ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY
ILM’S John Knoll shares his experience of making the new Star Wars movie
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story marks the start of a series of movies that explore the origins and back stories of various historical events and characters that are part of the cinematic universe conceived by George Lucas.
“As far as I know I’m credited as executive producer, story by, and visual effects supervisor on the movie,” says ILM’S chief creative officer and VFX supervisor John Knoll, who took part in discussions about story, design, costumes and casting for the project based on his idea. “It began informally in the company after the new slate of Star Wars films was announced. There were Episodes VII, VIII and IX which continue the Skywalker saga, but intriguing to a lot of us was this idea of doing films that are in the Star Wars universe, but weren’t part of that through line. They could be their own self-contained, standalone stories that don’t have to have any characters in common. One of them announced was the Han Solo story which is a wonderful opportunity to find out who this mysterious character that we meet in Episode IV is, and find out how he became the person we see there.
“I wanted to do some adventures with characters who we don’t know, so I pitched informally to friends this idea of the rebel spy mission to steal the Death Star plans. I got these enthusiastic responses back when I would do this little 30-second version of it. ‘Imagine this.’ Encouraged by that, I started to get a little more elaborate with each telling.”
Many, many stars
Two new locations appear in the science fiction heist helmed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) and starring Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Jiang Wen and Forest Whitaker. “I can’t claim credit for Jedha or Scarif, which were the result of Doug Chiang [co-production designer] and Gareth working together on what they
a theme of the Whole movie is to juxtapose some of the Familiar With things We haven’t seen Before John Knoll, CCO and VFX supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic
wanted some of these environments to be,” reveals John. “Gareth wanted to shoot in some place like Jordan. We ended up in Wadi Desa right next to Wadi Rum where big parts of Lawrence of Arabia were shot. It’s spectacular terrain. Jedha came from Gareth wanting to shoot there. How do we make that planet not look like any other desert planet we’ve been on because we’ve got Tatooine and Jakku? Some of it’s colour palette. We’re doing more Mars-like colours on the planet but with the idea of it being a cold environment with snow visible at times.” The original concept called for there to be permafrost on the desert moon that is the home of the Kyber crystal contained in the Jedi weapon of choice – the Lightsaber.
“There was talk early on about taking a lot of our photography from Jordan, and adding snow and permafrost into that, but in the end we decided not to go in and do all of that. However, you can still see some of the permafrost and snow in the wide views of the planet from orbit.” Laamu Atoll in the Maldives served as new planet Scarif. “I don’t think we ever establish what it is a moon of,” states John. “The idea is that this bright sunny tropical paradise is juxtaposed with the war events that are going on there. Gareth wanted to have that contrast which we haven’t seen in Star Wars before.”
A theme of the movie is to juxtapose familiar things from the Star Wars universe with things we’ve not seen before, as seen with Stormtroopers marching through clear blue waters. John recalls what director Gareth Edwards said: “You want to bring something new to it, otherwise, why are we telling the story?”
Orbiting the moon is the infamous Death Star. Recreating this was a unique problem as it needed to be digitally recreated without having access to the original model, because it is now owned by a private collector. “We were going to need to see it a number
of different times from various angles,” says John. “I wanted to make sure that we got it right so I made a little hobby project last year when we were in pre-production – collecting every good photograph that we had from our image archives and even on the internet. We projected our imagery onto a sphere and then unwrapped it into texture space so we had a good template. Then I did some nice high-resolution textures, which lined up with the template so that we had all of the panels in the right place.”
Model behaviour
“A fun aspect of this project is that we do catch up to much of what you see in Episode IV with the vehicle designs,” remarks John. Our X-wing and TIE Fighters are matched as closely as we can to the original motioncontrolled models. Given that they were framed in a little tighter than was ever done in New Hope there’s better detail in the
execution. There’s one Imperial shuttle we’ve seen before but the other ones are new, yet feel like they’re from the same factory and design team.”
Two new vehicles make an appearance: “The U-wing is like the Rebel troop carrier so it’s meant to be a bigger thing to what we’ve seen before, which is more of an attack ship or bomber. It’s got influences from a Y-wing and X-wing in there. The idea of the AT-ACT is that it’s an earlier model of AT-AT. It has shared pieces with the design of the later, more heavily armoured AT-AT, but it’s thinner and less well-armed because it’s more for transporting cargo than a walking tank,” describes John.
Most of the aliens were produced by creature effects supervisor Neal Scanlan
We acquired a Whole Bunch of the original model kits, then Built Digital Versions of the Parts John Knoll, CCO and VFX supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic
and the costume of Darth Vader was rebuilt; however, the Stormtrooper outfit needed a digital upgrade. “We saw a bunch of the original props and costumes out at the archive building. Due to limitations of the era, the Stormtroopers’ helmets were lumpy and had sloppy paint lines. It was fine for a grainer film stock in a theatre where the film will be jumping around in the gate a bit, but the way this movie was being shot with the Alexa 65 camera and sharp lenses, I didn’t think that stuff would hold up. So what we did is a better implementation from the original design. When you see them at a distance they look exactly the same but when you get framed in tighter there’s better detail in there. For example, the respirator in front which was vacuum-formed into one piece now has part lines.”
An important aspect of the Millennium Falcon and Star Destroyer aesthetic was the way the models were built, using plastic model kits for Formula One cars, artillery pieces, rockets and tanks to detail the basic forms. The same process was updated for Rogue One: “We went through a process of acquiring a whole bunch of the original model kits that were used to build all of the ships in the 1970s, then built digital versions of the parts so that our modellers could construct the ships in the same way.”
Documentary-style shooting
“Gareth’s approach towards shooting on Rogue One is a cinéma vérité, documentary style which is a wonderful thing to inject into Star Wars,” observes John. “It has much more of a found footage kind of feel to it. When we were doing all-synthetic scenes, such as the space battle and some of the aerial fight down at ground level, I wanted to make sure that the cinematography had that same kind of cinéma vérité look and feel.”
Since Gareth operates the camera on 75 per cent of the live-action, motion-capturing the cameras became be a good way to inject the same kind of composition and
cinematography into the CG scenes. John says: “We did lots of prepping of scenes, mocap volumes, and then let Gareth walk around with our virtual camera to record his own coverage.”
LED panels were deployed to emulate the proper lighting for the cockpit scenes. “These are massive jumbotrons that you see for animated billboards or at sporting events,” explains John. “Essentially we’re taking image-based lighting like with CG and bringing it back into the real world. Vehicle cockpits are a perfect example of travelling through a complex environment that makes it hard to light the set well, because as you’re moving past something that is slightly illuminated or darker you’ve got things like lasers flying past you or explosions that you’re flying by. So you want to see that light travel as well as some subtlety and complexity. 360-degree animatics were prepared with more realistic lighting and contrast so that the foreground is more photographically true and you get a nice high level of realism.”
In a movie that’s about the rebels stealing the Death Star plans, we’re going to get a glimpse of that classic Larry Cuba graphic from A New Hope, John explains: “I did some investigations, and we couldn’t locate a copy of the original film that was projected on the rear projection screen in that briefing room scene, so I did a painstaking recreation. It was fun trying to recreate older technology with the modern tools.”
Six weeks of reshoots were conducted: “That was all about the movie coming in a bit long, condensing it, and needing to explain some of what had been dropped out. It was all about clarity and sharpness of storytelling,” says John. “I’m deeply involved with the space battle right now and it’s really fun. I like being able to revisit some of the old designs. There are a lot of classic ships that we are seeing in ways we haven’t seen them before. The shots look gorgeous.” Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is in UK cinemas from December 15.