ST Filming Techniques and Technologies for the ST

I have to be honest here, the way this video is being heralded around the web is hilariously hypocritical. People are praising this film for using techniques that were pioneered by Lucas with the prequels. I loved TFA and I don't have any issue with the way technology was used in it, but the sheer hypocracy of the love that video is getting is too much for me to ignore.

 

I have a question (or a few) for anyone who has a good understanding of the post-production process. When they shoot on 35mm film, that means that the movie will have some grain in the picture simply because it's film, right? And then, in order to do the post-production, this film gets scanned/digitized so that the visual effects/CGI can be digitally added, right? So, since the added CG does not have grain, how do they seamlessly blend elements that don't have grain (the effects, CG creatures, etc.) with elements that do have grain (the live-action portions)? For movies that are digitally shot, this isn't a problem since there wouldn't be grain anywhere, but I've always wondered how the seamless blending is achieved with FX-heavy movies shot on film. Do they just add fake grain to the CGI or something? Or is the amount of grain so negligible that they don't even bother since nobody will notice it anyway?

 

Why bring the prequels in to it when someone is saying the effects were good in this particular film? Should I have said the effects look great in this, but only because of the prequels? You clearly have a chip on your shoulder.

 

Is it digitally generated grain or is it real grain that is actually rotoscoped in from the originally filmed frame? If it's the latter, then that does not sound fun at all lol

 

At least Abrams himself has acknowledged that none of ILM's work in TFA would have been possible without the innovations Lucas made.

 

True and the same goes for any film made since ILM was set up when they revolutionised effects. Who in turn were inspired by other before them. But it's ILM who are the pioneers who gave Lucas and film makers since the tools for their visions on screen.

But it's ridiculous for someone to say Its all down to the prequels for the effects in TFA and anyone not saying it is a hypocrite. It's basically a subtle dig saying people are dissing the prequels because you've not mentioned them. That's just taking it a little bit too far imo.

By the same token should I go on to the prequel threads and say to anyone saying the PT effects are good that they're hypocrites because without the advances made in Jurassic Park there'd be no prequels? No I wouldn't because that would be stupid.

 

There's no need for this to be an argument between fans of either trilogy. It's not unreasonable to have a reaction to something, and it's also not unreasonable if their reactions to different things differ based on their experience.

"Hypocrisy" is the most overstated of character flaws. We are all hypocrites about many issues, and to actively avoid hypocrisy about things as unimportant in the scheme of things as "enjoyment of aspects of films within a series" often results in a more divisive personality than accepting that we can have differing/seemingly contradictory opinions at different times. We all know how annoying it can be when people post at great length to make absolutely sure we all know that their entire set of beliefs about Star Wars adhere to a strict internal logic

 

Well the problem there is for those who few who actually believed or pretended to themselves to believe and those who promoted the bogus "return" to practical effects that was nothing more than a public relations exercise. Which is little different from the digital and CGI public relations exercise the prequels did where they downplayed all the practical effects.

So since the actual way both the prequels and TFA (and all the new movies are being made) really are not all that different for the most part then really it's about the perception creating the narrative of the production. Now the way the actual productions worked is another matter.

So it's the PR spins vs the reality of how production worked.

Well no because it's from ILM which is a Lucasfilm company created by George so it doesn't really work.

Because his company made huge advances then his other company could make new Star Wars which created further advances which in turn allow movies like TFA and all the movies between the two to be made as well as the impact on TV production coming out of not just the prequels but his young Indy series.

Then add in the way the prequels impact on basically all but eliminating film from TV and movie production. Driving it to the brink of extinction and creating the digital film-making world Lucas dreamed about for decades.

Oddly TFA and the ST are using film though while R1 is digital.

Of course shooting on film isn't the same thing now as back in the day.

 

You misunderstand me. I agree that bringing the prequels into this conversation SHOULD be irrelevant. However, when one of the main things people bashed those movies for was the CGI and all of that and the lack of "real" sets, for those same people to turn around and then praise TFA for a visual effects real showing basically the same techniques used in the prequels and for the internet to call it "the coolest effects reel ever" is VERY hypocritical. It is irrelevant to my argument whether or not the prequels should be in this discussion. Imagine if TFA featured Jar Jar Binks in a starring role doing the same dumb stuff he did in TPM and people praised TFA for this. That is essentially what is going on here.

 

Absolutely they used all the effects tools in the book, anyone who thought this film would be totally practical is completely mistaken. The effects do look great in TFA as its so seamless. But I think there's a huge difference between how TFA looked as a whole, for want of a better word TFA follows the tradition of the OT in that it looks more real and tangible to me. It's irrelevant to me how they achieved that as long as it looks convincing. The enhancements to worlds and sets aren't immediately obvious or intrusive. The practical and CGI characters blend seamlessly and that's the big difference I see visually between this and what they went for in the PT. Maybe that's down to how effects have progressed in the last 20 years or the choices they made in terms of some locations, sets and characters.

So for me it's not hypocritical to say how great the effects look in TFA because they are great. It doesn't need to be added with a caveat saying that looks great and let's also give thanks to the effects pioneered in the PT too. That's being a bit too precious about the prequels imo. ILM have developed effects for the industry as a whole.

 

i think it's both and gl was always pushing the limits of what was possible. it's amazing the pt exists and holds up for the time it was made in.

the only thing i missed in tfa was the amount of digital characters and creatures gl liked to put into the world. i would have liked some more of those.

 

That overall was probably one of the actual major differences between them production-wise. Where Lucas mixed in both "practical" and "CGI" characters all over in foreground and background TFA really had only a handful in the foreground and I don't know any outside of the basic digital doubles for stunt work or deep background figures and the like.

The other was the unused worlds environments that is more particular to the OT while the PT went to used worlds that had civilizations. That of course comes about simply because they really couldn't do much of anything before so didn't bother.

There are various others but they don't really matter much to the final presentation because whether you use CGI (like TFA) instead of all the models and miniatures and CGI (like the PT) either way it's way beyond anything they could do in the first place or even when they could sustain for the OT.

That aspect I would say simply comes down to personal preference of what "seamless" means. I find the PT just as much and probably more "seamless" than TFA in part because the PT went out of it's way to mix everything in together. So in any shot you would have a mixture of set, location, miniature, CGI set, actors, CGI characters, creature suits and the like.

I would say that has not much of anything to do with technology (especially nowadays) as a whole but how they decided to mix everything. I agree in that sense TFA was more like the OT is that they separated the overall elements and didn't mix things together. This starts on the story level and manifests on the visual one. So TFA was very sparse in terms of using CGI characters with Maz and Snoke then Unkar Plutt's face but there nothing like Dex's Diner for instance which was mixing everything in while Maz's place was pretty much everything "practical" save for Maz.

Thing is of course that when the OT did that they had to. The ability to mix things up like now didn't exist. So there was little choice. For the OT the limitations were forced on them while for TFA they self imposed them. So that was a pastiche ethic on their part that guided them in terms of aliens and environments.

TFA also followed the OT pattern of having lots of humans and then aliens in the background more or specific more "alien race" places like Jakku or Takodana. We'll see if things change but I doubt that we will see much like Clonetroopers, battledroids, Geonosians, Kaminoans etc in the ST. While one would think that they will expand the environments for the following movies but if they don't have the kinds of alien characters then they don't have to create the environments that they live in and where their civilizations exist.

So if the civilizations they go to are human ones with Earth-like environments (and aliens are just passing through) then they don't have to bother.

Again though the main thing is that many of those developments were so that Lucas could get VFX to the point that he could do the prequels. Basically the changeover from optical to digital was the start then early CGI for Jurassic Park and the like.

Then when Lucas did decide to do the PT (as talked about on documentary on TPM) they didn't know exactly how they were going to do half of the movie's effects so they were figuring it out on the fly. So again there is ILM making huge strides in VFX just to make the first movie. So it's not like it was as simple as Jurassic Park CGI and everything on TPM was sorted in how to achieve everything.

Lucas also points out quite rightly that if they pull this off then everyone else is going to want to do movie this way as well. Which is exactly what happened over and again for AOTC and ROTS where they kept pushing digital forward. Now they weren't the only ones but ILM is often seen as being the preeminent.

I don't think it's precious in terms of the PR spins that they gave in particular where for TFA they were talking about all the practical effects that were akin to the OT. They really pushed that and gave the false impression that somehow they were doing things more practical than the PT had ever done them.

Now I don't know how many in the media actually truly believed this spin or simply wanted to and so along with pushing the false spin about PT production. They also promoted the very selective spin from TFA about locations and sets and people in creature outfits as now being some new focused form of practical all the while sort of skipping over all the other aspects of practical which TFA simply didn't do because hardly anyone does anymore.

I mean when talking about "practical effects" simply having sets and going to locations took on a new "practical" approach with their PR spin (we're in a real desert) that really was not a focused part of "practical' before. That the PT also had sets and went to locations then was subjected to some kind of spin that it wasn't enough of either and there was too much green screen or even spin that there were no sets at all ever.

Now is it possible that if Lucas didn't make the PT that TFA could be the same film we saw?

Sure it's possible (and things would have moved along through other movies) but the fact is that it does look the way it does because the fact of the PT's production forced ILM to come up with ways to make them happen. TFA isn't the movie that it is because of the OT's production. The actual reality of it's production is way beyond anything the technology of the OT could do. If it could then they would have done it back then in the first place.

As Lucas says you create the tools you need to tell the story. The tools are not created otherwise.

 

The PT helped to push technology forwards so we have CGI in 2016 that looks like real miniatures. Look Rogue One Star Destroyer shot, for example. And several shots in TFA that we all thought were pratical, were CGI.

 

Except I'd be careful not to overstate the influence of the PT on the state of current effects quality. The PT were not the only visually groundbreaking films in the two decades since 1983 and there have been many films since then that have also pushed the state of effects (Avatar being the most notable example). Personally, I think TFA owes more to films like Moon, Interstellar and Gravity, in the more seamless blending of its effects, as well as the advances made in the many TV shows that employed layering of elements and background CGI mattes, than the PT. Also, at the same time as the PT, you had WETA doing equal if not superior work with LOTR, and the Matrix also came out.

Finally, I know some people have grown fond of saying that the PR spin for TFA being practical was misleading, but it really wasn't. There are tons of shots in TFA that are not effects shots at all, and that are entirely in camera, even in wide shots. In a contemporary science fiction film of this type, that's really quite unprecedented. The same cannot be said for the PT, especially in AOTC and ROTS, where there's always some effect in the shot. That's why those movies have always received that complaint of too much CGI. There's very little in-camera work, and what there is is then unfortunately undermined by the use of digital photography. There's a world of difference between subtlely tweaking the head movements of the practical BB8 in a shot and inserting a wholly CGI character.

 

I know I'm late to the Party but i just got The Art of the force awakens, and i can't believe how awesome some of the concept art for this Movie is. They definitely choose the worst designs for the Film.
The Planets look so much more epic and exotic. Even Maz Castle looks much better, and feels just more like SW as the final product.

 

Concept drawings almost always look better than what ends up in the movie.

 

Concept has to be created in the real world. This is when compromises have to be made.
Drawing paper accepts everything.

 

Generally agree (though I think WETA's work on Lord Of The Rings has dated pretty badly)
If anything, (and I don't mean this as a bash, more as an observation of trends in reviews and FX discussion) the PT effects have been used more as a byword for OTT ,lavish effects that don't quite work, rather than recognised as, say, groundbreaking effects that might have dated but pointed to a better future.
Which is slightly unfair, because some of the PT effects are absolutely stunning. Forget Jar Jar; look at Watto. Or any number of the CG or miniature effects that just register. The only PT effects that don't work are those where clearly the entire shot is a composite of varied elements, with, crucially, the actors not having been present in whatever the main environment was.

 

Which I alluded to. Understating their influence is something that really should not be done because as we can see if that is done then the undercutting that comes with it can bring it down to very little . Overstating is a far better course because then the undercutting will take it to where it probably deserves to be. Trying to separate the PT and what it did in relation to ILM to me is an odd and untenable argument.

A lot of the PT work set up Avatar from what I have read like this:

http://www.cinelinx.com/movie-stuff...-enjoy-the-vfx-in-the-star-wars-prequels.html

Everyone complains about the overuse of special effects in the Star Wars prequels, but the truth is, the original films were facing the same issue back when they released. No other film of that time period had used such extensive visual effects work, and it helped move the industry forward in ways they otherwise wouldn’t have. The same could be said for the Prequels. They tried something new. They used technology in a way that it hadn’t before in order to push the bounds of what could be seen on the big screen. In a lot of ways, the Prequel films helped pave the way for the use of all CG characters which have in turn given us Avatar and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Moon is from 2009, Interstellar from 2014 and Gravity from 2013 so that is over 10 to 15 years past TPM's production. TFA may very well have taken some methods from those movies but they all in turn look back to the prequels which pushed the entire envelope further forward than anyone ever had at the time.

Once again what exactly "blending" mean seems to shift from person to person or group to group.

How exactly some people seem to think that TFA somehow mixes and blends elements together better I am not really sure. As I have said to me the key difference that I see is that TFA deliberately decided to not try to blend as many elements in the first place.

So really it's not that they did it any better or worse than the prequels did. They simply limited themselves in aspects of what they were going to do in the first place. As we know some people are totally convinced that because they can tell that something is CGI that therefore it doesn't "blend" with human characters or alien characters that are people with masks, make-up, etc. Yet for whatever reason that they can tell that said alien characters are from masks (or puppets) etc. apparently gives them no problem whatsoever.

The PT as talked about before had CGI characters all over the place from Jar Jar, Boss Nass, the Gungans, Clonetroopers, Kaminoans, Geonosians, battledroids and on and on all over the place. If any of the new movies do the same mix and blend of elements that the PT did it's only then that we would even begin to see how they react to it. Otherwise the basic story intent from TFA is coming from a less ambitious and comprehensive standpoint in terms of using all the tools available to their full story potential.

The basic approach they seemed to take for TFA was "What if we were making ANH now but with today's technology?" this extends to even where they really cut down the end aerial battles to be very simple like ANH (which of course was not what Lucas would have liked to do at the time but what he had to settle for). If Lucas had his way then the end of ANH would look like ROTJ with the "better equipped than you think" rebels who just had a major victory striking from their hidden base. Instead it's really not that many ships.

I can't agree. BB-8 is the case in point for the PR spin which they over and again talked about the practical like somehow it was remote controlled on the set with independent movement. Of course it was only after the movie came out that they starting talking about how it was CGI around 25% of the time or as much as 33% of the time. The rest of the time was done with green stocking puppeteers who then would be painted out. R2 for all the talk of building also had CGI shots. Practical props can't give the emotive acting that CGI can provide.

They also then finally started to talk about how they found it gratifying that some people were looking at shots thinking they were in-camera but actually were not. So obviously all this information was really not talked about in the run up to the movie itself. Then even more VFX reels (like the latest one) came out going over the actual production methods showing how different what was shot in-camera and the final scenes were.

When Star Wars came out in 1977 it was the least in-camera live action movie of all-time up to that point until TESB that is and then until ROTJ after. So being in-camera is not at all what Star Wars was ever really about in the first place.

No doubt the relative number of shots from TFA that really are "in-camera" is higher than any of the prequels but since the PT has probably maybe literally a handful since basically everything was digitally touched by Lucas for every shot then it's not really something that he was at all interested in doing anymore than he was in the 70's in the first place. It simply never was of any interest to him to do so. I don't know how anyone would know what is "untouched" anyway. With today's technology virtually every frame is touched in some way shape or form because it makes the shot better than in-camera could ever be.

The fact is that TFA has roughly the same amount of VFX shots as AOTC and ROTS (approx 2100 to their 2200 each) and approx 150 more than TPM's 1950. On top of that what is also fact is that the PT used tons of models/miniature and motion control shooting of which TFA used apparently exactly none. TPM in particular probably used more models and miniatures than all the other movies combined because after that most vehicles were done with CGI.

The PR spin before the movie more than anything makes the most impact on people and afterwards those who talk about it the loudest then set the narrative. Look at the number of people who actually seem to believe that the prequels used no sets or props.

 

You make interesting points, Qui, but the sheer length makes it hard to engage with them.

The overall point for me, and the most important one for me and a few others, is that while obviously ANH had groundbreaking VFX, the reason they were groundbreaking was because the story needed them to be. And that the divide happened kind of at that point in fandom' are groundbreaking special effects crucial to Star Wars? Or just the side effect of the state of the VFX industry at the time?
Each argument has valid points.
However, that's where the prequels solidified that divide: for all Lucas's talk that he waited for the technology to catch up before he made the prequels, that's not quite what he did (and it's odd that this point isn't made more often); what he did was he waited until the technology was not *quite* there, but where he could push it further with the visuals he had in mind. And to his credit, he did push things further. But that the consequence of being a trailblazer (much like with Jackson's high frame rate disaster) is that the things that don't work really stand out. And that is a problem when a significant part of the fanbase wants the films to be as timeless as possible.
I mean, take ESB: I strongly believe that one of the reasons it's as loved as it is is because it's the most timeless. There are some relatively dated effects in the original version, but generally they were working within what was possible, less so than in ANH or ROTJ, and then every prequel film pushed and pushed - admirable intentions, sure - but TFA feels timeless, and I think the reason it does so is because it knows that the quality of existing effects is high enough that if done properly, the story can be told effectively with no fudged shots, no "we need this shot even though it's not quite there"
I mean, if a Star Wars director wants to do something that's never been done on film before; great. Push boundaries where neccesary. But let's always remember that we're just talking about best use of tools.

 

So you're overestimating their influence due to fear of them not being given enough credit? You admit that you've given them too much weight?

I think it's somewhat disenguous to argue that the situations in 1977 and 1999-2003 were similar. Further, it's as if you're attributing CGI itself to the PT, which is very far off the mark. Where I'm struggling is thinking of anything that the PT films did with their effects that weren't just being done slightly better. That's why I don't really buy into the argument. The PT is just another evolutionary milestone among many along the special effects path.

I picked those 3 because are these seem far more in line with the asthetic of TFA. If your argument that the PT should be credited for pushing the envelope, then so too can films like T2 and Lost In Space for their CGI characters... In the last decade or so, there's been a move in visual effects towards more seamless transitions and subtle effects, of going for a sleight of hand. The PT is neither of these things. It doesn't seek to hide its effects, it revels in them and shows them clearly. They've given close-ups and/or given action to draw your eye.

This isn't the best argument to make. You don't need CGI characters all over the place to be ambitious or more comprehensive. In fact, it's very telling that the CGI characters in TFA are the least impressive. Maz works because she's an interesting character, but the Rahtars and Snoke are the least successful effects. It's no coincidence that these are also CGI.

Except there's little to no context for that "BB-8 is CGI 25-33% of the time" soundbite or that "Probably about a quarter of the shots of BB-8 are digital." The breakdowns show that tweaks were made to small elements of the droid, sometimes just the eye, sometimes the head, so clearly it's not a thing that BB-8 is entirely CGI in all the digital shots. So I'd be careful about misrepresenting what the filmmakers have said.

R2 has had always an emotive acting and all without CGI, so I'm not sure where you're going with that? I think he was probably the most emotive in ANH out of all the films (he doesn't do anything in TFA really either).

This is sort of twisting and misrepresenting what in-camera means here. In that era, technically everything was done in-camera because that's the only way they could do it. Each element was photographed and then they were re-photographed together.

I don't think you can really equate the practice of digital colour grading with the addition of CG elements into almost every frame. And aren't your supposed intentions of Lucas a weak excuse, and similar to that old argument that the writing is bad because he wrote it that way? I'm not really sure that the almost complete lack of any straight photography (ignoring whether the camera is film or digital) in the AOTC and ROTS should be a badge of honour either...

Well, what people actually said/say is that AOTC and ROTS used hardly any sets or props, and that it essentially used too much CGI, so let's not continue that strawman. It wasn't a criticism levelled towards TPM to nearly the same degree either. More importantly, this was said in an era where CGI was not used as extensively as it has been since.

Of course, effects shots is a rather nebulous term, and can mean a very wide variety of complexity.