it for off screen dialogue, or having to use VFX to match mouth movements for a few words here and there. With the Mandalorian, you would have a lot more freedom to redub all of these helmeted characters, and you could even record new voices for Mandalorian characters with brief speaking roles if you needed to convey some information.
And speaking of lines in general, I think it would be nice if you could trim down the use of “This is the Way”. I feel like the Mandalorians day it for every little thing, and it takes away from its gravitas when used for the most trivial things. “You can sit by the fire. This is the Way.”
Hard to have a lot of ideas about the overall plot until this season is over, but I thought it would be useful to keep this stuff in mind when imagining what can be done with this season.