First things first: I apologize for the Jar Jar Binks picture. But let’s be real. It’s Monday, and your day probably sucked even before you were reminded of his existence.
Lucasfilm head honcho Kathleen Kennedy had some things to say to fans attending Star Wars Celebration in Germany about Episode VII, namely about its approach to CGI:
“The conversation we’re having all the time now about Episode VII is how much CGI. We’re looking at what the early Star Wars films did; they used real locations with special effects. So [for Episode VII] we’re going to find some very cool locations, [and] we’re going to end up using every single tool in the toolbox.”
Those tools will include things she saw cosplayers doing at the convention: “I was amazed yesterday, looking at what the fans are doing. Using model makers, using real droids, taking advantage of the artwork that you can touch and feel—we want to do that in combination with CG effects.”
“We have an amazing team at ILM,” Kennedy continued, “who can create fantastic effects, but if we don’t have a great story and characters, the effects mean nothing.”
The wish for practical effects augmented, not overpowered, by CGI is one echoed by Mark Hamill, who spoke out back in May on the issue and said he’d hate for the Star Wars sequels to “look like Roger Rabbit.”
An over-reliance on special effects was one of the things that brought the prequel trilogy down, so I’m incredibly pleased to hear that they’ve no plans to go down that particular path this time. Sure, it’ll be years before we see any footage (hopefully) confirming the practical-computer effects balance Kennedy is talking about, but at least now we can be (relatively) sure we won’t have another “We can [insert flashy but unnecessary and ultimately bad-looking thing here], we should totally do that!” situation on our hands.
Like Jar Jar. Or Yoda’s pinball-esque fighting style. Or… look, I’ve managed to block the prequels out for the most part, but you know what I mean.
(via: Guardian, Digital Spy)
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