Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!
Thursday, May 10, 2002
Issue #61
Episode II Easter Eggs
The Star Wars films are brimming with so much detail, that they require multiple viewings to soak it all in. First time screenings are to watch the main characters and the core story, but with subsequent viewings it’s hard not to let your eye wander and take in some of the extras.
Sometimes, the details are intentional elements meant to remind you how the galaxy fits together. Other times, it’s an unintentional flub that illustrates the complexities of filmmaking (keep track of thecolor of the clothes that Padmé packs on Coruscant in Episode II, for example). And, on occasion, the filmmakers purposely put in a little visual joke to reward sharp-eyed (or in some cases, sharp-eared) movie-goers.
Here’s some of the things to watch for the next time you go to see Attack of the Clones.
Trundling along the streets of Mos Espa as Anakin and Padmé go to meet Watto is none other than R5-D4, the grumpy astromech from Episode IV that blows its stack in front of Luke.
What has become a tradition of sorts is the “Wilhelm,” the affectionate moniker given to a very distinct scream sound effect used in all of the Star Wars films (and quite a few non-Star Wars films too). In A New Hope, it’s the stormtrooper that plummets down the Death Star chasm. In Episode II, it’s a Naboo soldier thrown in the opening explosion of the film.
The very first shot of Episode II has an homage to another sci-fi classic as the camera tilts up to the crowded orbital traffic of Coruscant. “That shot had been executed in 2001: A Space Odyssey,” explains John Knoll, one of Episode II’s Visual Effects Supervisors. “I put an Orion space plane flying in there.”
Star Wars continuity purists will have a hard time explaining just how an X-wing fighter and TIE fighter got into the speeder chase over Coruscant.
By now, many have spotted the familiar Millennium Falcon-style Corellian freighters docked on Naboo. “It was George Lucas’ idea,” says VFX Supervisor Pablo Helman. “He said something like, ‘should we dare go there?’ And we did.” In addition to those saucer-shaped freighters, expanded universe fans might be able to spot a Corellian bulk freighter, the same model as Talon Karrde’s Wild Karrde.
It appears that Fett genes and low headroom don’t mix. In an homage to the classic Star Wars misstep, wherein a stormtrooper bangs his head on a low-hanging door, Jango Fett also takes a wallop on the noggin — complete with sound effect — as he enters the Slave I after tangling with Obi-Wan.
“There’s these big cow-like creatures called shaaks that Anakin rides on Naboo,” explains Knoll. “The shaaks got to be a bit of a joke with the crew. I put one in the asteroid sequence, in a reference to Ken Ralston [visual effects artist in the classic trilogy] having put potatoes and tennis shoes in space battle scenes previously. So there’s a shaak there, but it’s got the asteroid shader on it with craters. You really can’t see it unless you start to look at it and see the legs and snout.”
“There may be a shaak on fire during the Clone War,” hints Ben Snow, another of Episode II’s Visual Effects Supervisors. “It was almost a competition. Can anyone get a shaak in their scene?”
Of course, for every confirmed Easter Egg, there are dozens of imagined ones (Luke’s landspeeder? Sebulba? Darth Maul? Joey Fatone?). Keep a close eye on the screen during your next viewing, but remember: your eyes can deceive you; don’t trust them.
Thursday, June 13, 2002
Issue #62
Making it Count
Joining the pantheon of such dark side villains as Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, Darth Vader and the Emperor is Christopher Lee’s Count Dooku, or Darth Tyranus.The conceptual exploration of a new Sith villain for Episode II meandered through many iterations — including gothic vampiric female warriors and half-cyborg samurai. The end result, though, of a rogue Jedi of stately menace could only have been accomplished by an actor of Lee’s presence and history.
“He’s fascinating,” says Writer/Director George Lucas. “Christopher plays it so you don’t quite know if Dooku’s disenchantment with the corruption in the Republic is valid — because it is valid. It’s all valid. He plays it like: is he really a villain or is he really just somebody who’s gotten disenchanted and trying to make things right? He was Qui-Gon’s master, and his feeling of loss at Qui-Gon and thinking about him is real. He’s not just a monster that, say, Darth Maul was.”
In addition to the screen presence Lee brings to the charismatic separatist character, he also brings with him decades of martial skills. “He’s a really brilliant swordsman,” says Lucas. “He’s done more sword-fights than anyotheractor. He was doing sword-fights back when the films that we’re trying to mimic were the real films!”
“This is a different kind of sword-fighting, so he had to learn a new kind, and he’s very good at that. And we had a really good stunt double that is a world-class swordsman. Through digital technology, we were able to take Christopher’s likeness and put it on the stuntman, so the stuntman looks exactly like him. We combined the close-ups of Christopher and the stuntman, which is what you normally do in a movie, but now we were able to do it more precisely, so it’s more seamless.”
Thursday, June 27, 2002
Issue #63
On The Dark Side
“He has a great capacity to have a brooding dark side,” says Writer | Director George Lucas, describing Hayden Christensen. “He’s very good with anger, and those kind of qualities, which are not only important for this film, but are even more important for the next film. I was casting for the arc of this character, not just how he was able to play it in this one. The boyish qualities start to drift away in the next film.”
When landing the role of Anakin, Christensen’s research materials were the four previous films of the Star Wars series. “There’s only so much you can draw from a man behind a mask,” said Christensen. “But I wanted to bring some of the monotone aspect of the way he delivered his lines to my character, to a lesser degree, just so you can see where he was going. Also, there were certain times when I’d move my hands the way he would to indicate certain physical sensibilities that were to come.”
To further school himself in the way of the galaxy, Christensen watched Episode I every weekend during shooting. “It was more to get used to the way people talk in the Star Wars universe,” he explains. “It’s not the way normal people speak, so the delivery and the speech patterns are something that I was trying to have constantly imposed on my own psyche so I could be comfortable with it.”
Christensen also carefully eyed Jake Lloyd’s performance as the boy Anakin, looking for ways to bridge a character pure in heart to one destined for darkness. The scene in which Anakin confesses his first irrevocable step tothe dark side merged both characteristics. “In the telling of it, for me, it was a chance for me to justify Anakin’s younger more immature sensibilities,” says Christensen. “The fact that he can do this horrific act, but in the retelling of it, he would break down the same way a child would … that was something we were consciously aware of when we were filming it.”
As far as Anakin’s ultimate fate, Hayden doesn’t have any insights other than what is commonly known about the rise of Vader. “I can really only extrapolate on what’s been said in the latter part of the saga,” he says. “I murder all the Jedi and there has to be some falling out between Obi-Wan and I that leads to a fight scene. Aside from that, the only thing that I ever nag at George is whether or not I’m going to get to wear Darth Vader’s outfit. And he gives me a ‘wink wink, nudge nudge.’
Thursday, July 11, 2002
Issue #64
Gillian Libbert: Costuming Clones
By Pablo Hidalgo
The last time starwars.com talked to Gillian Libbert, way back in 1999, she worked as Lucasfilm’s Character Appearances Manager, preparing costumed characters for commercials and publicity events. After wrapping up that job, she placed a call into Trisha Biggar, Costume Designer for Episode I who was just starting on Episode II’s early pre-production.
“My background was in production, and I really wanted to get back into it,” says Libbert, who asked Biggar to contact her should she need any help. Given the costume requirements of Episode II, Biggar did just that. “Since Trish lived in Scotland, she needed someone in the U.S., particularly at Skywalker Ranch, to help coordinate things on this end. It was meant to be a two-week job, and ended up turning into two years,” she says.
Over those two years, Libbert was involved throughout all stages of production and beyond, first sourcing fabric and working with the concept artists, and then traveling down to Fox Studios Australia, assisting Biggar during principal photography.
“I can definitely say I’ve mastered the Jedi costume,” she says confidently. “We probably did about 50 Jedi at a time for the end battle, but we made enough costumes for 200 to 250 people.”
Libbert’s previous experience at Lucasfilm afforded her familiarity with a number of different departments. “I think it helped Trish a lot, since I knew the Lucasfilm structure” she says. For instance, for the Licensing division that produces the toys, she oversaw the costumes during reference photography shoots and 3-D laser scanning. For the Publicity Department, she ensured costume continuity during magazine photo shoots. “I have done cover shoots with Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, and I also did one with George Lucas and Jango Fett in the middle of a dry lake bed.”
During postproduction effects shooting, Libbert dressed theextras that would populate many of the digitally enhanced crowd scenes — particularly the Geonosis arena Jedi and the underworld Coruscant citizenry. She would also offer her expertise to the digital cloth simulation artists creating digital wardrobe for computer-generated characters (like Jar Jar) and stunt duplicates (like Obi-Wan).
Libbert had a chance to step in front of the camera for a cameo appearance as a Coruscant extra. “There’s a reason I’m behind the scenes,” she laughs modestly. Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll was gathering bluescreen elements of background extras to populate the Coruscant nightclub and alleys. “I think we probably dressed about 800 to 1,000 extras,” estimates Libbert. At Knoll’s prompting, Libbert donned an outfit cobbled together from various pieces and played a surprised bystander during the foot chase.
“It was a good time; Julie D’Antoni (ILM Production Manager) and I laughed so hard because I had a tendency to overact,” she admits. “John’s reaction was, ‘Um… you need to tone that down.'” After a handful of takes, her screen debut was secured, but she hadn’t realized just how prominent in frame she was to be until ILM screened their dailies for George Lucas.
“I could have just died,” she says. “I was mortified, because there I was on the big screen — at least Julie was there too. John took his laser pointer, circled our faces and said, ‘there’s Gillian and there’s Julie.’ But George finaled the shot so I guess my acting debut was a success!”
Thursday, July 25, 2002
Issue #65
Watto Returns
Ten years have passed between the events of Episodes I and II, but only three years mark the span between the film releases. While audiences get to see how a decade has shaped returning characters, the artists and animators at Industrial Light & Magic apply three years worth of advancements to their computer-generated stars.
One alien that benefited from such growth was Watto. Though a professed favorite of Animation Director Rob Coleman, Watto’s return saw a way of improving the already-convincing performance seen in The Phantom Menace.
“I was definitely happy with what ended up being in Episode I, but so much of that process was just sheer panic over being able to pull it all off,” he says. “With Episode I under our belt, we were able to concentrate more on performance, and actually getting the animators to think of themselves as actors, and get inside the characters’ heads.”
Watto may be a shrewd businessman, but he’s not that bright, and he hasn’t learned many lessons in ten years. “His character is pretty well exactly the same,” says Coleman. “What’s lovely in the Watto sequence is you have that moment of realization when he’s staring at Anakin, and it’s a sustained close-up, and he’s thinking. You can see him thinking and his eyes are darting around, and it’s like he can’t believe that his mind is telling him it’s Anakin.”
Aided with a rich voice performance from Andrew Secombe — whom Coleman has, oddly enough, never met despite working so closely with his voice — the animators were able to convey Watto’s one-track mind with subtlety. “When he comes to the realization that it’s Anakin, he has this joyful moment. Then he goes, right in the next shot, into the ‘hey, you can help me with some deadbeats who owe me a lot of money.’ It’s like he’s right back into his old ways, and Anakin has to pull him back. It’s a lovely scene, I loved it how it was scripted and I think it plays really well,” says Coleman.
Superficially, Watto shows the scars of an ailing business, as his gruff appearance is even more gruffer with the addition of a scraggly, unkempt beard. “He originally had a hat for The Phantom Menace, but George [Lucas] didn’t want it and then [Visual Effects Supervisor] John Knoll convinced him to have it in this one. There’s a nice little moment, an interaction with it, so the hat turns out to be a really nice prop for us to work with as animators.”
Another suggestion from Knoll that ended up in the final was a small cloud of pesky digital flies. “When they showed me the first take of that, because it wasn’t my suggestion and didn’t expect it, I thought it was hilarious,” recalls Coleman.
Another interesting challenge came from something as simple as camera angles. Though ugly from any angle, Watto actually has a more photogenic side, which was focused on heavily in Episode I. “I actually wanted him to lose another tooth, because whether people are aware of it or not, the majority of time in Episode I, Watto is right-to-left, so he’s looking to screen left. Most of the time — if not every shot — in Episode II, he’s left-to-right. In the last movie, we chipped off two of his teeth so we could see more of his mouth. This time around, we were on the side with the two big tusks, so I was worried when we first started that we weren’t going to be able to read his facial expressions, but it actually worked out okay.”
Thursday, August 8, 2002
Issue #66
Penciling the Clones
At last year’s Comic-Con International, Jan Duursema couldn’t say anything about her work penciling the Episode II adaptation forDark Horse Comics. This past weekend, though, she was finally able to speak freely about the assignment in front of an audience of comics fans.
“I was little hesitant to take the part,” she admitted. “I thought, ‘I’m going to know everything about the movie and I don’t want to!'” Her hesitation subsided quickly (“in two seconds,” she noted), and she eagerly entered the world of Attack of the Clones. “It’s more difficult than working on a regular comic book, because that’s in your head. In an adaptation, you’re trying to see into what someone else is going to do with a movie, and trying to recognize how they’re perceiving it.”
Working off of reference photography and concept illustrations, Duursema had to reconstruct the movie panel by panel, transforming the moving widescreen image into compelling sequential art of varying proportions. “You’re trying to figure out what’s the most important thing on a page,” she relates. “Which part of the conversation do you want to give the most weight to? I try to balance out the size of the shots and the intensity of the faces depending on what we needed for the story, or what I felt the emphasis needed to be.”
While the reference imagery and constant contact with LucasBooks editor Chris Cerasi helped fill in a lot of gaps, many times Duursema was left to interpret or create imagery on her own. Much of the reference photography was against featureless bluescreen, and George Lucas and ILM were refining scenes such as the droid factory and the final Clone War sequence right down to the wire.
This left opportunities for Duursema to still be surprised by the finished film. “Even though I knew a lot about it, and seen a lot of images, when I saw the movie I was just so blown away,” she says. “It was amazing.”
Thursday, August 22, 2002
Issue #67
Coleman Talks Coleman
Animation Director Rob Coleman’s crew was in charge of bringing the eponymous Jedi Coleman Trebor to life. To help fill out the Jedi ranks in both the arena and the Jedi Temple with more exotic shapes and forms, it was decided that several alien Knights and Masters would be entirely digital.
In the case of Trebor, the horn-crested Jedi came about as a replacement to an Episode I Jedi Master removed from the Jedi Council. “If you think back to the original Jedi Council there was a long-necked Jedi on the far side — Yarael Poof — he was a puppet. George was afraid that if we kept that guy in, people might confuse him with the Kaminoans.”
No new footage of the Jedi Council chambers was shot. Archival Episode I footage was reused, digitally modified to fit the appropriate time of day, and the offending Jedi Master was painted out and replaced with Coleman Trebor. To further suggest the progress of time, another Jedi Master got the digital axe. Green little Yaddle was replaced by Shaak Ti, an actress wearing elaborate makeup who was composited into the scene.
Coleman readily notes that the naming of the Jedi wasn’t his idea. It came about during an Art Department meeting at Skywalker Ranch, when concept sculptors Michael Patrick Murnane and Robert E. Barnes displayed the outcome of a rather intense sculpting jam session. From the array of aliens, George Lucas picked his favorites and assigned their roles. “[Visual Effects Supervisor] John Knoll said, ‘Uh, George, you know you haven’t named anything after Rob…'” recalls Coleman.
From that suggestion, Coleman Trebor was named, the maquette was realized as a computer-generated character, the character was painstakingly animated and composited into the temple and arena scenes…
… and then Coleman Trebor was quickly iced by Jango Fett.
“Yeah, but we don’t actually see him hit the ground,” Coleman is quick to point out with a laugh. “I keep telling George it’s only a flesh wound. He was the most heroic, he was the one who went after Dooku!”
Coleman has no qualms about his Jedi counterpart’s screen time. He says he actually shoved all thought of the character’s name out of his mind since he was never certain that the name wouldn’t get changed by the time the film was released. “If there is a toy I’d certainly be sending that up to my dad,” he notes. “Dad look: a Jedi!”
Thursday, September 05, 2002
Issue #68
Everybody in Helmets
The description of the shot is deceptively simple. Queues of clone troopers receive their helmets from an armory dispenser, while Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Kaminoan guides walk by in an overhead corridor. “There are several hundred rendering layers in this shot, not including the bluescreen and miniature elements as well,” reveals David Meny, a Computer Graphics Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic.
Working from concept art devised by Alexander Laurant of ILM’s Art Department, this shot is rooted in reality with a number of live action elements. Firstly, footage of Ewan McGregor as Kenobi was shot on a bluescreen stage. “This element was flopped left-to-right, so that Obi-Wan’s walking direction would be continuous throughout the sequence,” explains Meny. “It was also shrunk significantly in the frame so that the focus would remain in the foreground.”
With the live action element positioned, an animatic was created to determine correct camera lens and framing. That virtual camera data was taken to the motion control stage and miniatures of the glassy skywalk and the background dome interior were photographed in multiple passes. “These were shot with miniatures because they were static elements that could be reused for several shots in the sequence, each filmed from a slightly different angle. They also served as great bookends for the whole sequence and gave us something to match our computer graphics to,” says Meny.
In the foreground are the clones, entirely computer-generated. “Since we are seeing thousands of these characters on the screen at a time, a lot of time was spent making variations in their armor.” Scuffmarks and rank coloring diversify the crowd. Their movement was supplied via motion capture sessions, supplemented with some key-frame animation. The animation was divided into three portions: standing in line, picking up and donning the helmet, and walking back. “We’re using the Maya software application and a particle system in Maya, to drive the performances of the characters. The particle system allows us to script when each of the characters transitions from one cycle into the next. By choreographing the performances with Maya’s particle system, we can render hundreds to thousands of characters in a single shot very efficiently.”
The armory, jokingly called the “bowling ball dispenser” by the artists, was a computer model. “Computer graphics were used because it was a single model that needed to be used only for this shot, and would require a lot of interaction with the digital characters,” says Meny.
Pools of light, reflections, cast-shadows and layers of atmospheric haze help to blend the disparate elements together. These are rendered separately and composited together to allow for efficient tweaks of just one element.
Filling out the backgrounds are dozens of non-armored clones undergoing combat and calisthenics routines. These were less detailed computer models since in the finished film, they would appear only in the background. “Because we were seeing thousands of these models in subsequent shots, we created two different uniform colors to add some variation to the squads,” explains Meny. “Twenty-nine different performances were recorded and motion-captured.”
Since this was the only shot of unhelmeted yet armored clones in the movie, a CG model of a clone bearing the likeness of a young Jango (modeled from actor Bodie Taylor) was specifically designed. However, when it came time to don the helm, it became apparent that the computer artists had to fudge some of the real-world measurements. “The model of the helmet didn’t actually fit on the digital Jango’s head,” says Meny. “His head was too large, so parts of his cheek and nose were actually poking through the helmet. The animators had to enlarge the helmet and shrink down the face slightly to so that they would actually work together and the audience wouldn’t see any artifacts.”
Thursday, September 19, 2002
Issue #69
An Elegant Weapon
Count Dooku clearly does things his own way, but his ideology is not the only thing that sets him apart. His lightsaber handle design is unique among the Jedi weapons fans have seen to date in the saga.
The distinctive curved lightsaber first appeared in early sketches of the new Sith enemy, and this direction was later expanded with the help of Art Department Assistant Roel Robles, who brought in some of his own cultural roots to the design table.
“I started bringing in my arsenal of various Filipino swords, spears, and knives to give the Art Department a different feel than what we had before. At one point, we had a room full of artists playing with these deadly balisong (butterfly) knives before ameeting,” he recalls. Robles’ collection included a wide variety of blade types, but his favored weapon was the barong, which featured a curved handle to prevent weapon slippage during combat. “It looks cool, sharp and deadly,” he says.
At one Art Department meeting, Design Director Doug Chiang had Robles lay out his weapons for George Lucas to inspect. “George picked out the barong, which I was really happy about not only because it was my favorite blade, but also since it was a Filipino blade, it had cultural and historical bonds. I am proud to say I was able to put a small part of my Filipino heritage into the film,” says Robles.
As further inspiration to his fellow Art Department members, Robles arranged a demonstration of escrima, a Filipino martial arts employing multiple bladed weapons. He and a friend, Jonathan Soriben (“one of the best Filipino martial arts masters that I know,” he says) reserved the basketball court at the Skywalker Ranch fitness center and went at it with sticks rather than knives. “So as not to scare anyone,” Robles clarifies.
“When Dermot Power came up from London to work with the team, Iain McCaig encouraged me to set up a demonstration. Iain and Dermot were designing the Sith at the time, and were very impressed. They began to do more work on the Sith with escrima in mind,” says Robles.
Thursday, October 03, 2002
Issue #70
Padmé Amidala Speaks
By Pablo Hidalgo
Senator, activist, warrior, secret newlywed — Padmé Amidala keeps a schedule as busy as Natalie Portman does, not that the young actress minds.
“I’m in school during term time, I make movies in the summer, then I do publicity on the weekends,” she explains. “It’s not that difficult. I love going to school and all my school friends are great. They’re not at all jealous or intimidated. A couple of them came to visit me [on set]. I need to be surrounded by friends as well as work people. We had a lot of fun in Sydney.”
“Fun” is Portman’s one-word summary of Episode II, soon to be available on DVD. Freed from the cumbersome makeup and stately wardrobe of Episode I, Portman delights at Padmé’s more aggressive actions in Attack of the Clones. Sure, she got to storm her own palace in Menace, but that’s nothing compared to fighting alongside Jedi warriors and going toe-to-claw against a nasty cat creature. “I got a few small bruises and pulled muscles, but nothing serious,” she says.
Yet through it all, Padmé Amidala remained well coiffed and fully accessorized. “That makes me laugh,” she admits. “A lot of the time, Padmé is running around without her assistants, but she always has amazingly flamboyant hair. She must be very skilled at styling it herself.”
Another perk of Episode II is that for once, Portman gets to play the older woman in a romantic scenario. “It’s about time, isn’t it? After Leon and Beautiful Girls, I kept being made out as this ‘Lolita’ character, and now I get to be the cradle-robber,” she laughs.
She also chuckles at the rumors alleging an off-screen relationship with co-star Hayden Christensen. “I’m now the envy of little girls everywhere, which is better than being perceived as a bad person who robs stores or something,” she says. “There are much worse rumors people could make up about you.”
What is true is that she swiped an Anakin-related memento from the set; she now owns one of the Padawan’s braids used in the film. “There were like 12 of them so I knew one wouldn’t be missed.”
Knowing that young girls around the world are watching Padmé Amidala with a twinkle of heroism in their eyes, Portman switches to a more serious gear when discussing her alter ego as a role model. “I hope she has elements that young girls would aspire to,” she says. “She’s a leader, she’s idealistic and a good human being who has compassion for others. Plus she’s not corrupted by politics; she takes care of herself and she’s vulnerable to love — which everyone is.”
Portman’s commitment to her educational pursuits would make good role model material as well. “It is important for me to be the most rounded human being I can possibly be and to learn as much as I can learn,” she says. “For me, school and college have helped me understand myself better and given me the tools to live a full life and grow as a person”
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