PT Practical Effects in the Prequels- Sets, Pictures, Models, etc.

Yeah, well, the OT was no picnic either. Work is work.

Sorry to disappoint you, but that "tactile world" consisted mostly of matte paintings.

 

You still had complete sets and actual Stormtrooper armor.

 

It seems pointless arguing with somebody who likely hasn't taken the time to read the prior discussions in this thread (or even given it a rudimentary browsing, ffs). Subjective and ambiguous generalities don't make great arguments and aren't particularly worthy of rebuttal.

Some have chosen to fetishize an idealized notion of past movie making technics - a utopia lost. Unfortunately for them (and fortunate for the rest of us), sci-fi sfx has always been about progression.

 

I was blindsided when I saw the making of AOTC, because I was convinced the clone armor was real. Never questioned it for a moment. There were a couple dodgy Kashyyyk trooper shots in Revenge of the Sith (some had the coveted leg gap all the girls are talking about), but that's it.

 

many people have said this but now people insist it's terribly fake looking. uh huh.

 

I saw AOTC on a huge screen at a charity premiere a day before it was released in the U.S., and after the film I went online to check out the Clone Trooper costumes in greater detail, only to find out they were actually digital imagery. I still say they look darn realistic, especially in close-ups (commanders, trooper typing in coordinates, pilots).

 

Exactly.

Check out 5 minutes into this:



It was a difficult transition period going from analog to digital. Didn't matter how much better the digital was an analog guy would swear the old way was better.

Wrong. CG was only one element. Mustafar was a set piece no? Well according to Lorne Peterson it was 75% the massive miniature they spent 8 months shooting. Then add in the virtually fully built sets (apart from window views) plus matte painting, other partial sets and live action plates of Mount Etna and everything else they threw at it.

Going digital didn't help? Sorry but that is wrong. Without digital it'd be impossible to do. It couldn't be done analog. I don't know how you see these things are artificial. I really don't. In direct comparison the OT looks the artificial studio bound series while the PT looks like real places like you actually simply had cameras recording history a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. When you go to a great structure built decades or centuries ago or a thousand years ago do you stand there and say it looks fake because it's too big and vast and deep?

Sorry but that is totally incorrect. Like any additional sessions it was all about refining things that the editing process revealed they needed to add. By no means was it half the movie. In III they did new scenes that restructured events in the second half of the movie so maybe you misinterpreted that? As for the level of fun of anyone you'd have to ask them. As any film some people were and some were not.

Some! Far more than any of the OT films many times over. Sorry but if anything I find the PT world far more tactile by miles because they don't have the same ratio of studio sets look but so massive that they have to be real places because you can't build those in a studio.

Look I love the OT but let's face the truth. It's really a series of studio bound movies with a bit of location work with ESB having very little. Compare it to any PT film and there is no real comparsion.

They are on vast alien worlds which you can see and touch and feel. Cloud City looks pretty poor in comparison until the SE opened it up the way they would have liked to but couldn't.

Tactile example: The thick brushstrokes give the painting a tactile quality.

That is exactly what the PT is. Paintings that are extremely dense and fantastic. What the OT could do was create a surface depth world. The PT delved deep into intricate details on a level with digital tools that they could only dream of with analog tools.

 

So...there's more silliness out today with the video showing a full size starfighter model, name omitted for anyone who wants to avoid spoilers.

I've seen several comments saying it's better looking than any ship model in the PT, and some acting like there weren't even any ship models in the pt, it was all cockpits and green screen.

The first part is debatable, but I know for a fact there's a minimum of one full sized starfighter prop in each prequel.

TPM - Naboo Starfighter
AOTC - Jedi Starfighter
ROTS - Eta Starfighter

 

Looking at all of the photos in this thread really makes you realize that a lot of the blue/green screen used in the prequels was replaced with miniature photography, not CGI. Also, when it is CGI, it seems to usually be the Coruscant skyline.

 

There were full size fighters in every prequel movie. Heck, a whole hangar of Naboo N-1 Starfighters was built. "Get to your ships!"

 

But why does this scene look in any way like bad special effects work? Why is it "wonky" even in just a screen shot? As it's been noted, this scene features a miniature set, but it's made to look so ethereal that I doubt it would look much different if it were a full sized set.

 

I don't really think the set looks wonky at all. I was talking about the Kaminoans in particular.

The set looks shiny and sterile and ethereal because Tipoca City is a shiny, sterile, ethereal place. If you think it would look the same even if it were a full-sized set, why do you care?

 

I was just getting the impression that the ethereal "glowing" look to this scene was being perceived by some as the set looking phoney. Of course, it's purposefully the way it was shot or made to look in post and I doubt it would look any more "solid" if Ewan had been on a physical set given the way it's meant to look.

 

^ It is a setting that most people have never looked upon with their own eyes (I'm sure one architect or another turned something similar into a reality, though). It looks like something out of a dream. I imagine it has a meditative effect on the Kaminoans, with the bright lights "recharging their batteries". Maybe the inside of Vader's meditation chamber feels just like this.

 

Did not kaminoans see in the ultraviolet spectrum? So their walls that appear white to us could be full of colour to them.

 

Sounds fascinating. I have the Complete Locations book on my shelf. I should really look into the details on the Kaminoans.

 

it looks like people's description of ufo interiors.

 

It looks like the interior of a potato thrown across my yard that I couldn't identify?!

 

Wow!

 

Next time I eat french fries, I'm going to create a clone army

 

As far as I know, filming model spaceships with motion control cameras is simply not done anymore. Combine that with the fact that ILM's miniature department was spun off and has since gone out of business, the prequel trilogy could go down in history as having certain practical effects that the sequel trilogy does not.

 

where did you hear this? they could always use it if they wanted to. there were reports a while back that jj and co. were going to utilize 3d printing to print models directly from their 3d cg models in the computer.

 

I hope not. As fantastic as the use of model ships in the last 2 trilogies may be, I really think spaceships, and more specifically, spaces battles is an area that CGI particularly excels at. I have been a huge fan of space battle scenes (in and outside of SW) and the sfx it involves since the 70s (my unfulfilled childhood dream was to become a sci-fi model builder) and contemporary CGI is, without a doubt, the vastly superior medium for it.

 

The prequels didn't use this technology either. 99.9% of the models people are posting in here are built for the purposes of references and to be taken photos of to be composited into computer generated backgrounds or shots. Even that isn't done anymore because its not necessary.

 

The prequels didn't use this technology either. 99.9% of the models people are posting in here are built for the purposes of references and to be taken photos of to be composited into computer generated backgrounds or shots. Even that isn't done anymore because its not necessary.