Adam Savage Meets Imagineering's Star Wars BDX Droids!

0:01 Have you seen these before?

0:02 I have not.

0:03 Oh, these are pretty cool.

0:04 Holy cow.

0:05 So, these are the BD droids that the Imagineers built for the parks.

0:08 Yes.

0:08 Yeah.

0:09 New adventures in the Star Wars universe not only

0:11 enrich the world building that we see on screen,

0:14 but they also inspire future generations of storytellers,

0:18 effects artists, and droid builders.

0:20 The latest example of this virtuous

0:22 cycle are Walt Disney Imagineering's BDX Troids,

0:25 made possible by the latest advancements in robotics

0:28 married with Star Wars pedigree of character-driven design.

0:32 I got my first chance to meet a pair of BDXs

0:35 on the set of Star Wars the Mandalorian and Grou,

0:38 where director John Favro introduced me

0:40 to their breathtaking technology and even bigger personalities.

0:45 Can I push one?

0:46 I don't know.

0:46 Let's talk to Can I push one of OUR EXPERTS HERE?

0:52 THESE GUYS LOOK so expressive.

0:55 And now I could walk up to you.

0:56 We have them in the film uh in the background.

0:59 And they walk too.

1:00 Could you walk them around a little bit, too?

1:01 They're they're very stable, but they have so much personality.

1:05 And what I like about it, too,

1:06 is it captures the whole um the way George was able and and all

1:11 of you in Star Wars are able to get personality into the tech,

1:14 but it still doesn't look overly anthropomorphic.

1:17 No, but yet there's still like a chicken form in there.

1:20 And uh I want one of these in my house.

1:24 I know some people make some calls.

1:27 They're crowds.

1:29 I love how stable they are.

1:30 You guys are gorgeous.

1:35 It's awesome.

1:36 It's such a great It's such a great time, right?

1:40 Like this is incredible that this is practical.

1:42 It It is.

1:42 And but but it's also consumerf facing like

1:44 you could have people it could interact with people.

1:47 It's not just for a film set.

1:48 It's not just for a demo.

1:49 So the park is becoming more immersive

1:52 through these innovations that Imagineering are doing.

1:54 And

1:55 if you think about what Walt did with um

1:58 Abe Lincoln with animatronics for the first time,

2:01 all of that and and even stuff that he built

2:04 for the World's Fair that he then brought in like the dinosaurs uh uh tiki room.

2:10 This is really building on that tradition and and when

2:12 you see people actually interacting with the the suits,

2:15 the Baby Yoda animatron and these are stupendous.

2:19 It just creates a more immersive communal experience

2:23 that I think we're only seeing the beginning of

2:26 this tremendous potential there and they're and I know

2:30 at Disney they're really trying to lean into that.

2:32 Well, you create these imaginary worlds and bring us into them.

2:35 And this is part of making that actually real to us on a on a direct level.

2:40 It's amazing.

2:41 It's all very vertical.

2:43 Now,

2:44 you'll tell a story and then they'll see something that inspires them

2:47 or you'll or I saw them and put them in the movie.

2:50 Right.

2:50 Right.

2:51 There's it's a conversation that goes back and forth.

2:52 The servos in here, they're just they're so responsive.

2:55 It's crazy.

2:56 And these have to go all day.

2:58 I This isn't just for a few takes and Let's go send in people to adjust it.

3:04 This has to go all day long.

3:06 Oh, thank you.

3:09 Let's see here.

3:09 What you got going on?

3:11 I really I want to start I want to put a tape cassette in and have them play.

3:14 Right.

3:14 You can give them a dust plan.

3:17 Exactly.

3:16 They fit in good here, though.

3:17 See, that's how I know we're all doing

3:19 our cuz they look they look like they fit in

3:22 and all of it looks like it fits into the

3:25 what Howard Hughes built here.

3:27 I know.

3:27 What a continuum.

3:30 Yeah.

3:30 It's all part It's all drawing upon the stuff George drew on.

3:34 That's the trick.

3:34 Isn't

3:35 that amazing?

3:35 Yeah.

3:36 Is you look at the stuff that got that got him his gears turning.

3:40 And if you go back to what

3:42 you know, whether it's Corousawa, uh Leone,

3:45 uh Ford, World War II movies, Damn Busters, Battle of Britain,

3:50 or Hot Rodding, you know,

3:51 all of that is part of what went into George's imagination

3:55 and created this unique thing that we all fell in love with.

3:59 And so you can get back to the it's like looking at a chef's ingredients, right,

4:04 from their menu that you love and then you look at, oh,

4:06 where did they where did they source these things?

4:08 What did they, you know, what cuisines are they leaning into?

4:11 You know, I think we think about it more than he does.

4:14 Fair.

4:14 Which totally makes sense, right?

4:16 If you ask him about it, it's not something

4:18 it's super intuitive and internal.

4:19 He'll he'll he'll share, but yeah, he doesn't know as as we don't probably,

4:24 right?

4:24 Right.

4:24 What what's what what

4:26 what brings it together.

4:27 But I I love that this feels like this could have been in one of his.

4:30 No.

4:31 And and you could drop this into any one

4:32 of the films and you'd feel totally in place.

4:35 The color breakdown, you know, borrowing from the X- Wings and stuff.

4:40 It's just really cool.

4:42 So, this was not on camera,

4:44 but it's always good to have uh a a standin for framing and for lighting

4:49 and for color and

4:50 but of course, Legacy does one that you you know looks Oh my god, he's soft.

4:56 So we we had this for framing and you know, God bless him on the set.

5:00 It looks like

5:02 HR Puff and stuff.

5:03 It's not it's not as impressive,

5:05 right?

5:05 But once the animation,

5:06 we have Jeremy Allen's voice in there and we have the animators

5:09 and it's uh Hal Hickle uh uh running the uh as lead animator,

5:14 bringing these digital characters to life wasn't something I we

5:17 really had opportunity to do that much on the show.

5:19 Sure.

5:19 Sure.

5:20 But here you have Zeb, you have Rada.

5:23 From time to time we have uh Grou will

5:25 be digital if there are certain things he can't do.

5:27 Right.

5:27 Right.

5:28 Or we'll do a little augmentation.

5:30 Uh but so much of it is puppets and suits.

5:35 So I think you know I think we got the b the balance right.

5:39 Yeah.

5:39 But but this character is all digital.

5:40 But we figured we'd show it all.

5:41 And these are all uh practical masks that were used and costumes that were used

5:47 either in this or most of them are from the show.

5:49 Yeah.

5:49 This is the egg the uh

5:51 Yeah, the frog lady and the husband.

5:53 That's right, Misty.

5:55 And then we had that was John Leguisama was the cyclops.

5:57 We had our

5:59 Tuskan Tuskkins.

6:00 Yeah.

6:01 And some of them are actually quite involved.

6:03 You can't tell, but there's a lot of animatronics built into a lot of them.

6:06 I mean, every one of these is weeks and weeks and weeks for a team of people.

6:10 I know.

6:10 And then the performances, too.

6:11 Learning how to do it.

6:12 The people who had to Yeah.

6:14 to to wear

6:15 to emote out of That's the thing that amazes me about your costume performers.

6:18 They've got to get a whole character out of being

6:21 strapped into a whole bunch of plaster and rubber.

6:23 It's usually it's it's the ones who are the best at are the ones who build it.

6:28 Ah, and they love being in it.

6:30 Interesting.

6:29 As opposed to imagine you do an audition, you're going to be a fraud

6:34 and they're getting ready and they go to set and they're

6:36 in this thing and whereas somebody who built it knows what it does.

6:40 They know the team and they know how to get the most performance out of it.

6:44 So, a lot of our a lot of our uh

6:46 performers are people that are also either puppeteers or or designers.

6:50 So, it's but it's something you learn you learn that over time, right?

6:54 That's part of the collaboration.

6:55 Yeah.

6:56 So, it's so so so we've become more

6:58 collaborative with all of our vendors and departments.

7:01 Oh, that's right.

7:01 This is not a one-way street.

7:02 This is like we're thinking of doing this.

7:04 Show us what you're thinking.

7:04 And they know me well enough now that they'll pitch me back things, you know,

7:09 or you know, visual effects might make some

7:12 editing requests or change might change the cut, right?

7:16 Or somebody from editorial might request another shot.

7:18 It's very nonlinear.

7:20 We could pick things up and do things.

7:21 And so having best idea wins and everybody

7:24 pulling together and trying to plus the ideas

7:27 and that's why having a long schedule helps

7:30 you because you could keep refining and keep refining.

7:33 Dude, it's so thrilling to be in here and see the business end of all this.

7:35 It's just completely inspiring.

7:38 I knew you had to come.

7:39 That was it.

7:40 I was like, can we get out?

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