Maz is a bit of an acquired taste, so let me do the talking.
And whatever you do, don't stare.
BOTH: At what?
Any of it.
(CHITTERING)
(GROWLS)
That's great, yeah.
(CAMERA CLICKING)
NEAL SCANLAN: At the core of Star Wars is that charm.
It is a science fiction film,
with sci-fi characters and creatures and aliens,
but it remains grounded, and you only,
truly get that if you shoot using practical effects.
Star Wars has a particular feel to it, a charisma, almost,
about it that we had to hold on to. In order to add further characters,
we had to be very careful that we designed them and constructed
and brought them to life in a very sensitive way.
(GRUNTING)
The number of creatures that we made is sitting around the 105 mark,
believe it or not.
(LAUGHING)
SCANLAN: Once we knew what the character looked like,
we'd go back and invent a backstory,
which helped drive it forward a little bit.
(SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT)
(BOTH LAUGHING)
SCANLAN: This is called a Snootie Pirate.
He's a hand puppet,
so he works very much in the traditional sense of hand puppetry.
They have a great charm about them
because they rely very much on skills of hand puppetry
and they bring a very different life to them
than a character that is worn on someone's head.
(BOTH SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT)
This one is the other end of the scale, where this one is highly animatronic,
this one has the ability to do loads of movement
performed in real time, using what we call a performance system
that allows the person who is operating this,
to act and talk and deliver a set of lines.
(SPEAKING ALIEN DIALECT)
A lot of what we do here isn't really a lot different
to what's existed before.
We've just learned different techniques
and just improving what's already gone before, in a way.
(LAUGHING)
Watch out!
I'm hit!
SCANLAN: This character here is an animatronic character.
So he can blink, his eyes can move, he can sniff his nose.
Obviously it's worn by a performer, and his head's inside.
Once the performers who are inside here
started to bring them to life
with their own body language and with their own acting,
they tell a thousand words. They're really, really clever.
That's cool.
SCANLAN: This is what you call a legacy character.
You can't make a Star Wars film
without what we call a power droid or a Gonk droid.
(GRUNTING)
SCANLAN: These were copied from the original,
as faithfully as we could.
But a little person plays a role inside here,
I think, originally, Kenny Baker would have played this role as well as Artoo.
ARTI SHAH: So I'm about to get into this huge box,
and I've got these big feet here
and I just walk very, very slowly. (CHUCKLES)
(SPEAKING IN ALIEN DIALECT)
Hi there, I'm Mike Quinn and I'm playing Nien Nunb,
and I was also Nien Nunb in Return of the Jedi.
SCANLAN: Nien Nunb, yeah, absolutely, held with great affection,
he's probably slightly more polished than the original.
In Jedi, he was a puppet, like a big hand puppet
essentially with my hand inside the mouth,
and this is totally different. This is way ahead of that.
He's got eyebrows and nice facial, scrunchy things.
SCANLAN: I'm sure his return will be celebrated
as much as the return of any character.
You've done a lot of work. You've been busy in here, haven't you?
- Oh, God, yeah, yeah. - That's amazing.
MARIA CORK: There's definitely a lot of family influence on this film.
Warwick Davis had his first big break in the original Star Wars trilogy.
Just like that.
CORK: In this film, we've got Annabelle,
his daughter, who is playing a character,
a little yellow furry character that we've done a bit of the hair work on.
In Return of the Jedi, I played Wicket the Ewok,
that was my first experience with Star Wars,
and now I managed to make my way into Episode VII, which is brilliant.
We're working with some of
the best filmmakers in the world here, in all departments,
the guys that build this stuff.
If you see inside my head here, it's phenomenal.
Look at that. It's a pity that we don't see that
because that is a work of art in itself.
(ALL SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY)
That's mine!
SCANLAN: This is Unkar, Unkar was the junk dealer.
This is a silicone prosthetic, very malleable,
so once this was glued down, this was all a part of him,
he was able to bring his own personality,
be his own person.
(CHUCKLES)
Simon had a life-cast done so his body fitted within that skin,
and then my job as a fabricator is to marry up the head and the body,
and to free up the body so he can move in it,
and attach silicone hands and to line it, make sure Simon is comfortable.
PEGG: We did all the close up work
on Unkar at Pinewood
because the mask had to be glued to my face
so that the articulation was there.
We couldn't do that in Abu Dhabi
because of the heat so we used the pull-over mask,
and a fat suit and rubber hands.
It was extremely hot, worryingly at times.
My heart rate would go up a little bit and I'd just have to keep going,
"It's Star Wars, it's Star Wars, it's Star Wars."
So I was prepared to suffer without complaint as I melted,
literally, inside this silicone prison. (LAUGHS)
PATRICK TUBACH: So one thing that The Force Awakens has really done
is it brought together creature effects on the practical production side,
and creature effects on the CG side,
and then we have these times with Unkar
where we meet in the middle a little bit
where we have a creature on set,
but then you want to add some little details to the character
and that's where the CG can be used in conjunction
with those great prosthetics to produce something that's better than both.
Follow the girl and get that droid.
Chewie can be reaching for the controls, and so is Daisy, here we go,
and Peter, give her a look.
SCANLAN: It would almost be presumptuous to believe
that we could add anything to this character.
He is what he is and to us it was a little bit like an archeological dig,
and what we were really trying to do is go back in time and find out
exactly how Chewbacca was made.
I think it was Stuart Freeborn's wife knitted Chewbacca's suit.
It was a wool-knitted suit to which
they applied all the hair and things afterwards,
and we thought, "Well, you wouldn't do that today.
"Why would you bother doing that? There are many more materials
"and better fabrics that we can use."
The truth of the matter is the way a woolen suit moves
is absolutely incredible.
The way it flexes, the way it has that weight,
so it was not done
because they didn't have the right sort of materials,
or better materials, it was done because that was the way to do it.
So we knitted these suits. Hopefully we've really created
what we believe is the best possible replica of the Chewbacca suit.
CORK: With a very large stroke of luck,
we managed to get a hold of
one of the original sculpt heads,
so we actually ended up mimicking
exactly the shape of Stuart Freeborn's original head,
so it should look as close to
the original Chewbacca as we can make it.
The hair is yak belly, that all of the body suit
is knotted with and most of the head as well
and there is a bit of mohair on the face as well which just softens it out a bit.
SCANLAN: Hair by hair, every detail that we could,
we tried to create as perfect a replica,
even down to the way the mechanical mask worked.
CORK: He's very simple,
there's no big animatronic movements in there.
Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca originally, basically
opened and closed the mouth of the head with his own mouth.
There was nothing fancy.
We've been trying to keep it simple and just try and copy completely.
SCANLAN: When Peter and his wife came in
and they saw it for the first time,
they were very emotional.
It brought back many memories for them.
I remember we put a Chewbacca face onto Peter,
and as soon as it dropped onto Peter's face, it was Chewbacca.
MAYHEW: It's better, it's lighter, it looks as good as the original one.
I think everybody is going to be very, very pleased.
When I first saw Chewie on set, without any shame whatsoever,
I asked if I could have a hug. (LAUGHS)
I think we've worn the suit out probably quicker than we expected
because every time he meets someone they just want to hug him.
(LAUGHING)
You guys look amazing. Each one of you looks so incredible that
a movie could have been made just about each of you.
You could not look better.
Neal Scanlan and his team did an absolutely amazing job.
The look of these creatures is extraordinary,
and blew everyone away.
But also, not only wanna thank you guys,
but also, obviously, the incredible team of creature and make-up.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
(CAMERA CLICKS)