Percy Jackson and the Olympians — a new TV series inspired by Rick Riordan's Greek mythology-laden young adult fantasy books — is among the Disney+ new arrivals for December, but it also marks the arrival of a new era in Canadian film production; the show is being billed as the first shot in Canada to forgo green screens by using cutting-edge LED technology, Alex Nino Gheciu reports for the Canadian Press.
The Disney production is the first in the country to utilize StageCraft technology, which involves shooting live-action actors and sets surrounded by LED video walls displaying the computer-generated imagery that would traditionally be composited in post-production. Initially developed for The Mandalorian, it was designed by Industrial Light & Magic (IDM), a division of Disney's Lucasfilm.
IDM has virtual production stages in Manhattan Beach, CA, Burbank, CA, and London, England, with the California stages employed for The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi and the London one for Marvel Studios feature Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Percy Jackson and the Olympians was filmed on their latest venture, the newly built LED stage in Vancouver known as "the volume."
"[The volume] is just insane. The fact that we could be in New York one day and Los Angeles the next is crazy," 14-year-old actor Walker Scobell, who plays the titular hero, said. "They even added built-in sprinklers to the ceiling of the volume stage because there's so many raining scenes in the show."
"It was definitely very surreal," Leah Jeffries, who plays Annabeth Chase, added. "If you've read the book and know all the details that are in it, the creators made sure it was all in there. Even small things like, 'There was a box with a red mark on the side.' The volume made it more intense because you saw it come to life in 3D."
The Percy Jackson books were first adapted into movies starring eternal White Boy of the Month, Logan Lerman, by 20th Century Fox in the early 2010s, with Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. (Disney acquired Fox in 2017.) The first two episodes of the new short-form series arrive on Disney+ December 20.
The Disney production is the first in the country to utilize StageCraft technology, which involves shooting live-action actors and sets surrounded by LED video walls displaying the computer-generated imagery that would traditionally be composited in post-production. Initially developed for The Mandalorian, it was designed by Industrial Light & Magic (IDM), a division of Disney's Lucasfilm.
IDM has virtual production stages in Manhattan Beach, CA, Burbank, CA, and London, England, with the California stages employed for The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi and the London one for Marvel Studios feature Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Percy Jackson and the Olympians was filmed on their latest venture, the newly built LED stage in Vancouver known as "the volume."
"[The volume] is just insane. The fact that we could be in New York one day and Los Angeles the next is crazy," 14-year-old actor Walker Scobell, who plays the titular hero, said. "They even added built-in sprinklers to the ceiling of the volume stage because there's so many raining scenes in the show."
"It was definitely very surreal," Leah Jeffries, who plays Annabeth Chase, added. "If you've read the book and know all the details that are in it, the creators made sure it was all in there. Even small things like, 'There was a box with a red mark on the side.' The volume made it more intense because you saw it come to life in 3D."
The Percy Jackson books were first adapted into movies starring eternal White Boy of the Month, Logan Lerman, by 20th Century Fox in the early 2010s, with Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. (Disney acquired Fox in 2017.) The first two episodes of the new short-form series arrive on Disney+ December 20.
