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Sets

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I was inspired to make this thread by a discussion in another thread about how many physical models were used in the prequels and how a lot of the physical stuff were comped in as backgrounds for the actors, like the Kamino interiors and the Geonosian battle arena. Now, in my opinion, that creates a level of realism above that of a CG-created environment, because, even though it's still live actors against blue screen, the background actually exists. If given a choice, though, I would pick life-sized constructed sets with CG enhancements, though. That's assuming I wouldn't be able to have completely real sets to begin with (and you know in this case that's not going to happen). I'm talking, like, build as much real as humanly possible and then add in CG to get otherworldly or completely impractical things in there, like a room with a 150-foot high ceiling. Just build the ground-level real and add in the high parts with CG. That I would prefer over models because the actors have something to interact with. But again, don't let me confuse you with Episode III's "sets" that consisted of a real door or one wall with the rest green or blue screen. So I give you the choices of your favorites (and I know I've made this too wordy to be coherent): blue screen with real models comped in, real sets with minor or somewhat substantial CG enhancements, or, just to be fair, full CG environments?

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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The thing is, I don't think as many of us would have nearly as much trouble accepting the prequel CG if it didn't look so crappy. I always use Sin City as a comparison; every single set, with the exception of Katy's Saloon, is CG, yet it blends seamlessly and it makes for onr helluva movie.

http://i.imgur.com/7N84TM8.jpg

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I'm not saying CG is bad, but if you had to choose between it and a comparable version of it made practically (or mostly practically)...?

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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I voted for real sets with CG enhancements.

When I worked at Framestore I was hanging with one of the digital matte painters while he was working on a scene from Harry Potter 3. The scene consisted of Harry walking down an open air corridor. The corridor (floor, walls, bricks, etc) were real and the actor was really walking down it. The artist then painted a digital night sky and moon (BTW, he still used real photographic elements, but they were enhanced to look nicer, and there was some paintwork too). The finished scene looked great.

War does not make one great.

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Hmm. I'm trying to think of which scene that might have been, but I must admit I'm stumped.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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I've only seen the actual movie once so I don't remember, but if you watch it and they are walking down an open air corridor/wing or something at hogwarts, that's the one. You know how they added windows to cloud city in ESB, it's kinda like that (except this was planned during shooting so there were blue screens beyond the windows and open roof).

War does not make one great.

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I'm 100% in favor of real sets. And real FLOORS! Also, and I'm sure plenty of people will disagree, but I see physical sets being more necessary when filming digitally. The digital camera picks up so much detail and light, that a bluescreen backround doesn't blend well at all with the actors (most of the time). An example of this is virtually all of EP 2. It just looks fake and terrible, especially the scene in the ground floor of the Jedi Temple. That, to me, is the worst effects shot in the entire saga.
40,000 million notches away
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Real sets with enhancsments, all the way. With all this cg crap, they have gotten good at "seamlessly" comping the actors in, for the most part. What they sorely fail at now, and is just as bad if not worse than garbage mattes, is the difference in sharpness, contrast, and lighting between the actors that were comped in, and the environment that they're supposed to inhabit. That's awfully done. It always looks like they're standing in front of a movie screen.

The worst example of bad compositing in ROTS is with C-3PO on the veranda of Padme's apartment when Anakin leaves for Mustafar. Look at the difference in color, calrity, and sharpness between 3PO and Padme. It's insanely bad, especially the shot from behind 3PO looking at Padme when she says "No thank you, 3PO".
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For the type of story and environments Lucas designed the film with, there really wasn't a whole lot more they could do in terms of building actual sets. Much of the film was constructed facade--the coruscant streets, the nightclub, padme's apartment, palpatine's office, the kamino landing platform, Jango Fett's apartment, Dex's diner, most of the jedi temple, some geonosis exteriors, the lars' garage, the geonosis arena, the geonosis hanger...thats really every single location in the film. And all the Naboo places were real locations. The only place where they could have (and should have) used actual location plates was the Geonosis clone war ground battle--even though its mostly constructed from photographs, they have been manipulated enough that it looks false; simply setting the battle on some kind of earth desert with a few hundred real extras would have been much more impressive. But thats my only complaint really.
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Phew, this is the first poll I've ever done, so I'm happy at how the turnout has been so far! Thanks!

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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It's got to be real sets. The scenes will always look phony with the actors comped into a CGI or even a miniature environment.
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Real sets.

Nothing looked real in ROTS, and very little in AOTC.
However, a lot of TPM looked great and can pass the test of disbelief.

The reason? A lot of TPM actually WAS real. It's the best choice, and should be used when possible.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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The PT really opened my eyes to how much I loved the sets from the OT. The PT on first glance is really nice to look at, only because places like Kamino, Mustafar, Geonosis are all new looking, so something different is always neat to look at the first time around.

Upon further inspection, the films just don't look real at all. It honestly looks like one big animated film with real actors dubbed in. Now the one thing about real sets, is you are constrained on what you can do, and that is what is so appealing to CG, is that you can do almost anything.

But as I compare the look of the OT to the PT, the PT just doesn't feel real. I can't explain it, but CG movies are just too neat, and just don't have that realistic look to it.

As for models from the OT, don't even get me started on that. The OT space battles are so much more believable. The PT space battles look even more like an animated movie. Just check out the ROTS opening battle compared to the ANH or ROTJ battle, the CG is so obvious.
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Hmm, three people so far have voted for miniatures, but I don't see any comments from those people. I'd really like to hear the opinions from the other side! ^_^

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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This has been a nice thread and its great to hear all of your thoughts.

However, lets look at something shall we.
We all know that Lucas couldn't write his way out of a paper bag. He wrote the PT and the dialogue sounds like it was written by a second-grader. However, and please understand that I LOVE ANH, the dialogue in this entirely Lucas-sripted film is pretty bad in comparison to the brilliant characterization in Empire and to a lesser extent, Jedi. But WAIT A SECOND, A New Hope was such an incredible film and the bad dialogue never seems to get in the way......why? Could it be that the film is supported by the true substance of the elaborate sets and minatures. Absolutely.
The actors have some(physical)"thing" to act with which cancels out the lame writing.
In the PT, even though the actors have true talent, they have nothing to act with.....just a bunch of green screens.
When a majority of a film is based around the universe it creates, the universe should actually exist.
For some reason, the "Hey, That's My Dinner" line has ALWAYS bothered me.
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I voted for real sets, I think you should remove the CG from CG enhancements, since how the enhancements get there doesn't matter as long as they work.

Real sets first of all, look better for the camera... most of the time, but also help the actor visualize where they are and what's there. It's difficult acting that a ping pong ball on a stick is a giant spider. Anything that helps the acting process is AOK in my book.
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I voted for miniatures, though ideally, it'd be real sets with blue screen elements which would allow them to add in miniatures shot separately and make digital adjustments. The more that's real, the better.
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Upon further inspection, the films just don't look real at all. It honestly looks like one big animated film with real actors dubbed in. Now the one thing about real sets, is you are constrained on what you can do, and that is what is so appealing to CG, is that you can do almost anything.



Yours is a point Lucas always makes. But, I would argue that this is precisely why cg should not be used, or used only sparingly. Not only does cg allow you to do things that you can't do with sets...it allows you to do things that you just shouldn't do...like turning Yoda into a teenage mutant ninja turtle. Those things that shouldn't be done are a big part of what so weakened the PT. The entire focus of the PT was the technology used to make them...just listen to the commentary. That's all they talk about. Note to LFL...we don't need Rob Coleman, or anyone else, to tell us when a shot is cg. It's pretty glaringly obvious! If they had spent 10% of that energy on the story and the script, the PT would have been amazing instead of amazingly bad.

George should read a philosophical page from his own book..."just because you can do something doesn't mean you should."

Thank merciful god that Lucas didn't have the technology available back in the 70s to do what he did with the PT. If he had, Star Wars would suck. The more time goes on, the more apparent it becomes that Star Wars succeeded in spite of George Lucas, not because of him.
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Originally posted by: JediFlyer06

Thank merciful god that Lucas didn't have the technology available back in the 70s to do what he did with the PT. If he had, Star Wars would suck. The more time goes on, the more apparent it becomes that Star Wars succeeded in spite of George Lucas, not because of him.


You know, I think you just might be right . . .

I've had the same thought recently, and it disturbs me, though I do think he wasn't nearly as off his rocker as he has been lately. He's been haunted by the technology of special effects not being good enough to live up to his "vision" but I believe some of the limitations ended up making the original SW as good as it is. Take the Jabba scene for example, most of the dislike of it these days comes from the bad cgi job, but actually I think that scene was always a mistake to begin with. It didn't belong there, the film didn't need it, and ended up much better for not having it in, made possible precisely *because* the effects just weren't working out. But the way Lucas sees SW is quite different than how it actually ended up, and what fans love about it tends to be the stuff that didn't originate with him . . .

On the subject of sets, I would go with real sets whenever possible, of course. Miniatures and other physical tools to be used where possible--think the scene in ESB where Luke loses his hand, behind the actors there was an actual forced-perspective painting on set for the background, it wasn't even bluescreened, I believe. Then go to cgi for things that aren't feasible by any physical means, and to augment and clean up the physical effects if necessary.
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If you look at who made the OT...the producers, the writers, the designers, the effects pioneers...they're the ones who really made Star Wars what it is. Lucas planted that seed, but it took others to nurture it. Lucas was one part of the machine back then. Today, he is the machine, and he insists his way is the right way, even when it is obviously the wrong way. What made the OT great was creative collaboration. Lucas didn't write those scripts or develop those characters all by his lonesome. And we know damn well that he didn't direct them all by his lonesome.

With the PT, Lucas was all things. He was the dictator, so to speak, surrounded by arrogant yes-men, and we see what that resulted in. Lucas has probably only one real strength, and that is in ideas. He's a good idea man, but he DESPERATELY needs others to bring those ideas to life.
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Originally posted by: jack Spencer Jr
I voted for real sets, I think you should remove the CG from CG enhancements, since how the enhancements get there doesn't matter as long as they work.


I don't know. I carefully thought about the wording before I made this poll and even changed it around a few times before posting it. I made sure to clarify CG enhancements for a couple of reasons. If I had simply put real sets, it probably would have been winning more overwhelemingly than it is now simply because the prequels have trained us to avoid CG at all costs. But the fact is that CG is a widely-used tool nowadays. When used properly, it aids the movie a lot. And in fantasy films, especially Star Wars, it's almost unavoidable. So I was just being realistic.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
...in fantasy films, especially Star Wars, it's almost unavoidable.
Although there is none in SW, ESB or ROTJ.
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Now you're just playing semantics. ^_~

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Originally posted by: JediFlyer06

Thank merciful god that Lucas didn't have the technology available back in the 70s to do what he did with the PT. If he had, Star Wars would suck. The more time goes on, the more apparent it becomes that Star Wars succeeded in spite of George Lucas, not because of him.

I have been saying the same thing for YEARS! The O-OT was one huge fluke IMO...one of the coolest, most important flukes in the history of film! SW came out good because Lucas thought it was bad. The decisions Lucas was forced to make due to time constraints/budget/whatever actually saved the films because he didn't have the time to screw them all up...