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Farscape Puppetry use in the Star Wars PT

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I've been watching the first season of Farscape recently and the one thing I've noticed is how great the makeup/costumes/prosthetics are in the show. That aliens look absolutely fantastic. Light years better than when the original Yoda puppet was used.

I'm really impressed with how far the Henson companies have taken puppetry.

So...I got to thinking....why the hell did Lucas go with all CGI when he could have gotten the Henson companies to do some really great work and then only use CGI sparingly on individual characters?

It would have been more beneficial to the actors and it would have probably looked 10 times cooler.

What do all of you think? Would the PT have been better using the Farscape type puppetry mixed with some CGI?
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Wasn't Henson involved with Hitchiker's Guide? I thought those puppets were well done as well.

You'd think puppets would be the way to go. I even heard that it can be cheaper to use models and puppets than CGI. It might even look more realistic.

But honestly, who cares about realistic when you have all this money to throw about, right?
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I think the puppets are just as realistic as the CGI. I think the most beneficial thing is the actors have something "real" to interact with....not some guy in a blue suit or some wacky getup like what Ahmed Best had to wear.

Looking at Farscape, Zhann and D'Argo were just awesome looking for actors in makeup and prosthetics. Mix that kind of craftmanship with some CGI to spice certain things up and it would have looked spectacular and the actors would have loved it since they could see some of what was going to be onscreen.
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I think the more *real* stuff on set the better for all involved- the actors, the filmmakers and the audience.
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i totally agree , lucas sold his soul to the cg devil
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GCI should be used when Puppetry fails. Like intense action scenes or something. Such as having a Yoda throw his light saber into a Clone Trooper's chest and then yank it out. Puppetry can't do that very well with out looking stupid. But any other scene should use puppetry simply because it's hard on actors, and it looks more realistic (since it is real). I mean, even the Star Wars people complained that they had to act against very little.

And it is not getting any better. I heard the girl from King Kong had to really work hard because she was pretty much acting against nothing. It's just not easy on those poor actors. And then you get bad acting, and then the fans get pissed off...

Lucas, you should have learned from the past. The ESB Yoda could kick your ROTS Yoda's ass. Any day.

Puppets look way more real. Look at Jurassic park. The animatronics (sp?) are used for close ups and interaction. GCI was used for distance shots and action sequences. Even 12 years later that movie is bitchin'! Lucas should have taken some advice.
"I am altering the movies. Pray I don't alter them any further." -Darth Lucas
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Although i agree that much of the Farscape puppetry work is of a higher quality (on the small screen) then what came out in much of the PT, the problem though is that the puppetry has a higher level of difficulty when filming. George, it's been written, is continually evolving the look and storyline itself, puppetry wouldn't allow for him to change things later on, easily. Puppetry is against his prefered method of movie making. What would you all have converted from digital to puppet? Jar-Jar...the Kaminoians...Dexster. (Jar Jar's manerisms would have been greatly reduced, the Kaminoians wouldn't have been able to stand up or walk, but Dexster at least for the close ups at the table would have benefitted greatly) Although i love the Farscape work, and would guess that they could have done it at the HD quality George was up to, to do it in the time allotted would have been very difficult. After 28 years they still couldn't get a working R2 to do what was needed, you think George had the patience for more mechanical contrivances on set... Puppetry on set would either have added a year of production (overall) or reduced the number of 'aliens' available.
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the point is they wouldve brought an added reality because they are there, period. its better than looking at flat, weightless, cartoons
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Originally posted by: none
Jar Jar's manerisms would have been greatly reduced,


And that's a bad thing?
Forum Moderator

Where were you in '77?

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I don't think so. If they're able to do a 22 episode season of a TV show with that kind of puppetry, Lucas could do it for a 2 hour movie.

As for CGI giving more flexibility, that can come around and bite ya in the ass. The prequels are the result of having too much freedom to change things.

I agree with an earlier poster.....they shoudl keep it real as much as possible so there is something for the actors to react to. I find that many CGI movies, not just Star Wars, suffer from this same problem.

I think CGI is great for background and space battles and stuff, but not for actor footage. Keep it totally real.
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For the sake of argument, if they did go with Farscape like puppetry, wouldn't you have gotten the same critic from the public that they all look like Muppets or Men-In-Suits? The first few years of Farscape got that comment before people just stopped paying attention to that aspect of the show.

To convert some of the cgi to puppetry you have to make some sacrifices, what would they have been? Choose a scene.

Personally i don't think George did get as far as his ideas wanted to go. He held back on Jar-Jar. Looking back, i'm conjecturing that if George had gotten his way to make Jar-Jar an inflatable being as was originally speculated then maybe the Jar-Jar story arc wouldn't have been forgotten after TPM. Which could have added to the overall story. The pieces we're there to make the RotS Jar-Jar have a possible emotional final moment. but who knows.

But back to Farscape, Cable-X1, get back to this thread as you watch the show progress, there are various make-up changes to D'Argo, for instance, between some of the early seasons, and then there's all the attached head aliens towards the end of the series. We'll see if you don't start formulating some choice words about the work as you get more familiar with them.

George needed the flexibility of CGI to get these movies to where they ended up because he didn't have the story structure to build upon. He was modifing these stories right up to the end. With all the preproduction which went into these movies, they all suffered from a lack of cohesive substance. Lucas seemed to have a few choice moments well thought out but everything else, to me, was a creative impulse without reflection made at a deadline. Now maybe if the reality drawbacks of certain amounts of time put aside to create the puppets, get the puppet actors to work effectively with the actors on set, could have provided some grounding which could have forced the story into something more cohesive and resonant, but that's grand speculation. Better, could have been, but not definite. More puppets could have made these movies more RotJ-like...

What are the major scenes where individuals interact with digitally created life which you all think would have worked better without cgi.

To give cgi a good name, i don't think the Watto stuff could have been done better any other way. Rygel's a great character but there's something about Watto, which i wouldn't want changed.