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

Maybe because Lucas was having nightmares about how lousy men in costumes were to him?

They are pretty terrible in comparisons to the Clonetroopers.

Again though I think it's really simple. They are clones.

 

It is true enough about costume quality. Stormtrooper armour is supposed to be some heavy duty composite plating or something, but it's quite obvious that irl, it's just glorified plastic lol

 

I beg to differ

 

I believe with the above post, you're implying that the physical costumes are better, but this only makes me think of how the CG clones are superior. Notice how most clones' armour shows scorch marks, dents, rough edges, etc. It's obvious that they've been in a way, they all show signs of damage. The stormtroopers all have completely spotless white suits. True, even if they were virgin soldiers, then that would be justified, but a lot of them are vets who have fought in many battles. Particularly Endor comes to mind - full body armour simply does not remain without dirt on it when battling in a forest

I may be remembering incorrectly, but I think the scouttroopers had a lot of dirt around their boots up to about the shin, so kudos to that if I am indeed remembering it

 

Makes me think of how much I love Boga.

 

Boga was cool. I too love the Boga.

 

Scout troopers in ROTJ were great. I think ROTS could have benefitted from actual costumes for the less heavily armoured clones like the troopers on Kashyyyk and the clone pilots. Some superbly detailed Eta-2 cockpit sets were built, and the same could have been done for the ARC-170.

However, for the fully armoured troopers, CGI was the best option. There's little doubt about that.



The armour was designed to look decent in a few poses but couldn't be articulated like actual human body armour - that being actual armour which has been ergonomically designed for the wearer to use for actual soldiering. Just look at that poor bloke second from the right in that image above. His right upper arm plating has got wedged between his shoulder guard and his vambrace. His gun is left firing awkwardly from the waist, not aimed in a direction conducive to great gunfire imagery so the VFX guys have had to obscure the direction of the gun with a blaster bolt that's divergent by a significant angle. His entire breastplate seems to have shifted leftwards.

It's unfortunate to see this up close, but good editing turned that into a killer sequence.

Now compare that with the running clone trooper in the image above that. His elbow is bent to a very acute angle. He has no trouble running and hefting a huge rifle at the same time. His helmet is pointed so that the visor is aimed in the same direction that human eyes would be.

That is what makes clone trooper armour so much more believable as sci-fi military gear, and what makes the clone troopers seem more believable as rigorously trained soldiers. It obviously doesn't exist IRL, but it is seen to work as you'd expect it to. ILM were able to control the movement of each plate and prevent them from hindering motion with plate locks like what the stormtrooper portrayers suffered from.

The scout troopers didn't have this problem, thankfully. The Endor chase sequence would have been terrible had stormtroopers been on the bikes.

 

Boga was great. I remember how critics gave themselves hernias to praise Buckbeak in the movie version of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," but absolutely refused to give similar praise about Boga in ROTS, which I think was just as good. Similarly, they gushed over the FX in the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie while sneering at the FX in the prequels, never mind that they were done by the same FX team.

 

Does anyone have a high-resolution photo of the models used for the Republic's Venator flagship docks in ROTS?

 

Love this thread. Saving quotes and images for handy ammo to refute those who continue to blather in the excessive negative. I would say I had just two CGI issues in all the prequels and it involved placing a real person on a CGI moving image: Anakin losing his balance at the picnic scene on that critter (I always forget their name)* and Padmé astride another unknown, large snouted animal on Geonosis. Nothing else - not one frame - makes me disbelieve. and I too loved Boga - her scream as she's falling to her death is one of the saddest moments in RotS for me.
*re picnic scene critters - I just returned from Lake Como and the actual site used for the picnic scene. My guide was instrumental in selecting sites for the film - she said George's assistant was thrilled with the meadow Gigliolia (guide's name) find - and said it would be a great scene involving "space cows" !!

 

Boga actually survived that fall.

 

How do we know?

 

Didn't she splash down in a river? It's been ages since I've watched episode III so I can't remember.

 

Did she? I thought we saw Obi-Wan splash down and just didn't see the Boga after her fall. I can't remember either.

 

Well we know one thing, she's awesome. And brilliant sound design.

 

I concur. I was truly surprised as to the fact that the Prequels used as many, if not more physical models than the prequels. Even though the Prequel films are twenty years newer, it is still hard to tell what is a model and what is animated. I just wished that they had filmed some of Coruscant in the Prequels in Dubai. It would've been cool, since the buildings in that city are the concept for many in the Star Wars planet. Also, the scenes at the Jedi Temple could have been done better. It seemed obvious that they were walking on a green screen. Some shadows and background movement on the image would help conceal this.

 

Impressive Phantom Menace scene with Maul there! I always thought that that was mostly green-screen, and I am sure many others have as well. I'm interested in finding out more about how the reactor decks in the previous scene were done. In a similar fashion, I would imagine. I'll look into that.

 

Qui-Riv-Brid

When I first saw Attack Of The Clones I thought some of the close up Clone Troopers were guys in Suits, and I was a Lurker on here back then and from what I could tell people on here all mostly thought the same thing. I think it came as a shock to me and most people on here when George Lucas admitted that All the Clone Troopers were CGI I think that is a testament to how really good the CGI was in the Prequels.

 

Everyone that thinks the PT used so much CG! LOOK HERE!!!

 

http://www.theasc.com/magazine/sep02/brave/images/image1.jpg

 

I'm curious to gather opinions from posters in this thread who saw the Epispde 7 teaser, do you think this film might genuinely be using more practical effects than the prequels?

My opinion (uninformed, obviously, due to the limited amount we've seen) is that JJ might be using a higher "ratio" of practical to computer-generated elements than AOTC/ROTS if not TPM (which still takes the cake for using almost exclusively practical ships) but possibly at the expense of the scale we saw in the PT. The PT teasers were all deluges of ambitious , large imagery. The "biggest" thing that the TFA teaser shows us is 3 X-Wings hovering over a lake. We still have a lot left to see from the film, but it almost seems like JJ might be limiting himself in a way George never did, out of fear that audiences might find large scale imagery too "unrealistic".

 

I have no way of knowing for sure. I think if you look at the Trek films JJ did, he doesn't shy away from epic scale. In fact, those shots of San Fran in both JJ Treks look like a tweaked Coruscant. But what I do like about JJ is he does strive to do as much in camera it seems as he can.

But let's be honest, CG vfx has improved immensely since even ROTS, let alone TPM.

So I think we will see plenty of CG along with practical stuff. What I hope we do see is more mixed or blended fx, almost creating a new discipline. It seems in too many films since CG really revolutionized things, there has been too distinct a cutoff between "okay wheel in the animatronic dino"…."okay this shot will be all CG dino"…etc.

Even in the prequels with the creature work, there was almost always a cutoff between "okay this is a makeup or a creature mask" and "okay this will be an all CG character". There was this hard line between the two.

Let's shoot something practically and then add stuff to it with CG if needed. Or vice versa.

Lets expand the boundaries of vfx outward.

 

Was the shot of the xwing and The Falcon CG?

 

Yes but the X-Wing shot appeared to have on-location background footage shot and then composited with CG X-Wings. So they were not entirely CG. There was some live action footage.

 

The backgrounds were amazing!