American Cinematographer - April 1997 - 70

FRITZ LYNN HERSHEY

melds
technical

knowledge
and skills
with

techniques and attitudes to provide
key information on one of the most
vital parts of a camera assistant's job:
focusing. Assistants will learn how to
make themselves valuable on the set by
being able to apply theoretical ap¬
proaches to problem solving. Topics:
diagnostic optics, advanced estimating
and focus techniques, depth of field,
mental and physical preparation.
Fritz L.

Hershey. 1996. 294

pages.

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1026 N.

Empire Special Editions. The vari¬

age.

ous

original foot¬
"A lot of effort went into
matching the lighting and the tex¬
ture of the character and the original film grain, so the Sarlac
wouldn't pop off the old plates/'
Campanaro says. "Since the mon¬
ster was really in a sandpit, a lot of
sand got picked up during the
original plate shoot, and that atmo¬
sphere has to be added on top of our
CG work. We used particle systems

This book

Soft

been featured in the

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so the creature wouldn't look like as
if it had just been popped in there."

The Sarlac animation

was

a warmup compared to the
chore of displaying the entire land-

just

scape of Tattoine's lumbering
desert wasteland with Jabba's

barge in the background, sand
skiffs in the midground and the
Sarlac in the foreground. "There
are shots where we
spent 80 per¬
cent of our time re-creating the
original composites and 20 percent
just putting the tentacles and
beak in," reports CG supervisor
Hutchinson. "The original shots
contained various elements: two

sand skiffs shot against bluescreen,
several matte paintings, and the

original plate shot

on

location [in

Arizona]. All the roto work for the

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had been farmed out to another

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to find very much of those original
elements. We've had to re-create
the green lightsaber and the red
laserbolt animation, and blend it
into the location shots with all of
those matte-painting and bluescreen

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optically."
Perhaps the most amazing
inclusion of all is a montage of
planetary celebrations after the de¬
feat of the Empire, with masses of
CG extras carousing on the planets
of Bespin, Tattooine and Endor.
"We've added several shots show¬

ing more than just the Ewoks cel¬
ebrating the victory over the Em¬
pire," Carson says. "There are
quick cuts to mobs cheering on
other planets to show that it really
is a galaxy-wide event. Hopefully
it'll be a rousing ending."
While the film's Endor

68

are

connected via

a

tions between each

environment,

accompanied by a newly re-orchestrated

John Williams

score

that ties

everything together. "When we go
back to Tatooine, instead of re-cre¬

ating stuff from scratch, we actu¬
ally cut, pasted and reworked shots
already redone for Star Wars,"
Hutchinson reveals. "We took the
downward view of all these people

walking along the avenue in Mos
Eisley, and readjusted our camera
position. We also took a different
view of the same Cloud City envi¬
ronment built for Empire; we start
at ground level, then do a tilt up
toward the spires."
There's also a fourth world
that audiences will view for the first

time,

which

plays a dramatic
upcoming trilogy:
Coruscant. The Metropolis-style ga¬
lactic capital, which the Emperor of
the Universe calls home, was origi¬
nally visualized by concept artist
Ralph McQuarrie. Now, the Spe¬
cial Edition's art director, George
Hull, and ILM have provided audi¬
ences with a
tantalizing peek at
what awaits them in upcoming in¬
stallments of Lucas' epic saga. "We
start up high, looking down at the
Emperor's city - a huge, spreadout metropolis," Hutchinson en¬
thuses. "Then we tilt down through
the buildings until we reach the
ground plane, where we see crowds,
confetti and a huge parade."
This dazzling shot of
Coruscant is actually a teaser for
the effects that Lucas has planned
for the upcoming prequels, many
of which have been pioneered for
these Special Editions. "One of the
things we were told right up front
was that we would
hopefully be
able to apply some of the things we
learned on Empire and Jedi to the
new
prequels," Hutchinson states.
"While budget and time consider¬
ations didn't really allow the Spe¬
one

role in the

cial Edition films to

serve as

R&D

projects, I think George wishes
could have taken

of

more

we
of that kind

approach. Still, we've learned

forest sequence remains
unchanged, new shots of

tremendous amounts of infor¬
mation that we can use when

and

we

do reach the R&D

the

prequels."

virtually
Tatooine
Bespin were created using CG

elements built for the Star Wars and
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worlds

single continuous moving pan,
with wipes making subtle transi¬

stage on
♦
American Cinematographer - April 1997

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 1997
