Saturday, November 01, 2008

When I Was on Extra! Extra!

Here's a clip that ran on the entertainment show "Extra" back in 2005, in the days leading up to the release of "Star Wars: Episode III."


Did you miss me? Did you blink? Like these things usually go, the reporter from "Extra" and I talked for well over an hour, and really got into the nitty gritty of that particular shot... and it was all boiled down to two lines. At least they got to show my breakdown of the shot, which featured some sweet footage of actual lava blasts from Mt. Aetna in Sicily, photographed in HD by Ron Fricke (director of "Baraka") in late 2004. I placed most of the elements in 3D space in After Effects, but rendered out those passes and comped the shot in our in-house compositing tool, CompTime.

The entire Mustafar sequence was a real joy to help create - we had an amazing team comprised of visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett, compositing supervisor Pat Tubach, and comp sequence supervisor Mike Conte, all of whom were extremely generous.

3 comments:

Daniel Broadway said...

The Mustafar sequence looked great. You guys did a great job.

I thought it was especially cool you guys used miniatures for the lava and environments.

Speaking of miniatures, are any of the starships in Trek miniature, or all CGI? Probably CG, just curious.

Todd Vaziri said...

Hi, Daniel. Thanks for writing, and thanks for your kind words about "Episode III." The stage crew created some amazing elements for us. Did you read the "EP3" Cinefex article?

Please understand that there is no way I can talk about any upcoming film in any way. It is a shame that a movie in which we believe so strongly won't be released until, say, May 2009, but that's the way it is.

Daniel Broadway said...

Yes, I did pick up the Cinefex article, I have it here at my house. I have read it, but it's been a couple of years. Perhaps I shall go back over it.

I figured you wouldn't be able to answer the Trek question, but it was worth a shot...heh. I can't wait to see the trailer this month. Gonna be awesome.