How ‘Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’ Assembled the Hippest Directors in the Galaxy

This week’s episode of Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” is notable for a few reasons – one, it is dark and scary, adding in some creepier layers to the otherwise cheerful tone of the latest live-action Lucasfilm joint. There’s a lot of Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), the adorable blue alien. And one of the main characters has a dramatic change of heart.

But the most notable distinction of this week’s episode was that it was directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert aka the Daniels, the filmmaking team that won the Best Director and Best Picture Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” This is, in fact, their first directorial effort since their multiverse comedy swept the Oscars.

And the Daniels directing an episode of “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” isn’t an outlier either. The first season of the ambitious new series, which channels 1980s nostalgia through a distinct “Star Wars” lens and follows a group of kids who are lost in the galaxy, away from their suburban planet (and forced to rely on Jude Law’s shifty Force user), is full of outrageously talented filmmakers – from “The Green Knight” director David Lowery and future “Thunderbolts” director Jake Schreier to “Star Wars” veterans like Lee Isaac Chung and Bryce Dallas Howard, both of whom have directed installments of flagship Disney+ series “The Mandalorian.”

An emphasis on directors was part of the design of the show, according to Jon Watts, who co-created the new series with his frequent collaborator Christopher Ford, and who directed the first and last episodes of the season. For Watts, it was all about the directors.

“I’m a fan of directors, and I just really liked the idea of bringing in people who would have a take and a vision and if they already understood the broad strokes of what we were trying to do, taking that and elevating it,” Watts explained. “It’s also fun, as a director, to watch other directors direct because you never really get to see that.”

The allure of directing on “Skeleton Crew” was layered – there’s obviously the appeal of being part of the legendary franchise, which began with George Lucas’ original film in 1977. Then there’s also the chance to try out new technology, like the Volume – the large, wraparound screen that served as one of the chief breakthroughs on “The Mandalorian” and has been utilized on almost every subsequent “Star Wars” series.

“I felt like it might be more enticing than other potential TV directing episodic jobs for that exact reason – you get to come and play with all of the stuff,” said Watts. “A lot of it was doing work with puppets.”

“The thing that appealed to me first and foremost was that it was a ‘Star Wars’ project. I was a fan of the movies before I even saw the movies, thanks to the storybooks and the toys and I was too young to see them when they first came out, but I certainly got to know them on VHS,” said Lowery, who directed episodes 2 and 3. “I decided at the age of seven that I wanted to be a filmmaker because I love ‘Star Wars’ and I wanted to tell stories like George Lucas did. And so to get, all these decades later, to actually participate in something under the auspices of Lucasfilm that was a canonical ‘Star Wars’ tale was certainly of one of the easiest yeses in my entire life.”

Howard echoed the sentiment and said, “I would do anything that has to do with Star Wars, like anything, no matter what.”

Watts said that the production process, which was pioneered by Jon Favreau on his remake of “The Lion King” and streamlined on “The Mandalorian,” was a big draw. They do storyboards and 2D animatics, before going to a full 3D pre-visualization process that utilizes motion capture. The directors chosen for “Skeleton Crew” then get to their own pass of that. There were also tech scouts and location scouts in a VR world. “A team goes and installs a computer at [the director’s] house and we’d meet in the Metaverse and you’d see a little David Lowery or Bryce Dallas Howard floating around your alien planet,” Watts said. “And you start picking out the shots – it was a really fun, technologically innovative process, which I think was attractive to the team.”

Lowery described the virtual location scouting process as “cool, because you know that you’re going to be shooting in there, and you can take frame grabs and get a sense of what the space is in the same way that you would on a real set.” When he was actually on the set, Lowery broke a record – for “the largest number of actors on the volume ever,” he said. (The second episode takes place in a space port that is reminiscent of the cantina in the first “Star Wars.”) There were also, by Lowery’s estimation, 15 creatures on the set that day too, something that felt oddly second nature to him. “It came very naturally to me. I felt very much at home,” said Lowery. “Part of that is because I grew up just loving ‘The Dark Crystal’ and idolizing Jim Henson and all of the people he was working with.” Frank Oz, of course, was Henson’s right hand – sometimes literally – and performed Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” and several other “Star Wars” projects in the years since the original trilogy.

Breaking down the styles of the various filmmakers, Watts said, “Everyone was totally different. That’s what was great.” Lowery, Watts said, “edits most of his things, so he was always shooting to a specific edit.” The Daniels always had three cameras running. “They had really complex layouts of where all the cameras were so they could get three times more shots than anyone else could in this short amount of time,” Watts said. Chung was “the most amazing” to Watts. “He was so calm and quiet and it all seemed effortless,” Watts said. Schreier, who was coming off the success of “Beef,” shot quickly and assuredly. And Howard, Watts said, was particularly interested in the actors and getting the right performance. “I am an actor and I love actors and I see the upside when an actor is really empowered and trusted and brought into the process as early as possible,” Howard said.

Also: Schreier and Howard had known Watts and Ford since they were all 18.

“Those three guys, I’ve been rooting for them, excited about what they’re doing, inspired by them, the partnership between Ford and Watts, I adore, it’s just it was a really  beautiful opportunity to get to play in the world’s best sandbox with old friends,” said Howard. She had a connection with the other directors too – she co-starred in Lowery’s touching remake of “Pete’s Dragon” and had worked with Chung on “The Mandalorian.” In some ways, Howard was the seasoned pro of the group.

Howard, of course, downplays this, saying that she had experience with virtual production and the Volume, but that all the directors “have endeavored upon projects that I haven’t even attempted.” She did remember Lowery visting her on the set of “The Mandalorian.” He was observing her and the rest of the production and when Howard asked what he was working on, he told her “Skeleton Crew.” She was excited to introduce him to all of the talented members of the crew and to welcome these new filmmakers to the “Star Wars” universe where she’d been. “Everybody was really, really impressive and in it already,” Howard said.

The same touchstones that Watts and Lowery spoke about where key to Howard too. (Her first words as a child were “E.T. fly,” while watching Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece.) She was also there for some of the technological breakthroughs of the era. Like on the actual set. “I was on the set the day that that morphing was first utilized for ‘Willow.’ I remember it so clearly,” “It was a time of kind of extreme experimentation.” Now Howard is at the forefront of cutting-edge technology. “Each season, with each show, it gets improved upon,” she said.

When it came to post-production, Watts said, “I wanted everyone as involved as much as or as little as they wanted to be.” Watts had recently worked on the FX series “The Old Man” and what he didn’t realize was that sometimes directors do their director’s cut and “then just leave and hand it over to the showrunners.” “That’s the more traditional TV approach. And I didn’t want anyone to feel like it was like that,” Watts said. The directors on “Skeleton Crew” got their director’s cut and then the directors and Watts and Ford would watch the episodes together and try different approaches. “I wanted to keep everyone involved as long as they wanted to be involved,” Watts said. “Then everyone eventually gets other jobs and has to go off and do other things. But everyone was 100% invited to be a part of the process as long as possible.” A year after they were filming, some directors would pop in to give final animation notes. “Everyone was in it all the way to the very end,” Watts said.

Lowery said that he felt that his voice was heard throughout the process and that his two episodes, which feature an almost “Dark Crystal”-level of puppetry and creatures, reflect him as a filmmaker. “But here’s the funny thing about that, and I’m going to speak for myself, I don’t want to speak for all the other filmmakers, who might have the same answer. The language of ‘Star Wars’ is part of our filmmaking language to begin with, because we all grew up with it, and so my personal stamp has a lot of ‘Star Wars’ in it already, and I didn’t have to really change anything,” Lowery said. “I just got to make movies the way I’ve always made movies, and they fit right into the ‘Star Wars’ model, so to speak, because that is so ingrained in how I make movies to begin with.” Lowery said that his production designer is always laughing because, even on projects like “A Ghost Story” or “The Green Knight,” he’s always bringing up “Star Wars.” He just shot a musical called “Mother Mary” and Lowery was constantly bringing up “Star Wars floors” – and just saying that phrase you know exactly what he’s talking about, the slick shiny floors favored by the Empire.

“Part of my vernacular as a filmmaker is just ‘Star Wars’ references and ‘Star Wars’ shots and the way the camera moves in ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’” Lowery said. “The amount of times I’m using ‘Star Wars’ to explain what I want on my other films is almost embarrassing. To make an actual ‘Star Wars’ project, I just felt like I was getting to be my true self.”

Watching the final version of her episode, Howard was struck by the enormity and intricacy of the entire project. “I watched my episode where I was like, Oh, that’s different, but it was different good, it wasn’t different bad,” Howard said. “And some stuff that I shot is in other episodes and vice versa. It was incredibly, incredibly collaborative, more so than any kind of typical TV show. And I also trusted them to do what they needed for the entire series.”

Watts still sounds like an excitable kid talking about the show. He couldn’t believe that they got to premiere the show at the Tomorrowland Theater in Disneyland, the same theater that used to show “Captain EO,” Francis Ford Coppola’s Michael Jackson-led 3D movie. (There are “Captain EO” references littered throughout “Skeleton Crew.”) About the whole process, Watts said, “I loved it. I had so much fun doing this.” He really did. And he hopes he can do it again. But should the show get picked up, which is something of a rarity in the galaxy far, far away, what filmmakers would they get for season 2?

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