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

But as has been clearly gone over again and again people who see scenes from the PT are convinced what they are seeing is all "fake" and "unconvincing" because they "know it was all green and blue screen and all CG put in afterwards."

Then you tell them no that "fake" and "unconvincing"sequence you just saw was an actual set built or like many PT shots was mostly built or 3/4's or half or 1/4 or whatever plus matte paintings plus background plates or miniatures or whatever technique the same kind of thing the OT did only know they can do it digitally and do all kinds of things they wish they could have done back then.

Mustafar was an incredible feat of models, miniatures, matte paintings, sets, live shots of lava and the like put together digitally and CG as well but ask some uninformed people and they'll say it was unconvincing and all CG. They've made their minds it's unreal.

 

what the hell are you talkin about? If it looks unreal/greenscreened, it looks unreal man. Simple as that

 

Not in the least.

You are deciding what is unreal based on whatever it is you want which is fine for one's self but I say it looks completely real in as much as real as it can look in a fantasy way. The PT environments are just as "real" as the OT ones in fact the PT one's really are far better simply because they can make them look far more real and detailed.

I saw a really funny post from someone recently about how they said the CG for the SW SE's looks dated but the rest of it looks fine. That is quite funny that he actually thinks that all of the fixes for SW which make it far better and at least make it match up with ESB and ROTJ visually is dated looking while the original cut is not dated at all when it was dated by the time the next film came out!

 

Hell yeah it looked fine, did he see all the matte lines they took out?

 

It is worth mentioning that if someone thinks that an image in a film looks fake or unconvincing, even if that opinion is based off of a false assumption it is still their perception and a perfectly valid perception at that.

A lot of the images in this thread have really surprised me and opened my eyes. That doesn't change how "real" or "fake" the effects of the movies look to me, however. AOTC still looks like a movie from 2002 (meaning, it's starting to really show it's age) regardless of my conscious knowledge of how many models were used verses CGI elements.

The richer question that we really should be asking is this: why do so many people mistake practical, in-camera effects elements for CGI in these films? What is it about the design of the sets, the lighting, the way the models are composited, that causes so many people to find them "fake" looking? That's much richer food for thought, in my opinion, than simply saying "Hah! What you thought was one thing was actually another thing, therefore your perceptions and opinions are invalid!"

 

As i said, early hd cameras, early cgi and heavy use of greenscreen. Cgi is far better utilised with the practical (not models), and digital technology has come along way since early 2000's.
Lucas using cinematographer from Young Indiana Jones Chronicles probably didn't help either

 

Their prejudice, really. Knowing it was shot on digital cameras, knowing Lucas was a digital pioneer etc.

I've recently (well, it's actually almost a year ago) watched AOTC with a friend who had no idea about all of this. She had never seen Star Wars before and actually said she was impressed with how well and realistic the movie looks, especially considering the movie's age. When I once watched AOTC with my sister, she screamed "Fake!" during the "Waterfall scene" (which I always found convincing). During other scenes, which I always found considerably more fake, she didn't say a thing and believed in it.

Effects are a completely subjective thing, up to the individual's perception of reality. Again, for instance, there is no "rule" that a CG character looks less "realistic" than a puppet. They're both realistic and fake in different ways. The evaluation of realism is up to every single viewer.
If you really want to find a rudimentally "objective" reason for some people's problems with the effects in the PT, I'd find two things at best:
1.) They weren't afraid to show challenging, extremely bright daylight scenes in the PT.
2.) There are more locations in PT where we just know they don't exist. Everybody who sees Kamino knows this has to be "fake" because we know something like this doesn't exist on earth. It makes one sceptical, subconsciously "looking for fakeness".

That's it, in short:

 

Brilliant thread.

 

True but what informs said perception?

Because they "know" it's "fake" because they have come to accept that one particular way of doing things results in images they accept as "real"

As I've said it's all "fake" but their are people who insist that a fake puppet Yoda is more real to them than a fake digital puppet Yoda is. I on the other hand have no problem at all with either fake Yoda as being "real".

Of course if Yoda had been created as a digital character in the first place he'd never have been as immobile in the first place. There is a complete difference between the CG Yoda have to match up to the puppet in looks and movement and then trying to stretch that into something than can move anyway you want it to.

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here. What I take from it is that you mean AOTC looks like 2002 in some way but what exactly do you mean by that?

Every film in the series look like it's time in some ways be it '77, '80, '83, '99, 02 or 05. On the other hand there is nothing quite like them at their time before or since other than those films themselves.

SW may be a long time ago in a galaxy far away but it still is filtered through the 70's lens. That is one of the reasons why in the SE's GL redid the color timing so that they'd match better to the PT with the more modern look of crushed blacks and high contrast. Then there is the particular look of the film stock itself.

I'm not sure what showing it's age means as anything is going to age but the thing that is so striking about all Star Wars is how Lucas does things that many others didn't do and certainly not much of. Lucas was constantly doing large battles in full light without restorting to the tricks that many others do to get away with things in the dark and rain.

If you think AOTC shows it's age then SW really does. So many shots of the original really don't stand up very well at all unless you filter them through nostalgia. We've become so visually adept that many shot look to me now exactly what there were models. The Death Star really comes off quite poor at times but I don't mind it and the SE has been able to fix up what they can to make it less noticeable.

Except that perception is fueled by all the years that people have been feed the line that it was all CG therefore it was and trying to convince them otherwise becames extremely difficult. You have to prove to them it wasn't the way they've been told.

As I said before these people have a "reality" of the fake set for them in terms of the OT. That version of fake becomes solid and real while something that moves away from it is not that and therefore "obviously" fake. The film (or in the case of II and III the video as film) looks different images and sharper and clearer and things have a different quality.

The sets, lighting, costumes everything in the PT is done in a different style. It's not the same Star Wars with the same design ethic and colors and textures they are used to. In comparison the OT might be like acrylic painting compared to the PT's oil paintings.

 

Bunch of AOTC shots some repeats no doubt but they look good anyway:

 

So this was a model and not a full scale set?:



All this time I thought that was a real, full scale stage built.. looked very real.

 

love this stuff. i wish they ha more bts about these like all the lotr dvds have. love looking and miniatures and bigatures.

 

It'd be too costly to do that.

The actual sets they built were really often no more than the kind of thing they could do on the OT or far less in some cases. Studio stages are only so big then as now so there is only so big you can get.

Just like on the OT the sets were either kept smaller in total context as "real" or extended out with the means availble then being mattes and the like.

What they could do with digital comps is to do what was done before in making only part of the sets but then combining that with these great miniatures and then supplementing it all with mattes and CGI elements to bring it all alive as opposed to it being more static. Before they'd have to scratch the glass etc to place the live actions shots in now they can place what they want wherever they want to.

Yeah even on the DVD's it was rather undersold. It was there they just didn't really push it that much in terms of what they were doing.

It was just seen as part of the overall process so no big deal really.

ROTS:

 

i think a lot of the cg backlash had more to do with characters rather than sets and backdrops. jarjar and yoda and occasionally watto are the only characters imho who actually looked photorealistic. boss nass looked like a cartoon as did lots of the other generic gungans. In ep2 Dexter Jester was not believable. several of the guys on the separatist council were cg and as well as all of the geonosians. they looked like cartoons. You also have the 3 monsters in the arena in ep2 all completely cg. i didnt buy them for a second. in ep3 i cant really understand lucas' decision why the clones are cg'd. although i guess it's easier to kill them or insert them into big effects scenes if they are cg. but that still doesnt make them look real. the guys who helped refuel obiwan's ship after landing on utuapu were straight out of a pixar cartoon. and also the guys walking around the polis massa asteroid at the end were just as cartoonish looking.

 

all they had was the street and the aliens/people. great pics everyone!

 

I think the monsters in the Geonosian arena (AOTC) are infinitely more 'believable' than the Rancor in ROTJ or the giant slug in TESB etc. The slug, the Rancor, the Diagnoga, the Wampa, the Sarlacc pit all looked incredibly fake, even when the films came out in 77/80’s. The only one that gets a pass from me is ROTJ's Jabba... so where does that leave your little theory???

 

TPM shots:

 

How old are you?

 

I can't agree with that. DJ and the others look great.

No they didn't. I've seen cartoons. They aren't as good.

If you don't buy them I don't know what you can. Certainly no stop motion ever seen in cinema before that and certainly nothing in the OT.

Really the Stormtroopers aren't all that good. It's sort of covered in the story in that they are all pretty incompetant overall but the Clonetroopers look like real army not a bunch of stumblebums because they are extras. Guys running around in suits when they really can see is just trouble it's better not to deal with.

Again though your real problem seems to actually be design which makes them too "cartoony" this is the same basic problem that really is the subjective root of so many things as opposed to the objective reality of why they did it. Because they deemed it was the best thing to do.

You don't like it so therefore you are blaming it on this and this and this and that is your reality. Fine.

I'm not sure why people do this. Why not just acknowledge that the design isn't what you want and you wanted something else. That is fine but for various people to say that they think it all looks bad and cartoony and plastic and fake and this and that is really shifting the actual focus away from what they really dislike and that is it isn't the way they want it to be.

The execution is spectacular. It's not slipshod, it's not underthought, it's not done on the cheap or without thought or anything else like that.

I find that many people (I don't know about you) set their "reality" of Star Wars at the OT level and moving away from that upsets them. "Well it was done this way before why not do that again?"

 

Even the CG creatures/characters are built from photographic elements. I love watching how they textured the Kaminoans.

 

Old enough to have seen the films in the cinema... Young enough to embrace new ways of doing things. Why?

 

which films? the original trilogy or prequel trilogy?

 

Wow, these shots of the model sets are amazing. I've never seen most of these on the DVD's or in magazines. Where are they coming from?

 

Both...

 

Some great pictures there