The Visual Effects of The Force Awakens (Spoilers)

The visual effects were fantastic. Just goes to show how engaging the story and characters are and how well JJ directed the film that, even though there are plenty of shots that are completely CGI (like the prequels), I’ve heard nary a complaint (I’ve probably jinxed it though). Because he made the environments feel real and didn’t use CG when he didn’t have to.

I’m very curious to see how far Rian brings the practical effects, though. He did a Q&A with Christopher Nolan on Interstellar and they talked about how Nolan used next to zero CG. Johnson joked he was taking notes for VIII. We’ll see how much truth there was to that next year.

Tobar said:

The official discussion thread has gotten unruly since the release of the film.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/that-instant-bread-in-star-wars-the-force-awakens-wasnt-cgi-a6812826.html

This is pretty cool.

The Vimeo ones are gone 😦

You mean this one?

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3may5f_fa-vfx_shortfilms

I couldn’t tell if the CGI was actually bad or not, since the theatre had the movie out of focus, but Snoke and Maz both looked pretty fake to me. CGI always seems to look worse when the image isn’t clear.

Maz looked fine to my eyes. Very photorealistic.
Snoke on the other hand took me way out of the movie the CGI was so obvious.

Sounds reasonable.

Couple scenes took me out of the film a bit:

1. When Han, Chewie, Rey and Fin are on the Starkiller base looking up at that “oscillator” thing and the battle is going on above them. Looked like they were standing on a projector or something.

2. Han walking out on the plank towards Kylo, same thing as above. The background just did not feel real, Han was just not blended in well here.

Everything else was fantastic. Snoke and Maz were fine, not perfect but didn’t take me out of the movie at all.

Darth Lucas said:
…
Snoke on the other hand took me way out of the movie the CGI was so obvious.

I’m convinced that the fakeness of the holograph is deliberate for future narrative reasons.

Maybe not visual effects related per se, but I’m not sure how i feel about some of the design concepts in TFA.

The x wings and tie fighters were lifted straight from the originals and mcquarries drawings and i have no problem with that.

But some of the other things seemed out of place to me.

The armored creature that the scavenger was sitting on when he had netted BB8 had an odd look to me. It seemed less Star Wars and more Mech Warrior to me.

I wish i had seen what Han Solo’s freighter looked like as what little we did see was non-descript. But I get an Aliens vibe from it for some reason. Or maybe it just seems like your run of the mill generic large sized space ship. Star Wars influenced so many sci - fi designs of other franchises in the 80s and 90s so i guess its no surprise. But I dont want Star Wars to fall into the trap of becoming a weak rip off of itself.

The Dailymotion link is down, but the video can be found on Playwire (dunno how to get the direct link to the video though, so I’ll post the link to an article featuring said link): http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/01/15/star_wars_the_force_awakens_vfx_reel_shows_how_new_worlds_are_made_and_destroyed.html

Another VFX breakdown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRQPwJ0O24M