Thursday, October 10, 2019

Twin Suns Setting and Beyond: The Perfect Star Wars Shots


Hal Hickel and I had a lot of fun talking with Ashley Barry-Biancuzzo about our favorite shots from the "Star Wars" movie series for StarWars.com

Twin Suns Setting and Beyond: The Perfect Star Wars Shots
https://www.starwars.com/news/perfect-star-wars-shots

From Luke Skywalker gazing wistfully at the twin suns to the X-wings swooping through the trenches of the Death Star, Star Wars is chock-full of iconic shots. But what’s going on in these images from a filmmaking perspective? To satiate our curiosity, StarWars.com sat down with Industrial Light & Magic’s Hal Hickel and Todd Vaziri to find out. They shared with us the emotional impact of their favorite scenes, the technical trickery of a Texas Switch, the challenges of hand-drawn animation, and much more.

Here's an excerpt:

StarWars.com: In your opinion, what’s the most beautifully designed shot in Star Wars?

Todd Vaziri: The shot where the Millennium Falcon flies toward the camera with the core of the Death Star exploding behind it in Return of the Jedi resonates with me on a technical and aesthetic level. There’s a real progression to it, too. First you’re inside these claustrophobic tunnels and then you’re zooming around inside the main reactor, which is huge and cavernous. The last part of the sequence has you going through those tight tunnels again, but doing the exact inverse. It has this rubber-band effect where the tension releases and then builds up again.


I tweeted about this moment earlier this year. Click on the tweet below to see the whole thread: