This week, on The Star Wars Show!
Andi sits down with legendary designer, Doug Chiang!
We look at your reactions to the new Rogue One trailer
And much, much more And now, from the Lucasfilm Headquarters it’s
The Star Wars Show!
Hello I’m Peter Townley And I’m Andi Gutierrez welcome to The Star
Wars Show.
Hey, I had a question I wanted to ask you Is it about Star Wars news?
No.
Then its gotta wait!
Let’s go to the news!
Last week we had the pleasure of debuting the new one-sheet for Rogue One alongside
director, Gareth Edwards.
And while Gareth is understandably too busy to join us today, we do have some more Rogue
One posters to show you.
8 in fact.
The character posteqrs feature individual close-ups of Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor, K2SO,
Bodhi Rhook, Baze Malbus, Chirrut Imwe, Director Orson Krennic and Saw Gerrara, each with different
sections of schematics projected on their faces.
And you can see them all right now to pick apart each and every square inch on Star Wars.com
In video game news, PlayStation VR was released last week which means we’re even closer
release of the free DLC for Star Wars Battlefront, Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission, or SW-BRO-XW-VRM
for short.
SW-BRO-XW-VRM, SW-BRO it just kind of rolls off the tongue.
It’s catchy.
Which, thanks to the new key art, confirms that we’re going to be seeing a U-Wing flying
alongside X-Wings during a hair-raising space battle.
Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission will be available this holiday season.
Finally a few months back we announced the Star Wars The Force Awakens 3D Collectors
Edition Blu-ray coming to store shelves on November 15th.
And wouldn’t you know it, The Star Wars Show managed to get our hands on this exclusive
never before seen clip from the newly recorded commentary by Director JJ Abrams.
Would you like to watch it?
I’m going to assume yes since this is pre-recorded and it’s literally impossible for me to
hear or see your response on the other side of this camera, so without further adieu,
enjoy!
In this scene, she is drawn to this place.
Almost like Cinderella and she goes to this box which, when she opens, she discovers something
that of course has no meaning to her.
She’s never seen this before, she doesn’t know what it is.
But it has meaning to the audience.
Touching the lightsaber triggers what we call the “Force-back”.
There were many iterations of this, in one from this Cloud City corridor, we looked down
and saw Vader fighting Luke which we ended up cutting.
We wanted it to be a more personal story, something that she couldn’t comprehend,
that was overwhelming to her, frightening to her.
That was taking her though all these elemental experiences of fire, of rain, of snow, wind
but also she was being confronted with truths about the Force, about the past, the Knights
of Ren here, the past for herself.
She realizes the cries she heard were actually her own cries as a young girl being taken
away from her family.
And then she hears a voice, “Rey”.
And that’s Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Hey guys, today we have a special treat for you.
Rogue One production designer, The Force Awakens concept artist and ILM legend, Doug Chiang,
Thank you so much for hanging out with us.
Oh you’re very welcome, it’s a pleasure to be here.
You’ve been with ILM since 1989?
Yeah
Can you tell me a little bit of how you came to be with ILM?
It’s interesting because of course when I saw Star Wars when
I was 15 years old, that completely transformed my career directive.
And I was always trying to make my way toward ILM, and when I finally got the opportunity
to come up here in 89, it was for a short three-week project.
And it was one of those things where I had no idea if there was any future, I was down
in Los Angeles at the time, just freelancing and I thought okay, this is my chance.
I packed everything up, moved up, everything on the risk that the three weeks would turn
into something bigger.
And that three-week turned into a 13-year career.
What would you say is your favorite thing to design?
To be honest, its creating worlds.
I love sort of creating fantastic environments.
It goes to why I think Ralph is a genius.
Working at the ranch for 7 years, I had a chance to look at all of his artwork.
And there were some real jewels in his black and white pencil sketches, they were really
simple, but there was a romance to it that made me feel that’s an image I want to see
in a movie.
His sensibility was
so in sync with George.
In terms of his form language, in terms of how he designed.
And for me, what distinguished Ralph from other film designers is that his images were
almost always cinematic.
I mean he was composing for the screen.
And it’s a very unique thing because you know a lot of the time, designers and myself
we tend to sort of obsess about details, like okay here’s this cool spaceship, without
thinking about the big picture of how it fits into the frame.
Ralph was doing all of that.
And so, whenever I get stuck now, I always go back and look at how Ralph would handle
things and so my lessons that I learned from Ralph was to really design in a cinematic
space.
Design it from a camera’s point of view.
And its really important for a film like Star Wars to design to reality because ultimately
that’s how the audience is going to experience it.
And so we can’t get into the nitty gritty details of okay, what color is that?
What shape is that?
Because at the end, all those details, only augment the foundation of the design that
has to work.
You worked really closely on the prequels, and you’ve done beautiful work for the prequels
and now you’re working on Rogue One, which is completely different.
But it also has to feel very similar.
What’s it like working with those principals?
One of the really fun challenges of working on Rogue One with Gareth, for instance, the
U-Wing.
It’s our new iconic spaceship.
We set a pretty high bar; Gareth said lets a most iconic spaceship.
Lets create something that’s as memorable as the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wing.
And when you think about it, in my view, perfect designs.
And we ended up chasing the U-Wing for months and months.
Recently I went back and I was collecting all of the artwork and I discovered we did
781 individual designs of the U-Wing.
Before you settled on it?
Yeah, wow!
That spoke to Gareth’s thoroughness.
He really wanted to make sure that we explored all the options, that this was the best version
of that.
So you’ve been working closely with Amy Henning on her new project for Visceral.
Can you tell me a little bit about that process?
I love working with Amy, her ideas and her visions are very similar to George in some
ways.
Always thinking big scope.
And on top of that, she’s tied to a really strong story with really strong characters.
We’re figuring out immersive worlds, we’re figuring it out to such a level that the audience
or the player can actually experience what’s around that corner?
What’s behind that room?
And that’s where it’s really fun because we now get to figure out all the different
spaces.
For me it’s like being a kid again, going out back in the woods and exploring.
Well awesome, thank you so much for coming in and talking about your career and Rogue.
It was really enlightening and super super inspiring.
Stick around there is more Star Wars Show in just a moment.
Rebellions are built on hope!
I have tingles already!
Yes We have hope.
Saw Gerrara has no legs?!
Rebellions are built on hope!
Yeah it is!
So perfect.
Oh my gosh.
Ahh that’s Scarif!
They have no idea we’re coming.
Take hold of this moment.
The force is strong.
What the heck!
Make 10 men feel like 100.
We’ll take the next chance, and the next.
The X-Wings!
Yes You are rebels aren’t you?
Yeah we are!
Darth Vader!!!
Vader!
I could listen to Doug talk about Star Wars art all day.
Dude and you learn so much. He is awesome.
And with all that talk about Doug’s designs we wanted to know what your favorite concept
art from Star Wars is.
For me it’s, either Doug’s concept from Jakku with the tailend of the Star Destroyer
and the speeder going away or Ralph’s concept of Luke standing on a plateau overlooking
Mos Eisley.
Yeah I love the McQuarrie art where the environments are really big and the people are really small.
Like Luke hanging from the weathervane on Bespin as the Falcon approaches.
I love that one too.
Now you can share your favorite and tell us why using the # StarWarsConceptArt and we’ll
feature some of your picks here next week.
And as always be sure to check out The Star Wars After Show presented by Verizon, where
I, along with my panel of Lucasfilm employees and Star Wars super fans break down all the
happenings in this weeks episode of The Star Wars Show.
Watch it this Thursday and every Thursday on YouTube.com/Verizon.
And it’s been a while since we’ve done this so I’ll see if I can do it in one breath:
remember to like the video, subscribe to the channel, follow us on Twitter, Instagram,
Vine, and Google+, Like us on Facebook, and download the Star Wars app.
Thanks for watching, and may the force be with you.
Can I ask you that question now?
Sure.
What is the deal with you and….