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

Now that is as objectively true as something could be when talking about something that is based so much on perception of "reality".

The gaps between the film stock of the kind used during the OT era generally and TPM are different and no doubt for those with enough knowledge on the subject can tell the differences between the film stocks used on each of the OT movies.

The same is true for AOTC and ROTS which are very different looking. ROTS' image quality is really astoundingly better than AOTC. So in that sense it is "inferior" but that is a poor descriptor which denotes it as being low quality when it isn't.

The artistic point of course is that Lucas was dreaming of not using film back in the 70's but it took almost 30 years to finally get to the point of not bungling around with film. TPM did it to a degree as virtually all films now as you shoot on film then transfer it to the digital pipeline. He was not going to miss his chance to eliminate film altogether. It wasn't ready for TPM he did what he always does and push things to the limit and beyond for AOTC and then was able to vastly improve everything for his very last film he would direct.

The earlier statement though was about the general audience not people with specific knowledge and who would be able to tell the differences between film stocks as well as digital "stocks".

To some degree I suppose but then TPM didn't have Kamino or Geonosis or as you say Clonetroopers etc. TPM was set up to show mainly a forest planet, a sand planet and a city planet which was akin to the OT vibe. So was it really the cameras and film stock? Partially of course but even if AOTC was shot on film you would still have the more fantastic environments and the like so personally I rather doubt it would be that different.

AOTC behind the scenes from the DVD:

 

I love the hangar with the full size Jedi fighter. That thing looks amazing.

 

Sure a lot of people saw this, but just great!

 

It is amazing how much of an impact 3PO has had on both fans and society. A truly great character that Anthony Daniels gave such life to.

 

I wonder what C-3PO is saying to Obi Wan during 2:50 as he's about to inform Padmé on Anakin's dark deeds.

 

AOTC behind the scenes 2 from the DVD:

 

Mod Edit.

 

Mod Edit: Not Appropriate

KNOCK IT OFF.

 

2:15 -2:22
Shows some nice sets!
Was that Jungle Set or On location?

 

seriously! are you kidding me! saying someone is attractive is not sexism. wtf is going on around here?!

 

Attractive wow, u got modded for that!?
Don't want to say bad things bout mods, but thats
crazy IMO! But what ev,.

 

Sexism policy | Page 30 | Jedi Council Forums

 

This is why Episodes I-III look and are so beautiful. The combination of technics and creating new things.(Among other things)

 

Was r2d2 CGI in some of these shots, in ship and in the hanger?

 

Possibly, I think Kenny Baker was sick while filming ROTS.

 

That would have little to do with the scene in question though, because (at least when it comes to the prequels) Kenny Baker wasn't in R2 most of the time anyway
Kenny Baker only fit into an R2 that couldn't really move, while the version that could move couldn't turn its head at the same time. You can even notice this in ANH, where R2's head is always in a fixed position while rolling. So in short, any "character shots" of R2 interacting with others - moving his head, going up and down a bit - was done by Kenny Baker, while R2 just moving along was probably not him. In the prequels, apart from the scenes done specifically to have Kenny Baker in the movie, R2 was either a robot or - later on - digital. In this particular case, I'd guess - without being 100% sure - that any elaborate movement was probably done with the digital version. So firing the thrusters, using all his tools, etc. was probably CGI.

 

Real^

CGI ^

U Can kind of tell if it is or isn't. That scene on Corasaunt in Anakins Fighter was 100% practical?
Looks like it.?

 

4:33^
Practical sets and starships don't get much better than that!

 

I came to say that I despise how many people seem " to know better " but they have no idea how these movies were made . (some people from VIISA said that AOTC and ROTS had only reused soundtrack from the other movies and had only bits of new music in them.

 

Comparing these movies to another trilogy of movies that gets cridisized for a lot of CGI, The Hobbit trilogy!
But I feel (and pretty sure )Hobbit used more. At least the prequels didn't use cgi for humans, (besides Clones) but hobbit BOT5A
used cgi for IronFoot. At least im 99.9% sure that's cgi. ^

 

I still haven't seen any of the Hobbit movies, and doubt if I ever will. I promised myself to re-read LOTR a hundred times to wash the memory of the movies from my brain.

 

Some numbers I just did for another post:

ANH 350 shots
TESB 605 shots
ROTJ 900 shots
TPM 1950 shots
AOTC 2200 shots
ROTS 2200 shots

On the ROTS DVD Rob Coleman says that ROTS has animation in some 1269 shots. I presume he means these shots in the sense that they are elements of the entire shot ie. Grievous is animated in a shot that also has actors, miniatures, matte paintings etc. One shot is made up of many elements with CGI animation being one part of said shot.

So approximately 1269 shots of the 2200 of ROTS have some element of animation be it 1% to 100% (like some shots of Grievous in the escape pod etc)

So that is 931 shots of ROTS with no animation and therefore by some people's parlance those shots would be totally practical. So ROTS sans CGI has more practical shots than ROTJ's 900 and slightly less than ANH and TESB combined 955 combined compared to 931.

Now of course we know that there is animation in ANH, TESB and ROTJ and in each movie more and more animation was used. I don't know the animated shot numbers of the OT so I can't adjust their numbers. We know that while there was plenty of animation (which is what the lasers, Lightsabers, shadows of ships etc are) there were only a few early CGI animated shots like the Death Star trench plans projected in ANH.

As for ROTS itself 2200 divided by 1269 = 58%. So 42% of the movie has no animation while 58% has animation somewhere in the shot.

Now this is of course just an educated guess but of note before I tracked these number down my gut guess was that ROTS was probably about 60-65% of shots had some animation/CGI in them. So it was on the lower side of what I thought at 58%

If you were to do Mustafar, Utapau, Kashyyyk and Coruscant today they certainly wouldn't really need to do all that incredible miniature work and spends months and months shooting them with motion control cameras. As The Hobbit showed it can all be done via CGI now.

If ROTS were made today it could be with some 90% of the shots with CGI in them more or less.

Of course AOTC and ROTS both had some 2 hours of music composed and conducted by JW which is 30 minutes more than ANH and 13 minutes more than TESB.

Off hand I think in AOTC some portion of 10 minutes or so were cut and about 20 minutes of retracking was used from TPM. So that is still akin to TESB even before it had 10 minutes or whatever cut from it's score while edited to film.

As far as I can tell ROTS only retracked a few minutes overall but regardless it's still some 2 hours of music C&C'ed by JW with not much cut though there was a really good cue cut from Grievous' entrance starting with his theme and then action music with Obi-Wan and Anakin in The Elevator Scene.

 

It's funny that you mention that, B99. Now, I haven't gotten around the Battle of the Five Armies yet (I'm just having a hard time getting to it after suffering through Desolation of Smaug), but I was reading through some facebook posts on the official Hobbit page and their complaints are the same as what we've heard about the prequels. Too much green screen (there was still plenty of green screen work in LOTR), not enough location shooting (there was still plenty of good old natural New Zealand footage used in The Hobbit), all CGI (plenty of model work done).

I think effects have literally gotten to the point where folks can't distinguish models between CGI. I at least feel better that the prequels aren't the only films to be misrepresented as CGI-fests.