emanswfan

Also noticed that the video/panel also confirms and/or suggests a few elements from the rumors.

-crashed tie fighter (at least first time it's  official)

-Finn's Jakku clothing is actually Poe's from earlier in the film.

-it looks like Poe is on the Jakku at the same time Kylo and his troopers come to torch a town, and is clearly captured.  You can see his x-wing.  That's probbly Finn escorting him to escape.

-Rey is piloting the Falcon in the IMAX scene.

-that shot of the people running down a corridor might be from the rumored pirate attack on Han's freighter

-also seems like starkiller base might have something to do with the rumored new superweapons, or at least is the first order base on that ice-like planet.

For me, I think I'll just have to see the execution of the story, cause so far it sounds like something that could be good, but it could also be bad.

Full panel in excellent quality is available online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fMx670jOnw

At least from a visual standpoint, this film already looks WAY better than much of the PT.  The cinematography feels so much more inspired and some of those sets seem to just take you right into the experience. Though I can say I'm not a fan of some of the tealness of the darker shots.  But, I think a lot of what is seen here is a nice balance of traditional Star Wars and the best of modern filmmaking.

Of course, the story could still completely suck though.  And if the story is anything like the rumors at the moment, well I currently don't know where I'd stand, would have to see it play out on screen to know.

Well the panel is being live-blogged, and I'd assume they'll just release any videos and photos they show shortly after the panel finishes.

So, I decided to watch the first episode of Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales for the heck of it.  Disney is not backing down.  They made jokes out of the criticisms of the PT and SE many times throughout, which was plenty entertaining for me, despite the obvious child-like nature of the show.

Seems fake to me, but this film could also be about Boba Fett.

http://indierevolver.com/2015/07/08/the-full-slate-of-star-wars-films-leaked-in-advance-of-sdcc/

I do have a problem with the mixing of Vader's voice though.  Obviously it's James Earl Jones still, but it doesn't sound quite like Vader, almost as if their is some weird thin, restricted quality to it.  His voice sounds much better in the actual OT.  And I doubt it his age that is causing it.  I just cringed so much during the season 2 premiere.

If the Bluray has isolated dialogue, it would great if this could be fixed.  Not really sure if I'm the only who's noticed.

Another SW film written by Lawrence Kasdan? Check w/ his son.

Two directors associated with fun, creative movies? Check.

Still a little worried about a young Han Solo, but at least the writing/directing crew seems solid to me.

Umm, but why announce this before SDCC?  I guess they want to keep it strictly TFA focused then.

I really need to tone down my excitement level since we haven't seen any of these new SW films just yet.  I'm just such a nerd.

Well, no new trailer or clip coming to SDCC.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/07/06/star-wars-comic-con-panel

Perfectly fine with me, since teaser 2 wasn't that long ago AND I usually like watching behind-the-scenes featurettes to get a look into a movie instead, like PJ's vlogs for The Hobbit. September feels like a good place for another trailer, one that shows a grander view of the feel of the movie, but still hides the plot away.

Tobar said:

That post was pretty convincing until the end there. I've seen BB in person, he is no puppet on a stick. 

Actually, JJ mentioned a while back the BB-8 was puppeteered on set with digital work done to remove the wires/crew.  It may be that either the robotic version wasn't completed till after shooting, or the current robotic version doesn't allow them enough fine control in the movement to accomplish the level detail they seek.  How the actual set-up was on set, I'm not entirely sure of.

SilverWook said:

^ Source?

 It was on a 4chan thread, which mostly sketchy, but this at least looked interesting.

http://boards.4chan.org/tv/thread/58447373/tfa-time

There's some stuff in here that must be complete BS I'd hope, but at least some of this stuff, mostly about the puppet FX, seems cool.

Anonymous said:

I've heard a LOT about The Force Awakens from my friends who are artists and worked as consultants for the Creature Shop. If you didn't know, they are the ones who fabricated and all the aliens, puppets, props and such for the film.

One of the things they constantly tell me is that they are afraid of a fan backlash against the film like with the prequels. As old fans themselves, they say everyone at the shop was really positive going in but are honestly worried about the final product (in terms of art design and execution of concepts and so on, they don't know anything about the film's acting or pacing obviously). It has been almost a year since any of them has done actual work on TFA and only spec work for Episode 8. Second is that the design process got a bit hellish at times, with an art director telling them they had to throw out literally an entire planned section of the movie, with asiatic-style architecture and aliens and culture, everything, because one of the executives thought it could be racist. That led to a giant crunch to get new, less offensive aliens, which is why the puppets already revealed in the Vanity Fair article tend to look similar with smushed noses and rhino skin. Basically they tried to get away with reusing multiple designs for the same alien as different aliens. They say the architecture is now "uninspired." Another thing are aliens who were supposed to be in the start of the film got replaced with humans, again because of questionable design.  There is also a montage of aliens in the film including a large crime boss who is "not Jabba the Hutt but might as well be." Very few old species are back, except famous characters they said, and that a lot of character design concepts besides aliens were also scrapped because of rewrites and collapsing scenes together. One of the cooler things they told me is that Warwick Davis and Kiran Shah both play alien puppets in the film (not Ewoks), but they also gave Shah a cameo in the film as a body on an operating table in a medic bay. They made a scale dummy for him and everything, and they even sneaked it into a photo at the TFA panel at the Star Wars convention.

In terms of the plot, they didn't tell me much besides the middle of the film has an insane amount of aliens, almost all puppets with animatronic parts. There is a really cool process that allows them to do mocap on actors just for the face and gestures and map it onto a puppet. That is, they filmed a scene with a physical prop and use CGI to animate the face and subtler movements. Apparently it looks super realistic.  Andy Serkis and Lupita Nyong'o and others both play mocapped puppet aliens, Serkis being part cybernetic and Nyong'o being small, cute, and funny. There are also new puppet/CGI droids they are excited for.

Now for the juicier stuff that they dropped on me.  The worst kept secret of course is that Han Solo dies. The rumor is there is a dumb "You are not my father" line in the scene. Everyone in the shop also knows Daisy Ridley who plays Rey has a Padme/Amidala moment where her real name is revealed to be Kira Skywalker, and she had been living in hiding and thought dead like Luke.  They say that's also a stupid reveal because they used her real name all through production and everyone already knew. John Boyega's character is Finn Gruno (or Grunno), a stormtrooper who defects early in the film. Oscar Isaac plays Poe Dameron, "the new Han Solo" who apparently hits on alien chicks (at least in concept art) and a pilot named Gleev. Only other major thing is Domhnall Gleeson plays Major General Tarkin, a clone of the original Tarkin. It's rumored he dies in the film but will obviously implied he could be cloned again.

Lastly, some other tibits are that a running joke in the film is kicking the new BB8 (ball) droid. Rey, Poe, and C3PO all supposedly kick him, which was apparently harder to do than you'd think because the little guy is a puppet on a stick. Another rumor in the shop is that an alien who gets his arm ripped off by Chewbacca in the middle of the film is played by Simon Pegg. And of course, they say everyone is going to love seeing Admiral Ackbar again saying "It's a trap!" but this time, it's the good guys' trap.

Harmy said:

CC15 sucks! Hopefully, they will fix it in time but for now, I reinstalled CC14.

 Hmm, why you say that?  I'm just wondering, I haven't even downloaded the new update yet since I'm not on vacation right now.

Hal 9000 said:

Good to hear. I recently moved from a 7 year old machine to a 15" MacBook Pro myself! 

So, are you hoping to finish your PT regrade by the time TFA debuts, or were you referring to test clips? 

 the entire PT regrade.  Much of what I've been doing over the last several months was making documents to cover notes on color issues, possible creative decisions, and intended looks and reference images from various films/etc.  This is so I can more easily assess the project as a whole, and allows various iterations to keep to a consistent goal.

Each movie has their own issues, and vary greatly in their color grades, which I am trying to equalize out as much as possible.

I hope that this project can be something that can satisfy people's thirst for SW while we wait, and hopefully these films feel completely different from the official Bluray releases.

One note is that I am trying to optimize the footage to simply look like something that was shot on film, and while there is plenty that looks better in OOT color, there are also lot of places where more modern grading actually makes stuff look better/more real.  I am trying to make a healthy hybrid, that simply chooses colors that work best for the scenes, and help to add some emotion to scenes devoid of it because of bland, uncreative, or innacurate colors.

I've said this before, but with all the work I've put into it so far, I find it extremely hard to agree with someone who thinks the PT looks beautiful, and especially has a good BD transfer.

Sorry for not replying sooner.

Recently I've started to transfer my workflow from my 7 year old Windows computer (which was considered very powerful in its day) to my new high performance 15 inch Macbook Pro.  It's a gigantic step up in terms of performance, that I honestly REALLY needed for this project.  Apparently OS X's new version in the fall will also introduce a new graphics engine that should multiply AE's power quite a large amount as well.  CC 2015 just released the other day, so I'll see how that might improve things as well.

I've been busy with several official projects, that it has slowed me down a bit, but for now I seem to be relatively free, though I currently am on vacation atm.

After I finish reinstalling all the stuff I need on OS X and figuring out the best way of managing the storage necessary, I'll put out a new video clip for download, specifically in 4K to garner whether it would be worth it.

I am going to be trying very hard to get it accomplished by the release of TFA.

Also, I couldn't remember if I had asked this before, but are the PAL releases of PT deleted scenes are natively higher res, or simply upscales from the NTSC.  I misplaced my current DVD's, so I was going to have to get a new set, ugh.

Yeh, we can build new x-wings and blasters, but no new proper c3po arm?

Actually, the vast majority of nursery rhymes were written with religious symbolism in mind.  For example, the song talks about his fleece white as snow (Jesus being sinless), or the lamb following her to school (similar to the story of young Jesus).

Still weirds me out how many people were religious back and yet slavery and poor treatment of the native Americans was rampant.

It does say Snoke now (Uber before) in the summary, but that has to with the fact that the link is to a constantly updated summary based on all the current rumors.  So say, a few months from now the summary could be VERY different and far more accurate.

umm, there was only one for sure CG explosion, the rest being some pretty cool practical ones.  And I wouldn't consider the trailer much CGI, this trailer showed quite a bit less than say something for Marvel or any of the Transformers movies.  Dear god, the amount of iffy CG in Age Of Ultron really took me out of a movie, that was already so-so to begin with.

I believe they have a perfect balance between the two at least in the trailer, plus I'm sure all those shots will look better later.

And just saying ROTJ's final space battle was pretty crazy, especially for the movies of that day.

I do understand your worry though, as I always found the JJ trek space battle scenes really iffy quality, so I hope they actually hold up here.  The enterprise tended to look quite fake many times in those films, and I hope that isn't the case with stuff here too with the falcon and such.  And hoping the x-wings' quality improves decently as well.

I'm guessing from the current rumors, the crawl will pan down to said star destoryer Finn and the other troopers are leaving.

If the hand thing turned out to be true, I'd be very pissed off.

Now I am wondering whether I should post a 4K clip from that prequel project I've been working on, just so I can see what people think when they view it on a 4K display.

Another image of Kylo Ren's shuttle, at least in LEGO form.

Also, anyone else notice this similarity?  Not sure if actually a Sith temple like the one drawn a long time ago, but still cool to see another inspired design.

Full interactive compilation of the currently rumored plot elements.  (a more organized and easier to read version than my previous post about this)

http://spoilerboard.blogspot.de/2015/05/welcome-to-star-wars-force-awakens.html?m=1

Contains confidence levels for each plot point, as well as two different versions of Act III since nearly all of that last part of the film is speculation.

My bets, again, are that about 20% of the stuff is correct.  I think most of it sounds awesome to me, while others parts make me cringe (hopefully the stuff that is all fake).

John Doom said:

Have you seen this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyOUESbTCRk

At last a new Star Wars movie recorded on a REAL set! ;)

 So I am going to assume that is from the shot with the TIE-fighter shooting?  Looks like a similar place, though not sure.