This week we go behind the scenes of one of the coolest jobs at Lucasfilm.
Plus we talk to the President of ILM about the making of Solo.
STAR WARS!!!
This is The Star Wars Show!
From the Lucasfilm headquarters in San Francisco, here’s your hosts, Andi and Anthony!
Hello and welcome to The Star Wars Show, the only Star Wars Show that is brave enough to
say that the totally original, never replicated, red Millennium Falcon shirt is dead.
It’s all about the blue Millennium Falcon shirt now!
And now the news.
You ball up your red Millennium Falcon shirt and you throw it into the sea.
Harper you have to go change now.
Yeah.
Why are you wearing that old shirt?
He’s wearing red?
Ugh!
Gah.
Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, the immersive hyper reality experience from ILMxLab and
The VOID is adding a bounty to your head when you complete the experience.
What does that mean exactly?
It means you’re on the run now, baby!
You’re on the lam.
Well for starters when you finish, you’ll be given a wanted poster with a bounty for
you, complete with an Imperial transmission sent to your email from the Empire detailing
your personal achievements in the experience.
These achievements can be shared on Twitter and Facebook so you can compare with your friends.
For more on this new element being added to the experience check out StarWars.com.
And speaking of StarWars.com, wouldn’t you know it, they have landed not only an excerpt
from the adaptation of Solo: A Star Wars Story, but a clip from the audio book as well.
The book, written by Mur Lafferty is an expanded edition featuring expanded, deleted, and all
new scenes from Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The excerpt StarWars.com has wasn’t in the film, and follows Han during his time with
the Imperial Navy, flying with the Onyx Squadron.
You can read the excerpt or listen to the clip, voiced by Marc Thompson at StarWars.com
right now, and you pick up the full copy when its released on September 4th.
If the Empire hasn't caught you by then, you criminal.
Finally this week, there are a lot of cool jobs at Lucasfilm, two of them being our own,
in our own humble opinions, but there are people inside the building that have even
cooler jobs than the two of us.
Here’s one of their stories.
[Laughing]
Laugh now.
Cause soon you’ll be behind bars.
I know, I know.
I’m just getting it in while I can.
Well, I always say, you see that space ship that's in the foreground towards us?
I didn’t do that.
You know, I did the one in the background.
[Laughing]
I’m Stephen Zavala and I’m a Senior Concept Artist at the ILM art department.
Everytime you see something on screen that doesn't exist, somebody has to think about
it at some point and design it, that is basically my job.
To come up with ideas that you would eventually see on screen depending on the necessities
of the script or you know the sensibilities of the director.
I am originally from LA.
But I was raised abroad in Mexico City.
And the first time I applied here, they rejected me because my portfolio wasn't good enough.
But you know, I took all the feedback into consideration.
I said, you know what, I’m going to use this and I’m going to try again.
So I spent a whole year just practicing and redid my whole portfolio and sent it in again.
And it worked out in the end.
They were like, sure, do you wanna come aboard?
I have 2 biggest contributions that I really feel proud of.
The first one being for Rogue One.
When we finally get to Scarif we see what we call the Citadel, which is the Empire stronghold
where we hold the Death Star plans.
And that was a very long project that I had to work with a lot of amazing artists.
My art director gave me a lot of freedom to explore.
And he was like, you know what?
Let’s make it the meanest headquarters of the Empire.
And let’s just have fun with it.
And the second one, which was for Solo: A Star Wars Story.
It was designing the engine of the Millennium Falcon.
It was an amazing project that I had a chance to do because it’s basically touching this
iconic spaceship and just contributing a little bit into it.
So I was really excited to be apart of that.
Working at the art department, it is one of the best things that ever happened to me.
It is absolutely challenging and you have to be on top of your game.
The work part is one thing but collaborating with all these amazing artists, that is probably
the best part.
All these experiences and knowledge that I learned from all my peers, I don’t think
that is something I would trade off that easily.
This is literally making movies and what else is better than this?
[Porg sound]
Please say hello to Robert Bredow, special effect supervisor on Solo and head of ILM.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
This is great.
So you’re fresh off of giving the keynote address at SIGGRAPH 2018.
At SIGGRAPH you announced your new book Making of Solo.
This is the first time we’ve done a making of book where someone working in the film
has also been making it at the same time as effects supervisor.
How did that color your approach and your time on set?
I always, well this camera, I always carry this camera with me and I use it for visual effects reference.
I take a ton of pictures for the people back here at the studio, so they have context for
what's happening in all the shots.
And I realized in so many cases on Solo that I was the only one in the room with a camera.
And these things were happening.
Like we were designing Rio or designing Elthree.
Or walking into a set for the first time and no one was there capturing it.
So in addition to kind of the normal job of a visual effects supervisor, I was started taking
some shots and looking at them at night and going, this is kind of amazing.
Like nobody else has these photos.
Just as a fan I was excited about building something with it.
And my first inclination was maybe I’ll just build a little book and give them out
as crew gifts or something.
Which would be amazing.
Which would be super fun.
But then someone said, if you’re going to build a book, build a book, talk to Kathy about it.
So I talked to Kathy Kennedy and she looked at some of the photos and she said, oh yeah,
we’ve got to do something with this.
Well obviously being on set during the making of a show like this is very inspiring, but
what other inspirations did you look towards when you were making this book?
For me when I was a kid and I first opened up the making of book for Empire Strikes Back
and saw that shot of Phil Tippett where he pops out of the snow and animating the AT-AT.
That was one of those moments where I was like, that’s how they made that and I saw
how the magic came to life.
I was like if ever I could do that, that would be the kind of thing I would love to do for
my whole life.
So when I was on set and I saw these moments happening in front of me, I had to pinch myself
that I was actually standing there and getting to be apart of it.
I was also hoping to create one of these pictures and these images that would be that image
for somebody else.
One of the things from the book that I really enjoyed was the comparison between these large
scale solutions to these problems, like the 360 LED screens, and then the small scale
ones, like what you guys did with the coaxium.
Yeah, it’s amazing.
So the coaxium, the actual stuff moving around inside that prop, it’s actually built in
a real physical thing that is jet fuel.
One idea was you could have somebody in a green suit standing behind the prop with a
magnet trying to animate it in real time.
But we realized that wasn't actually going to be very practical on set.
People running around with these things.
So we came up with this idea that we could photograph that.
Do some visual effects work to find the best moments of the puppeting of the ferrofluid
and assemble it into a long, like, 30 second clip.
And then we stuck that into an iPad and the iPad actually fit inside the coaxium container.
The prop team had this great idea of making a lense, and we tried different lenses.
But it was a curved lense that fit over the top of the iPad so as you looked at it from
different angles it really looked like it was inside the coaxium tube.
You made another announcement at SIGGRAPH that’s sort of feeding off of these changes in the industry.
I would love to hear a little bit more about your project with Open Source.
Just this week we announced the existence of the Academy Software Foundation.
And we combined and made the Academy Software Foundation that is now going to host some
of these core open source technologies for the film industry.
So we can have a long and healthy future to look at how we can make a healthy environment
for these projects.
So anybody could access this for free, teach themselves how to use these techniques.
Exactly!
Going use these tools and if you see something in the tools that need to be improved you
can actually just go right on the Academy’s website, submit a change to the tool.
It could build automatically and be available for the next developer, the next user.
And if you’re a developer who wants to get noticed by ILM, what better way is there than
to go on that site and go like, I see a little bug in opening XR I’m going to fix it.
This is how we’re going to meet people in the future.
Is we’re going to see the contributions people are making online and that might be
one way you could get your foot in the door at Industrial Light & Magic.
Awesome, thank you so much for coming by.
Super cool and that book is gorgeous!
Aw, thank you.
Really, really good job.
So much fun to get to make.
I’m Matt Martin.
I’m apart of the Lucasfilm Story Group and before that I worked for StarWars.com and
Star Wars social media where I got to see a lot of cool Star Wars fan creations.
And now I’m here to give you some tips from somebody who’s seen a whole lot of examples.
A good tip is make it your own.
When George was working Star Wars initially he encorporated all kinds of cool influences
that were important to him.
When you’re making a Star Wars fan film or any sort of Star Wars fan art don’t just
look at Star Wars.
Look at the things that inspired George and also look at the things that inspire you.
There’s going to be hundreds, if not thousands of other entries and you need to make your entry standout.
Keep digging deep.
Think of other stories.
Tailor it all together into something special and something that is your Star Wars story
and something that is so unique that only you could tell it.
And have you seen Rogue One?
Not all Star Wars movies need a crawl.
They just don't.
You’re watching The Star Wars Show!
With summer drawing to a close, and back to school sales giving people well into their
20s and 30s like me crazy stress flashbacks, we thought it would be a good idea to find
out how you spent your Star Wars Summer Vacation.
Dee retraced the steps of Rey and Luke on Skellig Michael Island, I love these photos.
And Daniel Russell took his R2-D2 back to Tatooine…via the original set locations in Tunisia.
One day I will get there.
I believe in you.
Thank you.
Tom Frannsen went to Naboo…er, Spain, @Galaxie1977 braved 122 degree heat with his Jawa in Death
Valley, while @Jere7my brought Rose along to Rome.
Plus, Amanda checked in with BB-8 bobbing in a pond, dewbacked with a dewback taking
a dip, and a lot of people taking selfies outside of our building.
We just want you to know we were waving to all of you.
Thanks again to everyone who submitted this week, they were really fun to look at.
And as always, make sure you like the video, subscribe to the channel, talk to us on the
community tab on YouTube, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and remember to drink
at least 8 glasses of water a day.
Thanks for watching, and may the Force be with you.
People don’t hydrate enough.
Hydration is key.
You get tired around 3 PM and you’re like, why am I so tired?
It’s cause you’re dehydrated.
It’s cause you’re dehydrated!
We got two of them!
Ahhh!
We’ve got two of them in the house!
Can you guys come out here?
Show the world what you guys have done.
This is real.
They didn’t get the memo.
This is real.
Apparently I didn’t get the memo.
Yeah.