Star Wars Episode 7

[Guest]

Well I have to admit Freya, that's a pretty funny post. :D

 

R,

[Chris Millar]

There are hundreds :)

 

One that I found took a fair bit of effort and is better for it:

 

[Guest]

That as well is also very funny indeed.

 

R,

[Brian Drysdale]

Making the real thing:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-30273367

[Freya Black]

Making the real thing:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-30273367

 

 

Great article Brian! :)

 

Made me smile!

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

The plight of the director.

 

So I just heard that poor JJ Abrams who is getting tons of stick over that awful trailer is actually fighting tooth and nail with Disney every step of the way.

 

It's Disney who are responsible for the beach ball robot abomination thing.

I think they are maybe hoping to spin it off into some kind of pixar animated series or something.

 

It's really hard for directors as the buck stops with them and everyone will judge them on the work as we have already seen with the trailer.

Of course in reality the studios have the big say in what happens.

 

My understanding is that everyone involved (bar Disney) have worked really hard to make something in keeping with the original film. Obviously when there is big money involved things can get messy.

 

On the other side of all that, we do see some bad acting from that guy in the forest but it might just be a bit taken out of context that works fine overall. I mention this because I feel the director will have a LOT of input into the acting whereas the studio are more likely to be bothered with glitzy stuff and explosions.

 

I'm not keen on the cgi look of most of the trailer with the exception of the bits in the desert as I feel this affects the overall look of the movie. That beach ball robot is the most offensive thing so far though.

 

It might not be as bad as the trailer suggest in short but there may be a lot more nasty surprises given that JJ has been in many, many battles with Disney over this movie.

 

Freya

Edited December 5, 2014 by Freya Black

[Bill DiPietra]

We all know this movie will pack the theaters, but you simply can't compare this or the prequels that looked like digital paintings to the original films. The Millennium Falcon had such a rustic look to it in the '77 film. Tattooine actually looked like the desert. Not a series of digitally enhanced dunes.

 

There is only one Star Wars trilogy in my book.

[Bill DiPietra]

I just re-watched the trailer with the sound off while I had Preisner's Lacrimosa playing on iTunes. Talk about surreal...lol

[John Holland]

Just to say this film only finished shooing i think now 3/4 weeks ago so teaser preview means nothing , I do know they have shot so much old school as in false perspectives and huge sets . This was from the D.P and Second unit DP .So please dont diss it from this little tease .

[Paulo Arellano]

 

 

On the other side of all that, we do see some bad acting from that guy in the forest but it might just be a bit taken out of context that works fine overall. I mention this because I feel the director will have a LOT of input into the acting whereas the studio are more likely to be bothered with glitzy stuff and explosions.

 

How can you even rate the acting on that teaser ? you're nuts.

[Tyler Purcell]

Heard a vicious rumor two weeks ago from a local projectionist…

 

With the success of Interstellar, Episode VII is rumored to have 5 perf 70mm projection prints made utilizing the 6k scan back process they used on Interstellar.

[Freya Black]

 

How can you even rate the acting on that teaser ? you're nuts.

 

:) Well that was the point I was making in the bit you quoted me from.

 

The reason I'm down on the acting is because the guy pulls this silly fake pose in the trailer that reminds me of something out of a computer game trailer but my point was that perhaps this makes sense in the context of the movie as a whole. It just looks awful in the trailer. It's too short and out of context to have much of an idea.

 

Freya

[Brian Drysdale]

Of course, some of the things seen in the trailer may never end up in the final the film.

[Guest]

It might not be as bad as the trailer suggest in short but there may be a lot more nasty surprises given that JJ has been in many, many battles with Disney over this movie.

 

Freya

 

I will be disappointed if I don't see Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck locked in a light saber battle to the death.

 

R,

[Freya Black]

 

I will be disappointed if I don't see Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck locked in a light saber battle to the death.

 

R,

 

[Guest]

I hope that's a scene from the movie.

 

R,

[Jackson Clark]

I really liked the beach ball droid. Honestly, it reminds me of exactly the same spirit of invention and silliness that R2 and C3PO represented throughout the entire original trilogy. I loved nearly every single shot of this trailer. It invoked the invention and adventure of the original trilogy on an incredible level. I also liked how they are using visual effects not to go crazy...but merely to refine.

[Freya Black]

I really liked the beach ball droid. Honestly, it reminds me of exactly the same spirit of invention and silliness that R2 and C3PO represented throughout the entire original trilogy. I loved nearly every single shot of this trailer. It invoked the invention and adventure of the original trilogy on an incredible level. I also liked how they are using visual effects not to go crazy...but merely to refine.

 

Well it's not so much about the character of the droid so much but the fact that the appearance of the droid is poorly executed. It looks like rather cheap knocked up cgi from a computer game or something and integrates really poorly with the surrounding environment it is depicted in. Also the characters of R2D2 and C3PO were characters that seemed like they might operate on technology rather than magic. Obviously Star Wars is heavily based in the realm of fantasy but it does try to keep a balance between the science and fantasy elements.

 

So it's mostly the appearance of the character that I'm concerned about here and the fact it looks cheaply executed and very digital. The overall look of the trailer is poor with the exception of the small Daisy in the desert moment.

 

The fact I have to explain what is wrong with the beach ball robot is an indication of the problems that cinematography faces.

 

There has been a trend for some time towards very nasty looking imagery and I don't see an easy way to turn back from this path at this point. It started with abandoning film for video because video cameras, while not getting that close to the incredible quality of film, have reached a point where many people consider them to be "good enough". This is only the first compromise however. Since then there seems to have been a trend towards nastier and nastier looking video. I'm often shocked by people saying how fantastic some imagery looks when it looks completely awful to my eyes.

 

It's now very easy to create cgi aspects to things and to manipulate the digital image. I think that over time it will matter less and less how well the CGI blends with the overall image environment and that it is in fact more likely that the cinematic environment will become degraded to match the CGI.

 

We have only just started down this path and I don't see cinematography having a bright future in relation to the changes that are coming.

 

Freya

Edited December 20, 2014 by Freya Black

[Bill DiPietra]

 

Well it's not so much about the character of the droid so much but the fact that the appearance of the droid is poorly executed. It looks like rather cheap knocked up cgi from a computer game or something and integrates really poorly with the surrounding environment it is depicted in. Also the characters of R2D2 and C3PO were characters that seemed like they might operate on technology rather than magic. Obviously Star Wars is heavily based in the realm of fantasy but it does try to keep a balance between the science and fantasy elements.

 

So it's mostly the appearance of the character that I'm concerned about here and the fact it looks cheaply executed and very digital. The overall look of the trailer is poor with the exception of the small Daisy in the desert moment.

 

The fact I have to explain what is wrong with the beach ball robot is an indication of the problems that cinematography faces.

 

There has been a trend for some time towards very nasty looking imagery and I don't see an easy way to turn back from this path at this point. It started with abandoning film for video because video cameras, while not getting that close to the incredible quality of film, have reached a point where many people consider them to be "good enough". This is only the first compromise however. Since then there seems to have been a trend towards nastier and nastier looking video. I'm often shocked by people saying how fantastic some imagery looks when it looks completely awful to my eyes.

 

It's now very easy to create cgi aspects to things and to manipulate the digital image. I think that over time it will matter less and less how well the CGI blends with the overall image environment and that it is in fact more likely that the cinematic environment will become degraded to match the CGI.

 

We have only just started down this path and I don't see cinematography having a bright future in relation to the changes that are coming.

 

Freya

 

Very well stated, Freya! You nailed it!

Edited December 20, 2014 by Bill DiPietra

[David Mullen ASC]

But the new "Star Wars" is being shot on film, doesn't anyone here appreciate that? Are we really going to nitpick over some temp CGI effects for a movie that is a year away from being finished?

 

And the original "Star Wars" had some floating ball-like droids in them, one was completely added in post (the light saber training ball onboard the Millennium Falcon -- the torture droid in Princess Leia's prison chamber looked live on the set, but either way, the movies already established that droids can be as simple ball shapes.)

 

Some people seem to think that if J.J. Abrams doesn't use an optical printer and models, he's somehow betraying the films when he's already doing them in a more retro approach then Lucas did a decade ago on the prequels. I'd cut the guy some slack until you see the finished movie.

[cole t parzenn]

Has anyone actually called for optical composites? Supposing the effects team wanted to, could they?

[Chris Millar]

Would be interesting to see opticals done with todays technology - and by that I mean, film stock/grain improvements, glass/filters, positioning device precision etc.

 

And done by people with a good budget and legacy to upkeep. Reading about Return of the Jedi in Cinefex was really interesting, a lot of the challenge there was the management and timing of all the footage.

 

Maybe try a 'lean' approach ...

 

I'd love to be involved.

[David Mullen ASC]

Optical compositing was never all that great. You had color saturation, contrast and grain issues from duplicating the film that meant it never quite matched the non-optical shots surrounding the effects shot. Modern stocks aren't going to make that much of a difference and optical line-up of elements was as precise as any mechanical / optical technology could be with those ILM optical printers.

 

But worst of all was the amount of work involved, every element needing a hold-out matte and a reverse hold-out matte, and if you wanted to work with YCM's, you were talking about even more elements. A battle scene in space in "Return of the Jedi" involved hundreds of pieces of film that had to be composited in a certain order to get one object to pass in front of another and then behind another, etc. And after all of that work, they'd often spot a mistake and have to re-do it all over again.

 

Optical compositing will never come back for complex titles or effects work.

 

I used to loathe, loathe, loathe opticals when I got to the answer printing step, I constantly asked for A-B roll transitions instead but those had their own issues, but at least it kept the fade or dissolve first-generation.

 

With digital compositing, you can output a finished efx shot with exactly the same grain and contrast as the original film. And if everything is going through a D.I., it all matches even better.

 

Even in the best composites in a "Star Wars" film, you usually could spot an efx shot coming up by the change in graininess, etc. The main reason why it wasn't so bad was that there were so many composites, you'd have a string of duped shots rather than big chunks of cleaner non-efx shots.

[Chris Millar]

Well you obviously have real experience with this stuff compared to me so of course I'll defer but jeez, way to shoot my dream down...

 

:D

 

At least I can still grasp on to a fantasy/alternate universe, where that technology wasn't superseded by digital - but instead grew and evolved into something we just don't have today, but was still at heart, analog, composite, scale model, film based etc.

 

Of course digital could still be thrown in, but at the death star 'many Bothans died to bring us this information' projection level - Tron, Last Star Fighter kind of stuff

[Mark Dunn]

 

 

 

I used to loathe, loathe, loathe opticals when I got to the answer printing step, I constantly asked for A-B roll transitions instead but those had their own issues, but at least it kept the fade or dissolve first-generation.

 

I.m surprised they were still used so late. Maybe it was a US tradition? At film school we had A&B in 1982 (16mm of course) and it had been standard for years.

It's a hobby of mine to spot dissolves in films on TV (not hard) and work out the date when they went to A&B- I reckon early to mid-60s. I always wonder why they didn't just composite the whole of both shots rather than just the length of the dissolve. Paying by the foot, I suppose.