doubleofive said:

Can you imagine if someone tried to piece together the plots from the prequels based on pictures like this?

"He's walking in front of a blue screen... He takes his lightsaber out and swings it around, then continues walking..."

Having been a regular TFN and VirtualEdition reader during the Prequels, I can confirm that it was much like that. Thankfully some info did leak, over time, and so you could start to figure things out.

If any of you are unfamiliar with the Virtual Edition, I strongly recommend you check out http://virtualedition.net/ . They're slowly working on writing and illustrating their own Sequel Trilogy, but the really fascinating stuff is their "Virtual Editions" of the prequels. They were updated over time, so you'll probably find them a little more accurate than you'd expect as dialogue became available through trailers, but it's pretty fascinating to see what spy reports and photos plus photoshop could give you, before each prequel was released. Here's their version of TPM.

By the way, the title of this thread is a little silly. I never thought they didn't film the Barge scenes, you know?