Why Star Wars Needs Practical Effects, According to Rogue One’s Neal Scanlan

“Talk with any Star Wars fan that has issues with the prequel trilogy, and one of the chief complaints is likely to be the abundance of CGI. There have been memes and gifs made making fun of it (with Jedi swinging lightsabers at non-existent targets, or Obi-Wan cheerfully bouncing in a speeder with nothing but green surrounding him, for example). Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams and his entire production team clearly took that feedback to heart, stressing repeatedly in the lead-up to the film that it would be using as many practical effects as possible, building a life-size Millennium Falcon and many full sets, and more.

Now, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story looks to continue that tradition of practical effects married with CGI, instead of over-relying on the latter, something that Academy Award-winning Creature and Special Makeup Effects Supervisor Neal Scanlan says is of utmost importance in filmmaking, especially when making a Star Wars movie.

“I have a little theory that in all of our hearts, as brilliant and as wonderful as CGI is, and I of course am an absolute fan of it, this is going to make me slightly controversial, but there’s something deceitful about it,” Scanlan told the Radio 1138 Podcast on Jedi News. “It asks you to believe that it’s real, and the better it gets, the more it wants you to believe that it’s real and forces you to believe that it’s real.

“And I think there’s just a natural – something just deep inside us that knows when something is real. It may not be that it’s as perfect or fantastical or mind-blowing as the CG version may be, but it’s something that you allow into your heart and into your soul, and it allows your imagination to make up some of the little spots.”

Scanlan said that’s reflected by the data, as audience surveys are now indicating they prefer more practical effects, and that’s led to his team at ILM, Lucasfilm’s effects powerhouse, to find a way to “a creative middle ground” between practical and digital effects.

“[It] is really exciting, to be able to say that we can go so far practically, then go further digitally. Or we can create a partial creature, or enhance a creature, or assist in a place, like we did for K-2SO, who ultimately is a digital character, but to work with the actor as an alien, as a creature, as a physical character as if he were just another practical effect. I think that will make a difference, and I think you’ll see that in the film, that he was K-2SO on that set, and he had the same support as any creature we made. So I think he felt part of the practical effects, but ultimately he’s digitally in the film.”

Scanlan explained the intimidation of working on a Star Wars film, wanting to remain faithful but also push forward.

“There’s a charm, and a familiarity, and an innocence to Star Wars. If you let that go, it may still be a great movie, but it’s not a Star Wars movie,” he said. “

hat’s what the practical things do, they ground us in a place to feel these extraordinary worlds are not so detached, that we might still somehow understand them, be familiar with them. When we do a creature, the temptation is, ‘Let’s make it much more sophisticated than this, let’s do this, let’s do that!’ And you have to pull yourself back and say, no, you can’t do that. Star Wars language is a piece of hose pipe, and it came off your hoover [vacuum, for non-Brits], and you don’t know that it came off your hoover, but you recognize it, because it’s those pieces, and those components that make it up. It’s trying to hold onto that visual language, and then slowly but surely as films move on, we leave the old worlds behind and find new ones.”

Indeed, for Rogue One, they used tubes from vacuum cleaners, and old tractor parts from abandoned farms, making sure they apply the real world to the Star Wars world. It’s all in service of the story, and bringing storytelling to a new level with each film they make.

“Hopefully that’s a slow and pleasant journey and none of us ever let go of the old wonderment that George left us with.”

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters December 16, 2016.