Quick update:
Here’s the edit-focused part of the update. For equipment & funds update, click over to Facebook.
Today marks the day that the very first FX fix shot for ROTJ:R was completed. It’s a shot that has bugged me ever since 1983. The shot? When Luke is escaping the Death Star in the shuttle in the hangar. When the gantry falls it is no existent until it hits the floor due to the blue screen FX of the time and, when it does appear and hit the ground, it looks like a model because it has no weight to it. It seems that it was shot at the wrong frame rate which would have given it the scale and weight it needed. But I’ll reveal this by the end of the week and i can run you though what was done.
For reference, here’s the shot on Youtube: https://youtu.be/xPZigWFyK2o?t=463
Watch it at x0.25 speed. You can see the gantry silhouetted against a random explosion, but it completely fails to occlude any of the starfield outside. I would guess this is the same issue that lead to the B-Wings getting mostly cut from the film: The optical compositing process couldn’t handle really thin things. In this case, however, most viewers don’t notice (I never did, at least), but I look forward to seeing Ady’s version.
And since I can’t talk about this movie without a storyboard, here’s a storyboard for this shot, from November 19, 1982: https://macrobinoculars.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/ra105-181.jpg
Not only is the falling gantry absent, but they were considering having Endor visible outside. Endor probably should be visible! And that would give a brighter background for falling debris…if the compositing worked.