Star Wars new FX
dhe...@polaris.attmail.com
There's some FX-knowledgable folks who hang around here. Could someone
tell me if the new stuff Lucas added includes puppets? I'd heard it was
all computer generated, but some of it is incredibly 2D and the
creatures all look like stop action, to me.
And even if they did use puppets, if they had to digitally incorporate
the new stuff in with the old, why couldn't they... well, smooth things
out a little bit in the process? I mean the morphing stuff used in...
[oh what was the movie? "Legend" perhaps? You know the one--where the
old woman turns into several animals] anyway, that seemed to flow more
smoothly, to me.
Any comments or corrections to my perceptions?
--
Dianne <*>
(who really expected something cleaner)
Gharlane of Eddore
In <MPG.d74e4b7c1...@mailhost.att.com>
Well, it wasn't that great, but they did slip a bunch of new stuff in.
The one that really tickled me was the little flying robot high and
to the left in the scene just before the main characters enter the
Cantina....... all the humans' shadows go in one direction, but the
flying robot's shadow goes in a *different* direction.....
Gotta be purposeful, like that old shoe that somehow got into one
of the space battle scenes, or the Large Potato in the asteroid shots....
Magick Man
dhe...@polaris.attmail.com wrote:
: There's some FX-knowledgable folks who hang around here. Could someone
: tell me if the new stuff Lucas added includes puppets? I'd heard it was
: all computer generated, but some of it is incredibly 2D and the
: creatures all look like stop action, to me.
: And even if they did use puppets, if they had to digitally incorporate
: the new stuff in with the old, why couldn't they... well, smooth things
: out a little bit in the process? I mean the morphing stuff used in...
: [oh what was the movie? "Legend" perhaps? You know the one--where the
: old woman turns into several animals] anyway, that seemed to flow more
: smoothly, to me.
: Any comments or corrections to my perceptions?
: --
: Dianne <*>
: (who really expected something cleaner)
Not all the "new" scenes are actually newly-created footage. As
I understand it, in addition to the brand new CGI stuff, they also
showed us some of the more conventional special effects which had
originally ended up on the cutting room floor.
So, the scenes you don't recognize and take to be stuttery CGI
may instead be stop-motion stuff done a couple decades ago. Or
you might have thought as I did-- there were a few scenes I didn't
recognize in Empire, and I thought they were new footage, but when
I went home and re-watched my tape I realized that they were there
the whole time.
Magick Man
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dhe...@polaris.attmail.com
In article <5eqmrr$q...@linet06.li.net>, Magick Man penned...
>Not all the "new" scenes are actually newly-created footage. As
>I understand it, in addition to the brand new CGI stuff, they also
>showed us some of the more conventional special effects which had
>originally ended up on the cutting room floor.
>
>
Nah, it was new stuff added to existing scenes--especially the creatures
in the city-whose-name-I-don't-remember-Los-something-that-has-the-
Cantina...
[moderator note: Mos Eisley]
For that matter, I gather they had to recomposite--why didn't they
smooth out some of the cuts (like when they turned on the light saber in
front of Luke in the Millennium Falcon when he puts on the helmet to
spar with the remote-ball-thing--it looked spliced in the original and
in the new version).
It just amazed me how they could do so well with some stuff and so
awkwardly with others, and I was curious why.
--
Dianne <*>
Alan E. Minarik, Destroyer of Worlds
dhe...@polaris.attmail.com wrote:
>
> There's some FX-knowledgable folks who hang around here. Could someone
> tell me if the new stuff Lucas added includes puppets? I'd heard it was
> all computer generated, but some of it is incredibly 2D and the
> creatures all look like stop action, to me.
>
> And even if they did use puppets, if they had to digitally incorporate
> the new stuff in with the old, why couldn't they... well, smooth things
> out a little bit in the process? I mean the morphing stuff used in...
> [oh what was the movie? "Legend" perhaps? You know the one--where the
> old woman turns into several animals] anyway, that seemed to flow more
> smoothly, to me.
>
> Any comments or corrections to my perceptions?
Of course, what I really hoped (although I knew it to be in vain) they
might do as long as they were touching up the visuals was correct the
physics of some of the more...questionable moments in the space battles
and what-not. I mean, come on. That could have added *so much* to what
is already a great set of movies.
Just my humble opinion.
--AEM
Elisabeth Anne Riba
dhe...@polaris.attmail.com writes:
>For that matter, I gather they had to recomposite--why didn't they
>smooth out some of the cuts (like when they turned on the light saber in
>front of Luke in the Millennium Falcon when he puts on the helmet to
>spar with the remote-ball-thing--it looked spliced in the original and
>in the new version).
You know, I was asking that same question when I walked out of the theater.
It's very obviously two separate scenes:
- Luke standing with lit lightsaber
- Luke standing with unlit lightsaber
that they spliced together. And you can tell they were spliced because
there's a slight difference in position.
All they had to do was use morphing technology and add an extra frame or
three to smooth these scenes.
But they didn't.
>It just amazed me how they could do so well with some stuff and so
>awkwardly with others, and I was curious why.
I agree. I haven't seen Empire yet; only the new Star Wars.
The only added scenes that really excited my fiancee and me were the
Jabba sequence (ruined by the FX addition of Han stepping on Jabba's tail
- not supported by the dialog or attitude, but required by the size they
made Jabba) and the added dialog with Biggs.
But, they ruined the Biggs scene by dropping the payoff!
In the original, Biggs' death prompts Luke to say "We were a couple of
shooting stars" But there were no other scenes with Biggs, and the
audience didn't understand what Luke was talking about.
Now, Lucas returns the backstory and shows Luke & Biggs' friendship, but
cuts the epitaph. What's the point??
We notice that it was the added human interaction, not the FX, that
excited us. If anything, I found the new FX got in the way. All the
stuff in the background took attention away from the protagonists. And
because the characters didn't react to the new movement around them, it
made things that much more distracting. Luke was a naive farmboy.
Shouldn't he be gawking as much as the audience?
I've been thinking about what Mojo wrote, and I realize what the problem
is. Lucas made the Special Edition for the 14 year olds of today. He's
said he wants to show the spectacle to kids who never saw it before on the
big screen. We're not his target audience; we're too old. His target
audience wants bigger and better special effects, and the plot ambiguity
that we older fen enjoy gets in the way of that.
Han can't shoot Greedo first, because good guys never shoot first.
But Han is still the best figher and fastest shot in the West.
In the old version Han chased 10 stormtroopers down a corridor; only when
they reached a dead end did they realize that they were a match for him
and started shooting Han. But Han's man enough to take ten
stormtroopers! This won't do! Han'll run into a platoon of
stormtroopers before they'll start shooting back! He's a HERO!
I haven't seen Empire Strikes Back; based on Mojo's post and the list of
changes in rec.arts.sf.starwars.info, I'm not sure I'm going to.
Maybe I'll just watch the REAL version on video the next time I visit my
parents 52" screen with surround sound . . .
--
-------------------> Elisabeth Anne Riba * l...@netcom.com <-------------------
"Love wouldn't be blind if the braille weren't so damned much fun."
- Armistead Maupin, "Maybe the Moon"
Frederick Pagniello
In article <lisE6H...@netcom.com>
l...@netcom.com (Elisabeth Anne Riba) writes:
>
<snip>
>
>But, they ruined the Biggs scene by dropping the payoff!
>In the original, Biggs' death prompts Luke to say "We were a couple of
>shooting stars" But there were no other scenes with Biggs, and the
>audience didn't understand what Luke was talking about.
part of the novel, emphasizing Luke's long and deep friendship with Biggs.
Scott Johnson
Frederick Pagniello (FPAG...@UGA.cc.uga.edu) wrote:
: In article <lisE6H...@netcom.com>
I can't speak for that exact line, but the whole Bigg's thread was filmed
for the movie and just cut. So no, it wasn't in the original release of
Star Wars, but I believe Elisabeth's point was that if they were going to
include a part of the Bigg's thread, they should have included the whole
thing to get the full value. The reason it was in the novel was because it
*was* in the movie, (or at least filmed for it), just not in the original
release version.
--
Scott Johnson Email: sco...@eecs.umich.edu
Dept. of EECS, Univ. of Michigan http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~scottdj
"Do not meddle in the affairs of [techno]mages, for you are crunchy
and good with ketchup."
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