Episode 8 has a title!
We go behind the scenes of Rogue One, and The Star Wars Show has a brand new co-host.
Hello.
This week, on The Star Wars Show!
Andi sits down with Rogue One Executive Producer, John Knoll!
The first installment of Pablo Hidalgo’s Rogue Reports,
And much, much more Now, from the Lucasfilm Headquarters it’s
The Star Wars Show!
Hello and welcome to The Star Wars Show I’m Andi Gutierrez.
And I’m Anthony Carboni, and I gotta say I’m really excited to be hosting a show
with you again.
Me too.
It’s going to be nice working with you weekly instead of twice a year during massive high
profile events with huge budgets.
That’s a massive understatement about the budget.
Too late you already signed! Hahaha
Was that an effect?
Or is that just bad lights?
Budget cuts.
I still can’t believe you and Peter worked in such a small space for so long.
Wide angle lenses work wonders.
And speaking of Peter, since I can telepathically feel the audience typing comments, yes, he
is back from the moon and will return to the show from time to time.
Is it canon that you’re Force sensitive?
It is now!
Let’s go to the news!
On Monday Lucasfilm officially revealed the title for Star Wars Episode 8, Star Wars:
The Last Jedi.
The film, written and directed by Rian Johnson picks up right The Force Awakens left off
with Rey presenting Luke Skywalker his long lost lightsaber.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi will hit theaters, December 15th.
That uh, that title is a little ambiguous.
Yeah.
It’s red.
Huh.
And you know, Jedi is the singular and plural form of Jedi
I wonder what that means.
Yeah.
Well...
Well, 325 days to figure it out!
Mysteries!
In comics news, Marvel revealed two brand new covers this week.
The first is for Darth Maul #3, written by Cullen Bunn with cover art by Rafaeil Albuquerque
features two fan favorite bounty hunters Cad Bane and Aurra Sing.
Next is Poe Dameron #13 , written by Charles Soule and cover art by Phil Noto depicting
the handsome coverboy reflected in Capatain Phasma’s helmet.
Both comics will be released this March.
Star Wars Pinball has a brand new Rogue One themed table coming next week.
The table features 10 story related game modes and will be available on console and PC January
31st, and mobile on February 2.
In other gaming news, Star Wars: Force Arena, the brand new Star Wars PVP arena game is
now available in the app store and Google play.
And coincidentally I just bought a battery case for my phone
The game features 60 different Star Wars characters battling up to 50 players online at once across
the globe.
Check it out, its rad.
I am not just saying that Academy Award nominations were announced yesterday
and wouldn’t you know it, Rogue One picked up a few noms.
The first was for David Parker, Christopher Scarabosio and Stuart Wilson for their sound
mixing and the second nomination went to Mohen Leo, Hal Hickel, Neil Corbould, and John Knoll…(who
will be on our couch in a few minutes to talk more about Rogue One) for Best Visual Effects.
Congratulations and good luck to all of the nominees, and while we’re talking about
Rogue One, the movie crossed the 1 billion dollar mark at the box office this weekend.
That makes it the highest grossing film of 2016.
BUT WAIT!
THERE’S A SEGUE COMING!
During the production of Rogue One, we sent Pablo Hidalgo to the set to give you a peek
behind the scenes in a new ongoing segment we’re calling, the Rogue Reports.
Segment delivered.
How come you didn’t get to go.
It’s kind of a sore subject
Joining us is a special visitor to the set, you of course know him as supervising director,
co-creator and co-executive producer of Star Wars Rebels, Mr. Dave Filoni.
Pablo Hey Dave, good to see you here!
Oh my gosh, who knew.
So many years ago when we started that we would be on Yavin together
It’s amazing, I mean I can’t describe it.
It’s literally like you’re there, I mean we are really there.
This is it.
It’s like a time machine.
Everything is exactly the same, exactly as you remember it.
It’s overwhelming And you’ve been in this era because you
have been doing a lot of research for Rebels of course so you have the keen eye to understand
what to look for in this time frame I want all of it.
I mean yeah what’s great is that this movie is defining so many little things and little
details that we didn’t know about in A New Hope.
Just stepping back a little bit is going to allow in all honesty the great connectivity
and continuity between Star Wars Rebels and Rogue One on a level we haven’t seen before
really.
And we were just talking about potentially looking at some of the players here, the actors
who are playing supporting roles and being inspired.
Potentially maybe seeing them in Rebels Absolutely we can take any secondary, tertiary
character and say that you’re going to be a star on Star Wars Rebels.
That’s what it’s really about All the animation we’re really doing at
Lucasfilm is designed to really partner and go right with these films.
So characters that are in our show will weave into this and their film will lead into ours
and it’s all one thing.
It’s really unlike any other universe you see in film and television.
Everything is connected and it’s so great to see so much Star Wars being made and the
care and detail that’s going into it.
I’ll just talk about my experience here to my crew and just tell them that the whole
thing is evolving just like Kathy said that Star Wars is getting bigger and the universe
is expanding unlike at any time in it’s history.
And there’s a lot of room to tell stories now, a lot of characters and we’re all lucky
to be a part of this time.
Alright guys, we are kicking the year off with a very special guest, please welcome
to the show, ILM’s Chief Creative Officer, John Knoll. Hello.
Can you tell me a little bit about your journey to ILM?
Well I was in high school and started to think a little more seriously about what I was going
to do with my potential career and about a year after Star Wars came out, my dad had
a Society of Nuclear Medicine conference in Anaheim so I grew up there and he brought
my brothers with him.
It was my first visit to California and just on a lark I picked up the phonebook in the
hotel room just to see if Industrial Light and Magic was listed.
And it was!
So I called and said that I was a model maker and interested in working in the industry.
So why don’t you come on down and we’ll show you around!
You just didn’t tell them you were 15 It didn’t occur to me that I should!
That’s awesome.
Yeah my Dad was out there for a professional conference but yeah, love dad.
He drove me all the way from Anaheim to Van Nuys where ILM was at like 8:30 in the morning
and dropped me off then went off to his conference.
I spent an entire day at ILM but I felt like I had found my people
It’s one thing to read about these stories in a magazine, but when you witness it in
person, they come into work and do this for a living, I can be one of these people.
In addition to being the executive producer on Rogue One, a lot of our fans might not
know that you actually developed the story and pitched it to Kathy yourself.
How did that go?
Kathy and Kiri listened very politely to the whole thing and at the end, Kathy said, well
very good.
I’m impressed, thank you for doing that and I left and didn’t hear anything for
a while but at least I did it, I’ve always wondered what would have happened I had.
And I got a note from Kiri about a week later saying we’ve been talking a lot about this
and we may want to do something with it.
How long had you been cooking the idea up?
I always thought that first couple sentences in the opening crawl of A New Hope were intriguing.
And it was after Kathy came on board and announced this new slate of films.
Of course there was 7, 8 and 9 to continue the Skywalker saga.
But was really intriguing to a lot of us here was the idea of doing these standalone stories
and one of the first thoughts was what about the spy mission to steal the Death Star plans?
Could be a pretty good feature.
Everyone is talking about Tarkin and Leia, but were there any other ground-breaking things
created for Rogue?
One thing that I thought was pretty successful was the use of LED screens.
So all our cockpit footage was on set.
The sets were surrounded by these giant LED screens and we prepared computer graphics
that represented the environment the ships were in.
I’m sure that makes it a lot easier as an actor to have realistic depiction of where
you are around instead of just being in front of a green screen.
Yeah they’re looking at a representation of the space battle so their eye can track
a TIE fighter going by.
You know, it helps them with performance and understanding by immersing themselves in the
scene.
Well thank you so much for taking the time and coming to talk to us, always a pleasure.
And you guys, if you haven’t seen it yet which is really strange you’re watching
the Star Wars Show, if you haven’t seen Rogue One go see it.
It’s still in theatres.
On December 27th fans mourned the loss of Carrie Fisher.
A brilliant actress, incredible writer, and mental health advocate, Carrie was an original
and irreplaceable voice in the world.
And frankly the most badass princess/general/rebel trailblazer we’ve ever seen.
Carrie had a unique ability to bring heart and humor to everything she did.
On a personal note our limited interactions with her were not only hysterical, but incredibly
touching, and something that neither one of us will ever forget.
And even though she may be gone, her message of hope and rebellion will live on for generations.
The force will be with you Carrie, always.