Intro

In PLP the teachers are both really into Star Wars, so they wanted to somehow include seeing the new movie into our curriculum. They definitely succeeded!

We did a mini blue sky project based around Star Wars. Basically a blue sky project is where each person has to answer a question about anything they want. However in this case as the new Star Wars movie was about to come out, our question had to be on the theme of the Star Wars movies. My question was:

How did the developers create the special effects of the original movies?

I answered this question by making an iMovie about some of the special effects from the original movies and included my own attempts to recreate the effects with modern tools.

You can watch my movie here: Ryan’s Star Wars Blue Sky Project 

Planning and Research

So the first step was to make our pitch form. The form asked the what our question was and how we were going to answer it. I then had to decide what effects I would recreate and how I would make them. To decide which effects to pick I had to watch the movies. At this point I should probably admit that I didn’t used to like the Star Wars movies. I watched some of them when I was younger and didn’t find them very entertaining. At the start of term I wasn’t excited about doing a Star Wars unit at all. Turns out – this was the best unit yet. I ended up watching all 6 movies and really enjoyed them.

For my special effects I finally ended up choosing spaceships flying, the AT-AT walking scene, and a Lightsaber battle. Luckily for me my family has some behind the scenes DVD’s. They helped a lot when learning how they made special effects like the lightsaber back in the 70s, and showed the models that were used for the stop motion scenes and the computerized camera and green screens used for the flying scenes. Finally it was time to start working out how I could recreate the effects as I wanted to build prototypes to make sure I could actually do the effects I had chosen.

Prototype Phase

I started with the lightsaber effect. After finding a video on YouTube of how to make a lightsaber in Adobe After Effects I took a short film of me moving around a balloon pump to represent the hilt. The effect worked and looked good. I would show it here but I forgot to save it – however I wasn’t in the greatest mood while we were filming so my expression wasn’t very cheerful. Luckily this was just a prototype.

I then went to the app store on my iPad and looked at some green screen apps. I found one app called Veescope Live which would take my sheets of green paper out of the shot. I used green card for the background and underneath the ships so it would look like they were flying. When you look at the prototype you can see that part of the ship has disappeared because the green floor was reflective on the ship. So I got rid of the green floor. By this time I had learned more about Adobe After Effects and figured it was better at removing the green screen than the apps – so decided to use that.

I then started working on options for doing the stop motion AT-AT Walker. On the Veescope app you can also do stop motions so my first prototype was created on that. Unfortunately the fps was like 5 so it didn’t run smoothly at all as you can see in this prototype. I then tried to use iStopMotion on my Mac with my iPad as the remote camera – but for some annoying reason it wouldn’t connect. I think the problem was incompatible versions between the Mac and the iPad, but I never figured out a solution. In the end I bought the full iStopMotion app on my iPad and used that.

At this point I had successfully figured out how to create each of the effects so I was ready to start on making my video.

Creating the Video

After creating my prototypes I was ready to create the main movie for my project. I took a clip of the Millennium Falcon getting sucked into the death star in episode IV. I then took a clip from the behind the scenes show on how the ships were filmed. It was then time for me to create my scene. I wanted to copy the original scene, so that’s what I did. I used a light switch cover to represent the entry of the death star and stood the ship on a tin of beans to help it appear to be flying. After I filmed it I imported the clip to Adobe After Effects. It was actually really easy to take out the green screen. I added a starry background to give the impression that it was in space.

So now that the ships were finished I had to work on my AT-AT walker. Luckily for me I was in Whistler for the weekend because of a hockey game. So that made it really easy to film my lego walker in the snow. The only problem was that it was -12c and the lego walker was tiny, so it was hard to make small adjustments. I ended up moving the walker a bit too much after each frame so it looked like the AT-AT was sprinting. I used the slow motion effect in iMove to slow it down by quite a lot. On reflection I think my prototype in Veescope was actually better!

Finally I worked on the lightsaber effect. This one was that hardest and the most time consuming as you have to go frame by frame to move the lightsaber effect into the correct position. This effect took several hours to create and when you see my scene it’s only about 3 seconds long. I would never be patient enough to do a 10 minute lightsaber scene!

I put the iMovie together with the original scenes from the movies, the behind the scenes clips and my special effect – and then added titles and transitions and a good Star Wars sound track.

Exhibition

The exhibition is where everybody presents their projects. We were organized into groups of around 8 people. We were then given a Star Wars planet for our group and we had to make our area look like that planet. My group was Hoth. We had “Hoth” Chocolate (also known as Tim Hortons Hot Chocolate), pin the arm on the wompa, and we had a wompa cave you could walk through. We also opened the windows and ran fans to make it really cold in there – which made the Hoth Chocolate very nice.

To present my project I got a white (snow) project board. I came up with the idea to cut out an area in the board for my iPad to go through which I thought looked really effective. I also found an app that would play my video on a loop. I added some pictures of me working on the project around the spot with the iPad. On the sides of the project board I had a description of how George Lucas made his effects and how I made mine. The cool thing about my display was that it was self explanatory and so I didn’t have to be there to present it at all times.

What I Learned

I really enjoyed doing this project and learned a lot of things including:

• How to use Adobe After Effects
• How time consuming special effects are
• That it’s still not that easy too make these effects even with our modern technology
• I knew the computers were bad in the the 70s but not this bad
• How to create a lightsaber in After Effects by using a preset
• How to take out a green screen in After Effects

I also learned that for a big project its good to work on it a little bit each day as that way I didn’t have to rush to get everything done. I also learned that its good to make prototypes to test that an idea will work before going to far along with it.

Below is the information that I included on my project board about how George Lucas created the effects and how I recreated them. I also listed the challenges that each of us faced.

Effect IV – Spaceships in Space – George Lucas

• Filmed in front of a blue screen
• Blue screen removed in post processing
• Used models for the space ships
• The camera was controlled by a computer
• This meant the exact same movements could be filmed multiple times

Challenges

• Computer was big and very expensive
• Scenes had to be filmed multiple times and then sliced together to form the final scene
• Lots of work to remove the blue screen

Effect IV – Spaceships in Space – Me

• Filmed in front of a green screen made of sheets of card
• Used Adobe After Effects to remove green screen
• Filmed with spaceship model toys from Walmart!
• Tried different green screen apps before using After Effects
• Used light switch cover to represent the death star station

Challenges

• Green screen apps did not produce the quality I wanted
• The spaceship toys were not to scale (Tie fighter bigger than Millenium Falcon)
• Filming with a “green floor” as well as background caused lots of green reflection on the space ships and affected quality

Effect V – AT-AT Walking Scene – George Lucas

• Filmed using stop motion
• Stop motion takes individual photo for each frame of video
• Used complex models for the AT-ATs
• Had different sized models to be used in different scenes
• Used baking powder and glass to create the snow
• Filmed in a model environment

Challenges

• Stop motion is very time consuiming process
• Must only make tiny movements between each frame

Effect V – AT-AT Walking – Me

• Built an AT-AT from a lego set (discovered I can built Lego)
• Filmed stop motion scene in the snow in Whistler
• Tried free stop motion apps but they had bad frame rate
• Used iStopMotion to film the sequence

Challenges

• With the lego model it was hard to make small movements
• It was -12c in Whistler and I had to lay in snow to film!
• Had to play scene in slow motion in iMovie as otherwise AT-AT is moving too fast
• I hindsight I filmed the AT-AT from too far away so it looks way too small

Effect VI – Lightsabers – George Lucas

• Started using aluminium poles covered in reflective paper
• Post processing of film to add the glowing light effect
• This was done by drawing individually on each frame
• For some scenes they used swords or sticks as lightsaber
• In other scenes would use only the handle
• This was done so they could simulate starting up the saber

Challenges

• They often broke their “stand-in” lightsabres
• Had to learn how to make fights look realistic
• Time consuming work in post production to create the effect

Effect VI – Lightsabers – Me

• Filmed using plastic dollar store lightsabers
• Used Adobe After Effects “lightsaber” preset

Challenges

• Could only add one lightsaber effect to the movie
• At times in the battle my lightsaber is behind my sisters but the effect always appears to be on top
• Applying the effect to the correct location in the film is very time consuming even with After Effects
• It took me about an hour to create a short 3 second scene
• After Effects is very powerful but quite complicated when you are trying to learn how it works