 |
|
|||||||||||||||
This article is a brief look at the process of making Star Wars: An Ill-Made Weapon. Many of the techniques used were also used in the first two films, though from a technical standpoint this film was much more complex than the other parts. Writing The script writing process did not take long; once I came up with a premise I wrote a rough draft, then reworded and arranged the dialog and jokes to fit the characters' speech patterns better. The films' construction is fairly simple, so writing the scripts for all three films came pretty naturally. Filming The stop-motion part of the film took about 5 or 6 hours to shoot, though the original footage (883 frames) is quite a bit shorter than what it became after editing. I managed to go the whole time without any set bumps, which was nice. All the camera zooming and panning was added in post, possible because I filmed at a very high resolution. After I built the set, I took a picture at the angle I wanted to use, and used Photoshop elements to cut out the window then composite in a background. This way I was able to preview how it would match the perspective of the set and get it just right.
When it came time to film, I had to make sure that the backdrop sheet was parallel not with the set, but with the lense of the camera. I held it up by stacking The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Unfinished Tales (because it was good for nothing else), and a Spanish-English dictionary on top of each other, then taping the backdrop to the dictionary. It was important that the backdrop be tilted ever so slightly upward so that it could catch the light coming from high above (the lamps, not pictured in my setup shots, were about four feet above the low-to-the-ground LEGO table the set was on.) I set the camera on top of The Return of the King and tilted it at the right angle, then was very careful not to bump it during filming, because there was nothing holding it still. To add a little bit of realism, I put a piece of glass from a picture frame in the window for some realistic reflections, but as a result I had to carefully block off all outside sources of reflection that would be distracting otherwide. I ended up having to extend the set to more than was actually in camera because it was visible in the window's reflection. Here are some pictures of the whole setup:
Visual Effects To be honest, I didn't really see effects as a big part of this film, I just made what effects it needed for the story and didn't agonize over them too much, so there are a few flaws here and there. The film was made in 7 days; this is about the same period of time used to make the other two parts as well, but I spent a little more of that period working on this than I had on the the other two. The ship in the opening scenes, as with the other two films, is a photoshopped version of Erik Varszegi's amazing Venator model built as a promotional for Star Wars: Episode III. I used Erik's ship (sans the emblems and the red coloring, because in the final scene of Episode III the ships is gray) instead of a 3D model or something because that was how I made the first one, which was put together rather hastily. I wanted some consistency. The backdrop visible out the window was a printout, just as in the other two films. The beginning of the shot where it powers up is the original digital image, so I matched it up and blended it into the printout when the focus changes. The Death Star was in-camera, so I had to photoshop it out when it blew up, and add all the debris on top of that. I wanted the Death Star to appear as though it was blowing up from the inside, so I tried to make it look as though it was self-illuminating as it blew up. This was done by inverting the dark seams in the bricks to be bright and red and photoshopping the whole thing to look like it was on fire from the inside through a sequence of frames.
The holograms were both completely CGI. I made some unevenly sized bars scrolling up and down and used these to make the holograms slightly transparent when I composited them in, and tinted the holograms blue as they are in the movies. I originally planned to film the officer's hologram separately, but decided to use CGI because the hologram is small and it was possible to match the angle perfectly this way. The dish schematics were intended to be a computer-generated blueprint of sorts, so I gave them a slight wire-frame look.
Voice Acting In order to faithfully recreate Darth Vader's voice, I listened to Vader's voice in the films for reference and praticed until I was pretty good at imitating it, at least from an actual voice standpoint, while working on Attack of the Drones. For the Death Star Trilogy, I recorded the lines in my best Darth Vader impression, but didn't try too hard to make my voice low enough, as this distorts the sound of the voice and makes it sound less natural. I then lowered it somewhat in Audacity and added a little bass-boost, then played around with the flange settings in Goldwave until it sounded like it does coming through his helmet. I voiced all the characters in this film as well as the other two, and I think Tarkin and the officer sound similar, but overall I'm pleased with how the voice work turned out. So that was how I made it. These films were a lot of fun to make, but at the same time it is a relief to have the trilogy completed as I feel satisfied with the conclusion and don't have to churn out another 4-5 minute shot of continuous animation. I hope this explanation is helpful to people wondering about the technical aspects of the films. Keep filming!
Original Artwork and Media copyright © 2008. LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorise or endorse this site in any way. This site is in no way affiliated with Tolkien Enterprises or the Tolkien Estate. |
