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When Should we see the Falcons Mandibles out the window?

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 (Edited)

Ok so I thought it was a discussion worth bringing up.

At what point depending on where the camera is positioned within the Falcon cockpit shots should we see the mandible?

By no means am I saying that the image I have posted is in any way correct but It is something I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty. If we are behind the front seats of the Falcon we would not see them at all.

But when the camera moves to a position such as in the picture, above the dashboard we should see the mandible.

But if the camera moves further down to the middle ring right at the furthest most tip then I think we would not see the mandible at this angle which is also featured in some shots.

Anyone care to shed some light on angles and correct positioning for where the mandible would actually be?

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Is that an SE change, or something you've whipped up?

Is the Hasbro MF big enough to stick a Go Pro in the cockpit? That should settle things...

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Where were you in '77?

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It's a whip up :)

But I think the go pro could be the way forward :)

There is only two other shots in ESB that I am currently aware of that uses this particular angle of when Leia says "Star Destroyer" towards the end of the film. And the Space Slug Escape (this one is a little different) But I believe there are more in ROTJ escape out DS2 springs to mind at this angle but I don't think Star Wars uses this angle at all if my memory serves me correctly.

Just a quick extra thought but would it be possible to use a 3DS Max model and simply delete the windows if they are a hard shell and put a camera in there? Not sure what field of view the camera should be set at mind but perhaps a standard FOV would do..... The other option is simply measuring out some lengths on a accurate physical model and making a calculation. Unfortunately I have neither of these so I am making guesstimations.

I think it's a bit of fun trivia and not so sure it would work as an addition to the cockpits views but I am just more curious than anything else really.

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Ronster said:

 It wouldn't be angled up like that, I know for sure. The cockpit and mandibles are parallel and on the same plane so if the right mandible were visible it would be pointed farther downward, perhaps just above the bottom edge of the leftmost window.

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Doesn't matter where you are in the cockpit, looking straight out it depends on what lens is used. There is no "standard" field of view when it comes to shooting a film.

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At heart, hard-core OTers are no different than all the fans who discuss the trivialities of the EU and try to reconcile the various discontinuities, they just talk about different things. ;)

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I suppose if i wanted to add some more insults and injuries to my current assessment and say this.

It is not a camera angle it is a matte painting!!!

So... it is just a painting with holes slapped on top of the footage, so I suppose you can let the camera men off the hook. but the matte painting artist has made a small boo boo :)

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Ronster said:

I suppose if i wanted to add some more insults and injuries to my current assessment and say this.

It is not a camera angle it is a matte painting!!!

So... it is just a painting with holes slapped on top of the footage, so I suppose you can let the camera men off the hook. but the matte painting artist has made a small boo boo :)

 That's not a matte painting.

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I don't do face palms but i do smash my face against a wall occasionally :)

Ok so the reason i called matte painting was because the shot at this angle while Luke hangs under cloud city. I missed that one so a count of 4 shots at this angle in ESB and a few more in Jedi.

Anyway i agree with Dave the angle i have is wrong also.

But the camera is fairly high in the cockpit. where as in all the other shots we are low enough to not see the right mandible.

I was on the cusp of saying we would not see the mandible at all last night but i think a small part would be visible. I also thought for a while the actual tip of the mandible would not be visible but only the chassis leading off to the tip.

It is all Stinsons fault anyway :)

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Ok so that means that we have to make a calculation on the lens that was used.

In my opinion it is a fairly wide angled lens.

This will ultimately tell us if we would or would not.

If we looked with our eyes we would see them without doubt but yes the camera lens is different.

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Han seated should not be able to see the Falcon's Mandibles at all, but someone standing like the guy in the second photo should be able to.

Standing in that position, your POV should be something like...

But with the Holiday Special's Millennium Falcon, they could not afford mandibles, or much of anything else.

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I'm glad of this thread existing and would extend it to include other craft like the Star Destroyer and the view from various other windows (like the Emperor's tower).

We now live in an age were cameras a sufficiently small enough to fit inside reasonably small scale models to answer these sorts of questions.

We can also model these situations in computers.

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Well Just by looking at a simple angle measure we Can have a rough guess on the POV cockpit that the view cone is around 130 degrees. Subtracting around 50 degrees (25 from each side and looking at the Falcons shape and dimensions.)

This feels about right to me as a rough quick look.

Also to address what you have said Fanfiltration. Yes Han would not see anything sitting down. But if you look at the position of the camera in the POV cockpit shot it is actually about Head height looking down over the dashboard. The bottom of the image does not encompass the dashboard details.

There is only the POV Cockpit shot in the original post I think that could remotely have a chance of glimpsing a part of the ship out the window (never tell me the odds)

The only other thing I thought of as perhaps a way of calculating the Extended view out the window was to draw a box around the details we see and then extend lines which are approximate as to where they would go. I would like to say though that I am not really sure about this type of calculation and if it would yield an accuracy at all. But I do feel that it shows perhaps part of a process in to figuring this out.

@Bingo one thing at a time...

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For what it's worth Ronster, I'm personally 100% satisfied that none of the OT cockpit shots should show any glimpse of the Falcon's 'mandible' whatsoever, and are all correct as they are. 

This is due to the camera POV mainly pointing *directly ahead* (whether from behind the seats in some shots, or closer to the windows in others) throughout the trilogy.  And since the camera views are looking directly ahead in these shots, then we wouldn't see the closest 'mandible' to the cockpit...because unlike your initial mock-up, it is *angled away* from the cockpit.

So I totally agree with FanFiltration's points, who helpfully shows in his 3rd photo that the camera POV would need to be moved over to the right-hand of the cockpit before we would see any of the 'mandible'.

(Thankfully, no extra work required by adywan on any of these OT shots, as far as I'm concerned) :)  

The big question however...is whether J.J. will stick to the established *directly ahead* camera POV in his Falcon shots in his sequel, or whether he'll choose to show us something closer to that 3rd photo in Fanfiltration's post?... 

Me, I think it would be neat to see a glimpse of the Falcon out of the cockpit at this point, using a differently positioned camera angle inside.  

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Ok Imp, forget about the blackness of outer soace...

Think about how everything bends inwards when you look forward down a long desert road.

Now again I am making a guess but a guess based on angles and position of the mandible in the green on the left.

You must unlearn what you have learned...

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Ronster said:

Ok Imp, forget about the blackness of outer soace...

Think about how everything bends inwards when you look forward down a long desert road.

Now again I am making a guess but a guess based on angles and position of the mandible in the green on the left.

Ronster, although you amended your previous post to include your diagram with the coloured lines after I'd commented, it helps confirm for me the way I look at all these cockpit interior camera POV's - if you extend the middle *blue* line (showing the top edge of the 'mandible') towards the outer cockpit on your diagram (I just held a pen against it) you'll see that the top edge of the 'mandible' is actually a little *below* the side windows of the cockpit.

So that, taken in conjunction with your other helpful mock-up which I've shown above confirms for me that the 'mandible' would definitely be offscreen somewhere around where the 'tree' is seen on the far left-hand side...but still hidden by the lower section under the side window, if this was the view we were to see outside this particular camera POV.

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That Render is for the star wars falcon cockpit not ESB and ROTJ and it's also not in the same aspect ratio as the film is in. nor does it have the same FOV settings as the lens that filmed the scene. But I would say that the shot that you pointed out is not the closest to the one in question in the film. It's this one.

yes it is looking to the left a bit but not enough to obscure the mandible if it were centered. Also take into account the height gain to actually frame the cockpit bars in such a way so as they would fill the screen without the dashboard visible. (This would obscure the mandible further) and in this case a fair tilt upward. Scroll up to the Route 66 mock up where the falcon visited Area 51 for a tourist trip to view the drop down of angle shift and how the flat face would be more obscured, and when centered the mandible would do a shift to the left further outward along the horizontal plane.

I really don't mind if it's not visible but my gut tells me that everything points to it being visible at that particular angle in the POV shot we see in the film. And only the shot I have pointed out. Please note I have disregarded every other angle as saying "No Chance". I am happy to put my hands up and say "you know what you are right"... But I still am not ready to do so at this time based on the evidence

That Line is very important Imp Fighter in ascertaining the actual horizontal face of the mandible indeed. But as I have stated earlier we also have to take in to account the height of the camera and the slight tilt downward but over the dashboard controls. The mandible sticks out in front of the Falcon cockpit at about 5 x length of the cockpit in to the distance albeit angled away to the left.

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That frame is angled way too far down to compare to the one in the film, in my opinion. Just look at the lines of the cockpit walls, they're angled up instead of down like in the film.

Here's the frame I stopped on, and it looks closer to me to the shot in the film, even though it's angled slightly lower and further back from the front of the cockpit. I think the mandible is right on the level of that wall from this perspective.

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yes it is angled way to far down in the image I posted...Yours is angled way to far back and too low.

If you were to go up in height and tilt downward and come forward  a small bit you would achieve the angle in the POV cockpit shot I have been focusing on in the film.

But don't forget the sides of the cockpit is higher in the ESB cockpit and the Bars / frame are also of a totally different configuration.

The Falcon cockpit is a bit bigger in the ESB & ROTJ movies

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I hope this debate rages for years. Especially the definition of matte painting. But it seems all the mock ups show a mandible jutting upward in relation to the cockpit at an angle some would consider to be unnatural.

The blue elephant in the room.

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Mrebo said:

There are many definition of matte painting that lead to a mandible jutting upward in relation to the cockpit at an angle that some would consider to be... unnatural.

 

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