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Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (JJ Abrams 2015)


crocodile

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People don't want something new though. They want the OT on repeat.

Best of all, Abrams seems to want to indulge those people, you know, with his matte paintings and other old school techniques. ;)

Is he making the movie for himself and his generation?

I laughed at the video when they were stressing the fact that they were filming in "a real actual desert". Yeah, because Tunisia has that fake CGI desert.

The amount of people falling for all this practical effects nonsense is hilarious. It's a marketing tool and people are gobbling it up.

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They're better able to blend practical elements and CGI effects more seamlessly these days than they could 10 to 15 years ago.

If you watch the ROTS blu-ray, you can often see very faint blue or green outlines around Anakin or whoever.

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Screen-Shot-2015-07-10-at-10.28.35-PM.pn

Reminds me far more of the PT than the OT.

Nah - they actually have troopers on set, so it's already a step-up from the all-CGI clonetroopers. ;)

In the end, TFA will be somewhere in the middle of 1977-practical-effects and 2005-bad-CG. Eventually the movies will lean more heavily on CGI, as timetables and budgets become tighter (for instance there is a lot less turnaround time for Rogue One which just began filming, but which is coming out next year). I'll enjoy the nostalgia tide while it lasts, though.

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To be fair, the OT had its fair share share of blue screen, too. This picture is tame compared to the PT, especially AOTC and ROTS. But lets be real, this film is going to have more CGI than practical effects. It is 2015 after all.

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To be fair, the OT had its fair share share of blue screen, too. This picture is tame compared to the PT, especially AOTC and ROTS. But lets be real, this film is going to have more CGI than practical effects. It is 2015 after all.

True. At least the troopers in this photo are real.

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I used to think the clonetroopers looked pretty darn good in ROTS, especially in the Jedi Temple night scene, but other shots... yikes. Just look at those binoculars he's holding.

star-wars-episode-iii-clone-trooper-yoda

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It's so dense, every single image has so many things going on.

Wow, every character in that shot looks awful.

Amusing how the CGI characters look so radically different, as if completely different VFX houses completed each, then another composited them together.

Ironically, the only live-action element in the shot looks like crap CGI as a result of the poorly rendered surroundings.

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That looks like the cutscene from a video game. That's a still from the actual movie? Good lord....

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Ironically, the only live-action element in the shot looks like crap CGI as a result of the poorly rendered surroundings.

That's my least favorite thing about CGI. When it's used well and in moderation, great! When it makes up 3/4 of the shot, it looks quite cartoonish - and makes the other, real/composited elements of the shot look cartoonish too.

That looks like the cutscene from a video game. That's a still from the actual movie? Good lord....

For what it's worth, CGI almost always looks better in motion than in stills. Still, Revenge of the Sith is my least favorite Star Wars movie aesthetically, because everything looks fake to some degree.

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I thought ROTS was an improvement on AOTC, which has always had this weird videoish haziness.

The cameras they used to shoot AOTC were the earliest incarnations of digital cameras available, not even designed for feature film use but forced upon the production because Lucas saw the enormous cost saving potential of an entirely digital workflow. Of course, you can imagine how primitive digital cameras were 13 years ago; just compare the difference in phone cameras in only the last 5 years for a rough idea of how fast digital photography improves. Then consider AOTC was shot with digital cameras developed in the 90's!
The most abhorrent thing was their shooting resolution: a pitiful 1920x1080, a resolution already superseded by modern-day smartphones. It puts the franchise in the awkward situation where the OT (and TPM) now exist in a higher resolution than the prequels, which are forever locked to their native resolution. You can never remaster the last two prequels but you can go back and scan the original trilogy at 4K or 8K resolution and still find new details in the film print, despite it being nearly 40 years old.
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Not even 13 years ago. AOTC was captured on digital cameras in 2000-2001.

And I remember posts from that time raving about how 1080p was the next big leap and how AOTC was going to look so much greater than film. Heh.

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Considering the workflow is gradually shifting to 4K, 1080p certainly looks dated now.

Irrespective of the workflow standards, the fact is that digital films are forever locked to the resolution in which they're shot. The irony of course is that films shot 15+ years ago can now be remastered into vastly superior formats than any film filmed or edited digitally in the last 15 years. Even films shot 60+ years ago will look better with a high resolution scan and remaster than the Star Wars prequels ever will.

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I love these people who think black and white movies were shot in standard definition.

Probably the same people demanding a digitally colourised version of Schindler's List. :huh:

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It's unfair to rate CGI of old films to nowadays standards...

I think JP is one of the few films that you cannot critisize it. (even if it's flawed)

One of the worst offenders is the quiddich or any flying scenes in HP1. Now that's videogame footage in a big budget film... It was bad in 2001 already.

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It's unfair to rate CGI of old films to nowadays standards...

Old films?

The prequels are hardly old. And there are plenty of films older with far better CGI.

The visual effects of these films have dated very very fast. Much moreso then those of the OT, wich represented the best of what could be achieved at the time.

The problem is that Lucas used CGI for things that could have easily been done differently. Like the Clone Troopers, or Yoda.

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Fair. ok.

But lets include other films in the beating.

The discussion makes the prequels look as if they had the worse CGI of their time.

And even if it looks like crap now (in some shots), they had some of the best of their respective years.

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Seeing the falcon LEGO set,

I think the falcon is going to be in the hands of pirates, (lupita's character may be the owner?) and han and chewie are looking for it and finally get it (so the ''we're home line makes sense''). I hope rey is in the planet looking for it (her father's ship...) or tracking its movements.

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Btw, we still don't know whether or not Struzan's going to come out of retirement to do the poster, right? I remember there were a few rumors about that.

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Probably for the Dejarkik chess board, again. While it'll definitely be cool to see it again (especially with the same effects) I fear that it will be too fan-servicey

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Probably for the Dejarkik chess board, again. While it'll definitely be cool to see it again (especially with the same effects) I fear that it will be too fan-servicey

It's confirmed that's what it is in the video.

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Probably for the Dejarkik chess board, again. While it'll definitely be cool to see it again (especially with the same effects) I fear that it will be too fan-servicey

It's confirmed that's what it is in the video.

Oh, ok. My point still stands though

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Probably for the Dejarkik chess board, again. While it'll definitely be cool to see it again (especially with the same effects) I fear that it will be too fan-servicey

It's confirmed that's what it is in the video.

Oh, ok. My point still stands though

You say you fear it will be too fan-servicey. I guess I don't understand why that's a big deal. It's cool that it's back. Doesn't really matter if it's too fan-servicey or not. We haven't even seen the film to see how it's used.

:P

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Probably for the Dejarkik chess board, again. While it'll definitely be cool to see it again (especially with the same effects) I fear that it will be too fan-servicey

It's confirmed that's what it is in the video.

Oh, ok. My point still stands though

You say you fear it will be too fan-servicey. I guess I don't understand why that's a big deal. It's cool that it's back. Doesn't really matter if it's too fan-servicey or not. We haven't even seen the film to see how it's used.

:P

Fan-service can be great in moderation, but I'm afraid that the movie will be nothing but that. A series of reminders about all of the awesome things about the original trilogy without bringing anything new to the table.

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Enough with the spoiler tags if there is nothing spoilery in your post!

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