Shadowing Practice: Adam Savage Behind the Scenes of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu! - Learn English Speaking with Video

Sir?

Hello sir.

How are you?

Very good.

Pleasure.

Really good to see you.

Don't shake me too hard.

What do you got there?

This is something Dave Igler made on our sound mix.

No way.

What?

Isn't that cool?

Dude.

Great to see you man.

Thanks for coming by.

Absolutely.

The Mandalorian and Grogu marks the return of Star Wars to the big screen.

The culmination of a journey that began when we met these now iconic characters who pushed the boundaries of Star Wars storytelling.

I just had visited the production, where director Jon Favreau walked me through the practical sets they built,

housed within Quonset Huts, and in fact the very same Quonset Huts built during the mid-century aviation

and hot rod boom that inspired George Lucas's original vision.

It's on these sets and the production archives that Star Wars is at its most tangible, where I can see and touch and be immersed in the practical spaceships

and droids and creatures and props born of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni's expansion of the Star Wars universe.

You must be so excited to finally show the world your baby.

I am.

I'm pretty excited about it.

This area is known as Thunder Alley.

In the hot rodding days, these were all like Traco Motors.

James Garner had his Corvette shop here.

So here in this neighborhood, originally it was Howard Hughes built aircraft here and

filmed the iron man at what's now google headquarters this was

part of the big his big uh air airfield holy cow

i didn't realize this was many years ago then the hot rodders came in took them over

and these became machine shops

and this is where they built a lot of the bolt-on parts oh man

and then later tech came through so it was sort of silicon beach yeah

but these quadrate huts are our old originals and we've done motion capture in here.

One of the structures is our model shop.

We filmed Oswald in these, using these as sort of like mini sound stages.

And we filmed Star Wars here.

And so I'll bring you over across to where we filmed it.

Oh, let's see.

All right.

Inside here is where we actually filmed Adelphi base for the series.

No way and for the film

so you didn't just reassemble the set here this is where you we kept it standing these are just signs

that we had this is actually the food pod where marty scorsese's character holy cow works

so if you go in there actually amazing oh my gosh

so it's a little uh gondolph in uh in the shire i love this i love

that you built a practical set yes we did we were able

because it's a film we were able to have the time to build a lot of practical on the show

you know we had to turn around less than a year yeah

so we innovated there was there was new new gpus uh nvidia

that everybody knows nvidia now

but at the time they were just a gaming video card

company uh those their new cards allowed us to have a refresh rate

that allowed us to do 24 frames our volume the video

walls were driven by basically vr tech gaming tech incredible and so So we use that to get in-camera final pixel effects.

Now we use some of the same technology more for interactive light, but we had the opportunity to build full sets

and just do things we never had the opportunity to do because we had several years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not several months.

Right.

Anyway, so yeah, so this was one of our builds.

It's incredible how much practical you're able to do.

So as we go through here, this was our set from the show and from the film.

Oh, wow.

So in keeping with what George Lucas did, he used a lot of, kitbashed a lot of World War II techs and props.

And you know from the Greeblies and when you were making models that you'd pull pieces from the old model kits.

Yeah, the old Tamiya World War II train cars and rail guns.

Yeah.

For the weapons, for the spaceships, for everything.

And I know you probably recognize.

Oh, yeah, the IG, the Derwent engines.

Right, that's a Rolls Royce engine yeah and and before

that it was in the bar yes on tatooine

so we've we've we've got amanda serino and and and uh

and andrew jones are you know in our art department they've

been sourcing this stuff as they did on the we've really tried to capture the spirit of the originals uh

because that's what i grew up with well

and then using the quonset hut you're kit bashing the actual exactly the whole world exactly amazing

so it doesn't take much you know much like in the

original film you just have a few art pieces in there

and then you tie in and then you change them to pill windows

uh but see yeah like you can't even tell where it where it starts

and stops and

so this is the first star wars production the mandalorian to ever film in los angeles i love

that you've got the imperial droid sitting on the end

so you want to go through it do you recognize what

this is up here the round thing wait a second wait

a second it's the side of the something it's a hatch yeah it's actually a top hatch, I think, or the back hatch.

It's on a TIE fighter.

That's it.

Yes.

And we use that for when Moff Gideon's TIE fighter.

So we've been doing this for whatever, 18 years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we actually have our own little mini archive of stuff.

So this is a bit of a deep cut.

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This is from...

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We built this from a set piece from Tashi Station that was never used in the actual films, right?

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Amazing.

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But they filmed back in the 70s.

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And so this is a video game from Star Wars.

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People who know Star Wars, the more detail you put in, the more they, you know what I mean?

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Yeah.

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And if you don't know it, it doesn't matter.

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But if you do, there's a lot of the whole, our whole crew is always on the hunt for how do we put more stuff in the margins

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and how do you add detail.

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You must walk in here in the morning and be like, I'm fully in this world.

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Well, we kept it up.

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Yeah.

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You know, somebody like Adam Savage might want to come by one day.

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But we have this as a back, like, let's just keep it up as a backdrop.

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It really is like playing Star Wars.

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They always joke, Dave Filoni and I are like two kids.

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Totally.

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And it's just a bigger playset.

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That's why you get the big playset, because you guys make really great toys out of it.

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Thank you.

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Well, actually, you want to see we have more toys over here.

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okay so here's sort of a little front of house

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so we had a full lot of stages to to build things in

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and then we would use the tech in a different way

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because we would you know sometimes be on real location sometimes film at real locations

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and tie into ones that we build amazing

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but we weren't relying on the volume in the same way to actually replace the sets live

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but it created reflections and interactive light so it wasn't just blue screen right

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and so we could build pretty big sets

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that we would you know anything we interact with we build

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and if we extend up we didn't use the traditional technique of just digital extensions

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and then just fixing we wanted to make sure

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that the the main characters yeah we're getting uh optimal photography practical photography amazing

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and so that means providing proper reflections so you're not painting things out

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So we were we found that the technology

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that we developed for the show could be leveraged

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and John Noll actually built I don't know

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when you were touring with him

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but he actually built a mini volume I saw them for the miniatures no

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that for the for the Razorcrest from breaking through the planet

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we saw them put the mini volume on it was amazing

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I know on the prequels it was a big challenge with

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the reflective the reflective ships yeah the nablu ships right yeah uh

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that you were fighting reflections and totally sort of leaned into

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that as as we did with his armor here's Here's a practical location we built downtown, also Los Angeles, has sort of a neon noir look.

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And there it is, you're getting a sense of it.

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But then at the end, we actually plugged panels in for extension so we had live...

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So you had deep...

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Deep, deep and also reflection so we could go wet.

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Amazing.

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Neon noir look is all about reflections and lights.

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This is your Ridleyville.

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This is your Blade Runner.

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That's amazing.

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And we watched all those films together.

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Yeah.

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And we actually used the Apple Vision Pro

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because we were in John Noel was up north we were down here we'd screen together

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and he would like screen Rogue One

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and you'd see his avatar walking around talking

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so we we were able to use tech to bring people

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together that's amazing tech to to help leverage practical right

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and just create a different combination

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that one might not have had before I mean I've been following your guys stuff

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so closely it's hard for me to remember

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that this is also pushing the limits of what people can

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do would film right now like you are way out there

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at the at the leading edge of getting all this tech together

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but as you'll see it's super low tech at its core uh

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so it's it's a it's a mix yeah and that that

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that mix is very specific to what george did with star star wars

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because he did really really it was super high tech bleeding edge tech the dykstra flex at the time yeah

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but you also had really a lived-in world and old props and very tactile.

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So that's what we together as fans try to figure out, is this Star Wars or not?

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This is actually a blow-up of the Doug Chang original artwork his art department did.

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I'm not sure if he was the artist on this one.

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I think he was.

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But this is based on a doodle that, when I first showed the script to Filoni, he doodled this from the first episode,

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and that became kind of the final frame of the pilot of the first episode.

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Oh, so now we're getting into a different world.

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There's a dark saber, not in the film, but from the show.

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Yeah, yeah.

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We have a few of them.

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One of them I have.

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I'm so glad for that.

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That's as it should be.

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Here's a little Rada as a baby.

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That's something that I painted on the weekends.

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Dude, he's beautiful.

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Yeah, thank you.

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Oh, that's great.

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So that's fun.

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He's great until you see this.

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This is the actual stop motion models from Tippett.

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This is, oh yeah.

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So they're next level.

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Oh.

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And this was a very ambitious stop motion sequence.

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So because we had the time to plan and we had people like John Knoll coordinating all of it,

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we're able to engage with Tippett and have them do a really, and they're actually, you saw Mando scales about here.

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So these are giant droids.

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Here we go.

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Here's the.

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Oh!

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This is, oh my God.

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This is, ah, wow.

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Everything is our history this is this is everything we've done uh on on disney plus and in the film john

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it's

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so thrilling to see it in one room you it doesn't

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overwhelm you a little bit to it it's it's exciting it is overwhelming

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that because yes you're looking a lot of star wars

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but also this has been my life for a decade

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or close to a decade yeah and and all these um people

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that we get to work with that are you know

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and this is a collection of work of you know this is stuff

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that that that we were able to build for the show it's costumes

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that were built by by legacy iron head yeah it's even

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like those those little bird cages up there that's in the set each of those are little animatronics

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that were done by interns at legacy

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that they gave them an opportunity to do all the little

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creatures in the shop this is like the business end of a million decisions you've been making for a decade

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and i love that it's real too yeah it's you know it's it's um there i don't know

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that people really understand how much real stuff we used because

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so there's a lot of digital work and really good digital work

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but there's a lot of you know ig was a rod puppet

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and a lot of these things started off as puppets

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that were built for reference right

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that everybody over delivered like uh grogu was just supposed to be reference or stand in for for long shots

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but then they kept building more servos into it you know

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because yeah and you guys ended up limiting the cg model to the confines of the practical and

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because it's star wars i think people are more accepting of

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the wonkiness of a of a puppet as long as it has some life to it

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and personality and I know R2-D2 was my favorite character growing up

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and that was like you know it wasn't a traditionally cute character

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but I felt so connected to that character as a kid

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and and and so here's our here's one of the McKinney this isn't one of the real puppets

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but this is I think a maquette of him yeah oh

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his sigils much bigger than I thought it was the other

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the plate you should have come here did you build one for your guy I haven't yet Okay, good.

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Well, it's a good thing.

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Take reference.

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And then this is the Legacy built this in.

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This is the Enzelian ship.

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The Enzelian ship, right.

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Oh, my gosh.

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There's actually an interior over here.

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And if you look all the way over here, here's the inside.

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It's a bit of a Tarsus set.

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Oh, wow.

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So they had removable panels so they could puppet him through it?

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Yeah, and underneath, yeah.

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So we learned a lot about puppeting.

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And Dave Filoni directed most of the puppet unit.

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Thinking it was going to be, oh, it'll be easy little thing to do.

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It was the hardest part of the show.

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And then if you have Anzelans, you have four Anzelans going.

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Four.

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And Baby Yoda and Grogu.

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That's a lot of passes and then motion control.

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Oh, so you're doing separate passes for each puppet?

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Sometimes.

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Yeah, yeah.

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It depends on what they were doing.

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Sure.

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But often, that was the best way.

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Just because all the body's underneath working the rods, and you get more control of performance.

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So I remember reading about how concerned George was right up until filming with Yoda.

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Like, is this going to work? is this character going to hold?

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I'm curious if when you're getting ready to unveil Grogu, does he give you any words of advice or encouragement about taking that character and making them so central?

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Not at that point.

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We didn't know to what extent we'd be using him.

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And we, through the course of filming, started to really see what the practical version was doing.

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Again, we thought it was going to be mostly CG with just a maquette that had, they said, let's just build a little bit of movement in it, just so in case it's in the background,

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For a television show, you're not paying for a CG shot.

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If it's just in the background, just have it move around.

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But the people at Legacy just over-delivered, over-delivered.

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Then facial.

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Then movement.

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Then the rods.

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And then you start to look at the thing.

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And it was actually Werner Herzog who was on the set.

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Because we would shoot for a lighting reference.

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And then we'd say, okay, get it out.

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Let's do the clean plate.

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And he was the one who called us cowards for doing a clean plate.

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He says, this thing's beautiful.

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It's magnificent.

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Why could you?

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And Deb Chow was directing at the time.

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And she was like, Werner Herzog, who's, you know.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And so we started to trust it more.

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And then we knew once that we'd have the first reveal, because thanks to Lucasfilm and Disney, they kept it a secret.

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It was not in any of the merch or the marketing material.

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And so to have a surprise is rare now, because everybody knows everything ahead of time.

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And so that reveal was really, we knew it.

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And then it created, I think people wanted to see the show

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when it came out so

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that they wouldn't see on social on social media what had happened they wanted to be part of

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that discovery and then baby yoda became a international before the show was even available in markets something about

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that image and that the innocence of that character and the cuteness

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and the personality people got and connected with and so

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he's part of our thing uh but he's also part of the world

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and one of the interesting parts about about making a film with him as a star is you can't assume, if people know him, they might not know everything about the show.

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So it's not unlike season one where there's gonna be new people coming to see this.

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Of course, of course, yeah.

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But your core audience- They don't have any shorthand that they- They don't.

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But the same thing happened season one.

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Like there was, we assumed that nobody knew anything about Star Wars.

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There's new characters.

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Here, as long as you know that he's a bounty hunter and he's got his little apprentice slash adopted child.

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And what that dynamic is, you're good.

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But you also have to make it so that people who've been like us with Star Wars since the beginning, you have to give them a lot.

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And you have to make it work for both audiences.

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That's a trick.

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That sounds like a really tricky needle to thread.

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But I think we did it the first season.

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You know what I mean?

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So I think that we kind of knew the keep the story clear and clean.

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Know who the good guys and bad guys are. but then

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when you get to the supporting cast characters the background the

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details yeah the implications as it speaks to the larger storyline

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that there are clues in there as Dave Filoni is getting ready to do Ahsoka season two

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that speaks to the bigger picture and the films to come

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that this fits into that timeline

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but you want this to be a standalone story where somebody

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has it's been close to seven years there's there are people

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who aren't old enough to see Star Wars in the movie theater last time right

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and i want to make them feel how i felt

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when i saw it for the first time

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and have them fall in love with this and

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and bring them in you know i love

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that you talk about uh all the artisans working on all these things going above

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and beyond and over delivering and i want to tell you

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when i worked at ilm

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that was definitely the ethos was like you finished the back of your set to be really nice

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because it's us it's like it's like a michelin star kitchen yes you want to make sure

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that you know even if the even if the customer doesn't know everything you know

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that you put everything into it and

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that you you were you did the best you could

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and then other people who do it too are paying attention to what you're doing yes

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and they appreciate it as the director you're trusting so much

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that whole team but on this i had

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that i had i was coming into this with uh i

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knew the characters i knew the world the audience knew who we are

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and even though there's you know hopefully new people being introduced

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to it we understand how it plays we understand the genre

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and when we push to go from you know we started off with

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samurai western influences yeah well now we we were able to get into the other influences george had

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which was like flash gordon like space opera big yeah you know swashbuckling adventure and so

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we had other golf clubs in our bag than we would have had.

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We had the Big Bertha, so we could do things of a scale and a scope that we couldn't do before.

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But we were building on something we already knew with craftspeople that were at the top of their game.

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So I never felt this experience going into a film where we already felt like we did our reps together.

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And then finally when we hit the set, it was, okay, what can we do from here?

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So I have a story before we wrap which is that

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when I got on Star Wars on episode one It was just the last eight months of production

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So there was a warehouse over there at Kerner where all the models from episode one work Yes, and I was just there for a few months

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and I was new So I was you know telling people what I could do

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and I mentioned that I'd made a whip

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and my supervisor Brian Gernand was like bringing your whip tomorrow I want to see it

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and I brought it in he's like I want to see

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you crack it I'm like well this room isn't big enough

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So he took me to the warehouse with all the props He's like, stand on the table and crack it.

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So I'm standing on this table with, you know, $5 million of Star Wars props and cracking this whip that sounds like a gunshot, realizing I could end my whole career right here.

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That's right.

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You could have taken a taunta on that.

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Exactly.

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That's hilarious.

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But this is your version of the same.

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Yeah.

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It is cool to see.

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You don't realize when you're doing it until you stand back

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and look at all the things you realize you've been doing it for a long time with a lot of people.

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you sort of realize how much of your life you've spent working on something.

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So it's a little surreal, but it's fun.

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But the best part is, again, to be able to share it with other people and show.

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And I'm glad that you got to show everybody there because I'm proud of the work that everybody did.

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And it's good that you at least get a glimpse of it.

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Everything is a story here.

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Everything does.

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I'm glad we got to tell a few of them.

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But yeah, feel free to share any of this with your with your with your audience

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and maybe they know things I don't know they're gonna find some really interesting things

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Adam Savage Behind the Scenes of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu! - Learn English Speaking with Video

Speaking Goals for This Clip: Casual Conversational Flow

Phrase Bank: Reusable Expressions for Everyday Chats

Fix Your Weak Spots: Pronunciation & Rhythm in Casual Speech

What is the Shadowing Technique?