@jbartus Our production company exec produced / shot the overwhelming bulk of the “behind the scenes” footage (for the archival record) that was captured on set during the UK reshoots for a currently in production (in post now) separate stand-alone related release and for inclusion in the consumer retail home release (VOD/DVD, etc.) as an added feature or as part of an added / extended feature TBD by Disney.

I have stated that I enjoyed immensely the opportunity the contract presented and I was privileged to work with and around some of the finest talent in the feature film industry. It was an experience of a lifetime in many respects and a fitting project to end with as I am planning to retire in January.

I cannot make further public comment specific to the production or our role as I am embargoed until we are collectively / selectively released by Disney - which may not occur until after the retail DVD is pushed to production due to the nature of our participation.

I enjoyed viewing the finished film.

@Pavlov understood, I will press you no further. Thank you for clearing that up at the outset.

@Pavlov Really cool that you got to do that and that your company was viewed highly enough to be invited to do that - especially since you aren’t in LA. Nice way to end a career.

heads up!

this thread has gone into serious spoilers now. If you have not seen the film, do not read this thread!

ok then

@Kidsandliz The fact that we’re not on either coast and that we were actually available with little notice had a lot to do with things falling our way in this instance . . . No one could have anticipated the gross amount of re-shooting that was required for this film. When they initially wrapped, most everyone moved on to other obligations. We were in the right place at the right time, we knew the right people, and we were damn lucky.

The production scene in KC is magnificently vibrant, primarily due to the sheer volume of corporate work available (Hallmark, Garmin, Sprint, HR Block, Cerner, Crayola, Hostess, Russell Stover, AMC Theaters, Applebee’s, Farmland - all are headquartered in or around KC - and the list goes on, extensively). Especially copious are the opportunities in post-production, visual effects and animation.

@Pavlov

I enjoyed viewing the finished film.

well that speaks volumes as you don’t say you actually enjoyed the film just viewing it

i wondered why you got so quiet about things after you came back earlier this year after you were so jazzed up about things

i have a feeling that many people will be cool to the film like is written below

i didn’t like it at all and i had to sit through it twice already today once with my kid and once with my little brother and man it doesn’t get any better

i would bet that the next couple films will be bad too

someone other than disney needs to revive this dying saga

it is all just a money grab now guess disney wants their 4 billion back out quick

@mehtherfucker I feel like you’re reading quite a bit into @Pavlov’s statement that wasn’t actually there. I could be wrong but I feel like you’re splitting hairs about his use of the word viewing to create a double meaning that wasn’t intended.

@Pavlov Wow. I didn’t realize that about KC. So did you locate there on purpose with your company or did you always live there and so started your company there because you were already there?

Maybe I should job hunt there with all those corps located there (I have an MBA besides a PhD and where I live I just haven’t found anything here except manual labor for a plant company and adjunct teaching - some age discrimination in higher ed and they don’t view the kind of double cancer gap I had kindly even though I have pubs again).

And Russell Stover… That alone would make me happy. LOL. I miss having one of those around. Used to be down the road from one of their outlets. Stocked up on Christmas Santas and Easter Bunnies after each holiday. Though a few things are sold here in Kroger and Walmart I have not seen a Santa in about 4 years… sob. I’d buy about 5 of the really big ones given the chance and then be first in the store the second they marked them down and sweep the shelves. Bunnies we do have at easter so no clue why not santa. But then that leaves the rest of the year with nothing!!!

@Kidsandliz Moved to KC purposefully - We purchased and merged several smaller companies / production houses to make this one, and in ~20 days I’ll have sold this one and it will merge with another yet again. The wheel keeps spinning. As for job hunting here, the economic outlook in the area is quite good.

@Pavlov Hope you make out like a bandit when you sell. Are you staying there or moving on once you sell? I guess that is another way of asking if that is nice town to live in…

@Kidsandliz It is a great place to live - and I’ll be keeping a residence here in the southern suburbs while looking for another.

@Pavlov Thanks for the info. As long as there is decent health care there (one cancer has no cure but a longer life span) sounds good. Gets me the heck out of the deep south and it will be nice to be in a vibrant town again. Also you talking about the MO side or the KS side? Or does it not make a difference with respect to anything that matters…

@Kidsandliz The University of Kansas Medical Center has an excellent cancer program (interestingly located throughout the entire campus that was once the Worldcom World Headquarters). Amazing program, I highly recommend it. I live on the KS side in southern Johnson County, because money and children. If I were single I’d probably choose live in the River Market, or on Union Hill, or on the Plaza - all in KCMO.

@lisaviolet My wife has never seen one.
She started watching Episode IV with me after we got married.
She fell asleep before we even got to Mos Eisley.

@zachdecker @lisaviolet

Recently watched a few of minutes of one, and a bit more than a couple of minutes of another.

Would probably have helped if it they would have been from the first of the original trilogy and consecutive minutes.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Moose

Did you see the film in IMAX or faux-IMAX? 3D?

@f00l just a regular ol’ movie theater

@Moose Yeah, those two guys were my favorites. And I know nothing about them.

@f00l
I’ll mention 2 details

First it was obviously - to me - a different actor playing Vader from the first moment I saw him move. Small different things about the walk and the gestures. Funny how it’s so hard to actually act another person’s movement and rhythms. This was not a problem at all, btw. Just something you notice cause it’s a SW film.

Second, I saw the film at an IMAX Dome, which is very immersive. The screen is so big that you have to keep turning your head pretty far just to see all the characters onscreen at times. (This is a great way to see this film btw.)

It might not draw in the viewer quite as much in a conventional theater. Hard to say.

I think most people will have a grand time

PS. Perhaps all movies should just be about Donnie Yen’s characters. Cool beyond cool.

@f00l I felt like the suit itself didn’t look as good either. It changes a fair amount between ROTS and ANH, and I’m not sure which they were going for here but something was… off. Like an uncanny valley. Or maybe his neck was just too big, I dunno.

@Moose

The first step the character takes jarred me a little: not Prowse.

And even tho this actor is taller, he didn’t “feel” so physically overwhelming as our first shot of Vader in ANH, where Vader towers over everyone. Lucas must have cast really short actors for that scene.

Also Vader’s movements in IV-VI had a certain slow majesty about them. This guy moves more like a trained martial artist. I think he is one?

@jbartus George Lucas filmed it back in 1977.

George knew.

@jbartus
That’s my biggest tech q.

My bet it that they got Carrie to do the scene in a bun wig and then morphed her face back 40 years. Perhaps also another young actor for a body double.

On viewing I wondered if it was old unused footage from ANH because the film, the lighting, etc looked and felt different - old - to me.

@Moose

I have read someone that Disney said mostly cgi. When I saw it, o thought it was 70’s footage. It looks like 70’s footage.

Hoping to know more.

@jbartus

What kind of theater? And how did you like or not like it?

@f00l I’m thinking facial mocap to get the movements right and then CGI. Carrie’s put too much weight on for that to have been her body.

I saw it in fauxMax 3D. I liked it a lot but will post more concrete thoughts when I’m not viewing it at a 2 AM showing (ended 4:33 AM)

@jbartus
Saw it at 10pm. Was astonished the theater wasn’t full. Everyone would have been home by 1am if they wished.

A few parents brought kids. (Which was fine). Saw no one who looked younger than, say, around 10 years old.

What, 20-somethings and students don’t stay out late on weeknights anymore? No one goes to work all bleary? What fun is that?

Did you get one of the IMAX posters?

@f00l finals week for a lot of students, also the weather in many places was not participating. I almost didn’t go out for the showing I saw because it was 7 degrees out when I left my house (and 2 when I got home) with a vicious wind chill… which is all your fault.

@jbartus

Finals keep students away from Star Wars? Whoa. Am starting to have more respect for mm…mmma…my…g…generation.

@jbartus

@f00l is to blame for
Wind chill and finals up north
Students must suffer.

@f00l @jbartus I was joking, that was totes CG. It wasn’t as bad as Peter Cushing back from the dead as Tarkin, but still uncanny valley as hell. I’d be really surprised if they brought in Carrie at all

@jbartus

Speaking of cold weather. I once got a really bad case of flu from The Seven Samurai.

Or so I claim.

This was before home VHS and beta. And before flu shots were everywhere.

A theater near I think lower 2nd Ave in Manhattan was showing it and I’d never seen it. For some reason I don’t think this was a normal reperatory theater - perhaps a film society had rented the auditorium and was doing it. Don’t remember why there were films in that building that week.

I desperately wanted to see it and went with a friend. The time was Jan - one of those rare Manhattan spells stay barely above zero for a week or more, before you start to count the wind chill. We were dressed well enough to talk a few blocks in that weather, but no better.

When we got to the theater we found out the heating was busted for the entire building. And had been for days, which meant the entire building inside was the same temp as the outdoors.

The manager was in the ticket booth telling people to go home. He had a few space heaters so he could manage.

Only several of us idiots really wanted to see it anyway. Perhaps 6 of us? We begged. So he agreed to run the film. And we sunk as far as we could into the frozen seats and tried to endure the cold. We even paid the normal ticket price and thought nothing of it!

The film was so great that is was only now and then that I noticed I could soon no longer feel my feet and hands, and had gotten way to cold to shiver. That damned film is long.

So finally it’s over and we immediately went to a coffee place where we could barely get our hands to function to pay the register.

Still not close to warm, so went home and I just lay in a hot bath for what seemed like an hour.

2 days later I had those vise-grip-around-your-skull headaches and was really sick sick for about 2 weeks with huge fevers. I know it was the flu - it was going around and after the big fevers were gone, the little fevers bugged me off and on for two weeks after the worst part, and I had continuing vise-grip headaches for 2-3 more months.

I suppose sometimes both the makers and the receivers of art must still suffer for the experience. Always thought The Seven Samurai was worth it.

@Moose

They bring in real actors to do the eyes. I bet Carrie did it. The credits offered her a special thanks.

@f00l @Moose yeah with the kind of money the project had attached to it and the strong need to connect the films together I don’t see why they wouldn’t have paid Carrie to come out for a few days for mocap work, reference shots, and maybe even a 3D scan if they thought it would be helpful. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was looped into whatever contract she has.

@jbartus

For these inevtitable blockbusters, this mocap and cgi tech is just a given. And SW franchise isn’t quite running out of money yet. And Carrie’s contractually tied to the franchise, and, apart from that, is said to be very fond of it, apart from the $, which I assume may have been gravy for her anyway.

I remember hearing an interview w Peter Jackson about 15 years ago - he already had a pretty good cgi and tech setup in NZ in the early-90’s. And he was watching some test pieces that the people he worked with had done and it suddenly hit him that you could put anything you wanted onto a movie screen. Anything.

Funny how that’s such a universal assumption now, but 20 years ago the thought was hitting filmmakers like a sledgehammer.

Anyway, that was when that PJ and his crew started brainstorming for crazy stupid ideas and fun stuff and great classic stuff that were supposedly “unfilmable”.

About Carrie in this film - they had to use a body double for the dress. I wonder if they had a clip of Carrie from the 70’s doing a similar head motion and one word reply. Then perhaps they got today’s Carrie to come in for the mocap and voice? Then they altered the 70’s image just enough to give us what’s on the screen now, using today’s Carrie as a template for the changes? And I would presume they would mess a bit with Carrie’s current one-word line to make her voice sound “young”.

Did the footage of Carrie’s 70’s face look different to you than the rest of the film? Slightly different luminosity and a slight change is resolution and lighting and transparency?

@f00l not so as I noticed.

Honestly I didn’t really get an uncanny valley impression at all during the movie, from any of it. I kind of feel like Moose was looking for reasons to pick at the movie more than just wanting to enjoy it to have been noticing all of what he’s mentioned was bothering him.

That or he’s a super detail oriented super fan who’s seen each film 500 times I guess.

@jbartus
Tarkin’s face didn’t bother me the way he did @Moose. My first thought was “hello dead actor who looks even more skull-like than usual” and after that, I was just fascinated with how well they’d done it. And that the skin coloring seemed off -Cushing is naturally really pale; and that they had managed to get the minute facial changes that convey thought and emotion perfectly. No, it wasn’t seemless. But it was really good. And this Tarkin conveys incredible ruthless calculation and willingness to do anything to move forward - even more than in ANH.

What I have read re Tarkin: they found an actor who was lean and bony and pale and strongly resembles Cushing, with sharp cheekbones, who had superb control over his own face in an acting scenario - and he played the role repeatedly, both on set with the other actors, and in a mocap studio. And then the cg crew gradually morphed his face into Cushing’s. And kept his eyes and movements.

Leia’s face seems to be a diff resolution, a slight diff in lighting and transparency, an a slight diff in “feel and tone” to the rest of the film both times - w two diff friends. Both times at the IMAX Dome which gives astonishing detail. I’m not sure you could see what I saw in a normal theater, or even a regular IMAX or faux-IMAX. Or perhaps I projected my idea of “how did they do this?” into my response of what I saw and so I imagined stuff because I thought it must be there.

I’m sure that once the major plot points are more or lesss known by everyone, Disney/Lucasfilm/ILM will be happy to talk/brag.

@f00l I didn’t feel like the Leia was a coposite of 70s era footage personally.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@f00l

I was wrong about 1970’s filmstock Carrie, it seems. I wonder if they shot it the way it looked specifically to give a 1970’s look to that shot.
See later in thread.

@jbartus my friend and I felt it was very cgi looking.

@f00l Russia, sources I’ve seen say it’s from their version of Comic Con. It was later issued by Dolby.

@f00l found this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-Rogue-One-Movie-Poster-27x40-Helmet-/222346910448?hash=item33c4e89af0:g:zNsAAOSwImRYPh8X

@jbartus

As long as James Earl Jones can still do the voice, it’s gotta be him.

And Prowse is way too old to do the fighting now, even if they had cast him, they’d use a sword master or martial artist for the fighting like they did in the old days. But Prowse is such a jackass, or so it seems given his conduct and public whining, that it’s ok to me that he’s gone. I was expecting to see someone else and that’s cool. I just didn’t expect it to be obvious from the first moments. But still got into it.

And @Moose is right I think, there felt to be something “off” about the Vader outfit. With SW we know it so well that we notice if the cape doesn’t flow right for a moment.

@f00l I felt like the neck of his costume was really off.

@f00l
Here is the actor -Guy Henry - who morphed into “Peter Cushing” to play Grand Moff Tarkin:

Guy Henry

Peter Cushing

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/7/79/Tarkin_DS.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070114034159

@f00l

Note:
The paragraph about Princess Leis that begins:

“IMDb lists Norwegian actress Ingvild Deila. Though I wouldn’t be inclined to blindly trust IMDb, …”

Isn’t mine. I googled and found that on popsugar.com.

Forgot to set it off as a quote or credit it. Apologies.

https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Who-Plays-Princess-Leia-Rogue-One-42859178/amp

@f00l

@f00l I thought the same thing about rights. Seeing Peter Cushing in a movie he may or may not have wanted to do just bugs the crap out of me. At least Carrie Fisher clearly was asked.

@slydon
They clearly got permission from his estate. But still, creepy.

Perhaps next they’ll make new “Road to” movies starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour.

@daveinwarsh

@f00l takes all the blame
For lack of warning about
Spoilers in this thread.

@f00l LOL… Well, it’s all OK now then.

@ELUNO

In film terms, so far the Empire’s normal soldiers are just a source of never-ending cannon fodder (except for TFA). Tho it would be cool if they covered a routine stormtrooper unit’s normal existence in depth in one of the stand-alone films. I think “faceless in their combat gear” plus “almost no blood” equates “to ok to kill bunches of them” in PG-13 terms.

In the new expanded universe, in some of the the books do they deal with internal political problems in the empire? IDK.

@f00l Check out the Clone Wars animated series for a peek into the life of a clone trooper. It’s not that in-depth or stunning but does go into their unit and individual psyche. The current Star Wars Rebels series even has some former troopers the Jedi encounter.

@shruggie You aren’t a penguin. You are a goat.

Ah looks like that was actually a thing they debated: http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14022380/rogue-one-ending-original-different-gareth-edwards

@dave The movie was actually starting to lose me until this happened. It was so refreshing to me that a big budget movie was willing to do this. I was so happy with the way it ended.

@conandlibrarian

It was refreshing to me that they attempted to focus on the price paid by “ordinary heros”.

@dave Creatively, I get it. But it extinguished my desire to see it again, and enflamed my annoyance at the poor character development. So many potentially cool characters, with barely outline sketches to fire the imagination. I was willing to roll with it, figuring we’d get real character development in sequels. But these characters lived and died without us getting a chance to know them, and that kind of waste aggravates me.

@moondrake

Nice summation.

And stormtroopers (“stormtropers”)
still can’t shoot.

@f00l @moondrake

@moondrake Other questions to add to yours. Why would you have the dish controls outside on a deck and not in a control room?

What’s up with all the colorful lighted push buttons and levers everywhere instead of touch screens or virtual 3d interfaces? They have amazing hologram technology but can’t seem to apply it to their work tech.

Good to see the “shoot the control pad with a gun and the door will open” magic is still alive and well.

@moondrake

“Extensive Reshoots”

Plot can get all screwy that way.

Mostly I wanted a bit more character dev.

@sammydog01

And Carrie Fisher just had a heart attack?

Not what I wanted to happen today.