J.J. ABRAMS: Star Wars is a gift everywhere you look at it,
one of those gifts is the ability to work with ILM.
Every time they do a project, they solve a new problem.
Part of the DNA needs to be that audacity to think
that we'll figure it out,
that same spirit of fearlessness,
that thread goes throughout ILM and its history.
ROGER GUYETT: It's not a singular mission.
It's like an army collaborating
to try and create this idea that everything happened.
If you can somehow create that illusion,
then in my mind, we've succeeded.
We're able to take the best tools for the craft
and combine different techniques.
They're all there for a reason, they're all part of the story,
and that comes from Kathy.
She believes, she is completely fearless,
and that is inspiring.
I love the creative process,
so working with ILM has been a huge benefit,
and I think the level of imagination that could be brought into storytelling
expanded exponentially.
We have a really great art department here,
who worked with J.J. right from the beginning,
helping spark off story ideas
and delve deeper into the characters, and I think that comes out in the work.
A lot of the practical skills that is used in principal photography,
we have folks who have those skills
and we have translated those skills into the digital realm.
My mind went to, "How are we going to do this
"in the most convincing possible way to create this grand illusion?"
J.J. was very specific,
he wanted to build real sets
at the same time as CG when he needs to.
That was hugely exciting.
The worlds are colliding in the filmmaking process.
We wanted to use the VFX purely to fill in the storytelling gaps
so restraint was the huge word
that we used a lot in the design process.
(CHEWIE CRIES)
There are definitely many visual challenges in The Force Awakens
that have pushed the bar.
Now that we have offices in Vancouver, Singapore, London,
as well as in San Francisco,
it's enabled us to bring in the best artists
in visual effects from around the world.
Han Solo!
Lupita could actually perform as a normal human
which suddenly released her, and we could actually composite that
as she was performing on the motion capture stage in real time.
Somebody said to me, "What's the magic?"
And to me, the magic is when we were doing Maz.
You saw Lupita just make that character come to life.
ABRAMS: She looks like she fits in.
They've done an extraordinary job bringing a character to life in CG
that you would never know.
There has been an awakening.
Have you felt it?
ANDY SERKIS: I've thrown in the performance without
knowing how he's going to manifest,
and that's quite exciting, really.
MATT RANK: Andy's a veteran of performance capture,
and J.J. was very happy running with him
seeing what ideas he had, what we could do.
It was quite traditional, active mo-cap suit, cameras, head cam.
We performed it live on set. It all went really, really well.
We try incredibly hard to make sure the audience doesn't suddenly jump
when they see these characters.
PATRICK TUBACH: Maz and Snoke were both examples of
how can we use technology that we have today
to bring new characters to life.
Using the performance capture technology
to have real people inhabit these characters, I think,
is really just an extension of having a puppeteer using a puppet.
That's one way that we've been able to take technology from today
and really breathe new life into some of these characters.
(RATHTARS ROARING)
HAN: I got a bad feeling about this.
GUYETT: The fun of the rathtars is we wanted to create this slightly crazy
but just fun moment inside the freighter.
Those kind of creatures, you couldn't really do practically.
We had these huge creatures with these huge mouths
and super long tentacles grabbing people.
That kind of stuff is great when you do it in CG.
It was sort of like a mini, "Release the kraken,"
with these crazy creatures moving around.
They did this really wild thing where the creature would roll
and it just gave it a completely different kind of quality.
It was a weird rathtar, Indiana Jones homage in there.
DAVE FOGLER: We know what a TIE fighter looks like.
We know what an X-wing looks like.
This movie has new versions.
OSCAR ISAAC: A black X-wing.
The coolest thing I've ever heard in my life.
As a kid, I knew how to draw an X-wing and a TIE fighter
simply because it took like four lines to draw those things.
PAUL KAVANAGH: My seventh birthday,
I come out of the theater
and I want to make those spaceships fly on the screen.
Cut to 38 years later, and I'm sitting here,
and my mom calls me up and says,
"Son, you're doing it, you're the guy flying the spaceships."
The Falcon is a real character in the movie,
and people know it very well.
Flying the Falcon through the graveyard and then getting chased by TIE fighters.
Off it goes 'cause it's the fastest ship in the galaxy.
FOGLER: When we started, I remember being excited about building the Falcon,
and thinking, "We'll look at the miniatures,
"but we're going to make just the most beautiful Falcon you've ever seen."
Going to actually look at the five-foot Falcon that they built in 1976,
and I walked away from that, thinking
if we can make our digital version look that good, we will be successful.
We really wanted to make it as iconic as possible,
so we are trying to utilize more than just rendering the CG elements.
On the original miniature of the Falcon,
the model makers put on lots of little decals,
and when we were doing research,
we photographed all these tiny, tiny little graphics that they put on
and we put those on to our model.
So, in lots of ways, our Falcon really takes its cue
from the very original Falcon right down to some of the smallest little details
that you'll never see on screen, but we know they're there.
Any shot in The Force Awakens has a great tapestry of different techniques
to an extent that you really can't tell what's digital, what's real,
and they're all there for a reason, they're all part of the story.
ILM and Star Wars really changed the way you saw
what was possible in terms of visual effects.
Bringing to life these worlds, and these planets and these ships,
I can't say enough about ILM.
It's the most remarkable work being done
and I hope that audiences appreciate what they're doing.
What makes it so challenging and so exciting is
so many people care about it,
but my goal, if you like, is for people to just watch the movie
and imagine that these things happened for real.