Class Project - Star Wars

There are dozens of great locations in the Star Wars films, but this project was all about the vehicles.  We had a short sequence that showed two TIE fighters escorting the Millenium Falcon into the Death Star.  The picture quality is all over the place here - had to really dig for some of these.

A store-bought model kit was too small to shoot for our purposes (and it wasn't just a shopping class).  The Falcon crew was given the kit and instructed to double all the measurements.  Their ship was largely assembled from Styrofoam and balsa, and detailed with styrene sheets and plastic cups, among other found stuff.  Even at three feet long, it only weighed about a pound.  This was a good example of why project elements were volunteer-based: the really zealous ones would go immediately to the tougher jobs, and make time to work on them.

Our one TIE fighter consisted of a 4" Styrofoam ball and a center wooden dowel.  Its wings were made of foamcore board and covered with black electrical tape.  It would be shot several times and layered in during compositing to look like numerous ships.

For a tracking shot of the ships approaching the Death Star hangar, three students collaborated on a painted backdrop.  They drew a grid on a photo of the original matte painting and enlarged that with charcoal onto a 4'x8' sheet of insulation foam.  They blocked out large areas of tone and later focused on contrast and details.

Between the painting and the camera dolly was a row of miniature turrets and towers.  The turrets were manually operated from underneath to spin and raise their guns.  Having them pass the camera as foreground during the dolly shot sold the effect of greater depth.  Still photos of the ships in profile were keyframe-animated in After Effects to fly across the screen. 

The Falcon's entrance is seen from inside the hangar.  Moving the ultra-light ship caused it to wobble, which looked really bad.  Instead, the camera was fixed to the hangar set, and the whole thing was rolled toward the Falcon.  Differences in lighting on the ship as it entered added believability to the shot.