Post-crawl pan

In Eps I and IV-VI, the opening scene after the paragraphs, pans down to a ship/planet. George says in EpI DVD that that is something not to be changed because of fan loyality, but in EpII the pan is up. Why the change?

 

Because it made for a memorable opening (the best since ANH).

But remember in space, there isn't really up or down. In Star Wars, if you think of the "camera" movement, it was always moving towards something. So in AOTC it had to move "up" because that is where the planet was.

 

^Maybe he decided to change it just to make Episode II different, maybe to imply that nothing is as it seems in the film's plot. I wish I hadn't read the beginning of the script abd given that part away to myself before the movie came out. I didn't read any further, because I'd already managed to ruin one surprise.

Also, I've noticed a trend in the two trilogies: the originals all begin with a pan down to a Star Destroyer, a warship, an evil ship, whereas the prequels all seem to begin with an unarmed diplomatic ship, which is then destroyed. I bet Episode III will start with some kind of ship on a peace mission that is then blown up.

-JDR.

 

I thought what George was doing with with the pan up (I think it's a tilt, actually, but that's getting techical!) was to say that with this film, he'd be taking Star Wars into a different connection, as, in this film, we do see lots of things in the Star Wars universe that we've never seen before, so I think the pan up was an indication of that. Or something!

 

George says in EpI DVD that that is something not to be changed because of fan loyality

He never said it was for fan loyality.

 

Technically, the camera really tilts down to the planet, because it´s upside-down(like the ship).

I was really surprised by this on opening night(as I was by a lot of other things in the film).
My first thought was "What?"
The second: "COOL!"

 

It DOES pan down!

Look at the ships in that scene and the next. The senator's ship, and 3 naboo fighters rotate once to adjust to the planet. They fly by "right side up" but in at the end of that shot, and the beginning of the next, they rotate once. YOU were upside down!

In the theater, I remember rotating my entire body while watching that scene. Have any of you been in that tunnel in Universal Studios that rotates and you start turning your head sideways, because you think youre on your side. You keep thrusting your hands out to the wall, thinking its the floor, and that you are falling. Its a trip.

Anyway, Thats how I felt in that scene. I knew I was upside down.

 

I don't think of as that important. I guess he just wanted to do something new.

 

I believe it was a tribute to Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) who died b4 AOTC was finished.

 

I believe it was a tribute to Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) who died b4 AOTC was finished.

This was officially confirmed in Homing Beacon #61:

The very first shot of Episode II has an homage to another sci-fi classic as the camera tilts up to the crowded orbital traffic of Coruscant. "That shot had been executed in 2001: A Space Odyssey," explains John Knoll, one of Episode II's Visual Effects Supervisors. "I put an Orion space plane flying in there."

 

It's a tilt