Star Wars: Thala-sirens Required Two Puppeteers and a Helicopter to Come Alive for 'The Last Jedi'
The Last Jedi introduced audiences to a variety of new creatures, from
“At the very beginning of the film, [writer/director] Rian [Johnson] said to me that he wanted to take animatronics and practical effects and put them there
The creature may have been designed to sit in one location, yet there were still elements of motion that were required to make the creatures appear real. It required two different puppeteers to control its motion, in addition to creating the illusion of Luke milking the
“One would operate the shoulders and the flippers at the top and the other person would operate the belly and the milking mechanism or the udder mechanism at the bottom,” Scanlan pointed out.
With the remote location of Skellig Michael serving as the filming location for Ahch-To, the production team faced challenges even getting the puppet there in the first place.
“It’s the only creature I’ve ever flown by helicopter,” Scanlan joked. “We had two puppeteers on the outside, one did the head from a rocky position at the top—he had the head on a rod—and there were two other puppeteers at the bottom that did the bottom flippers."
Not only was the general public restricted from visiting the location, but scenes featuring the
“There were the only three other people on the set, and then Mark [Hamill] and Daisy [Ridley] came and acted out the scene," Scanlan detailed. "And when Mark, as you know, wanted delivery of the milk from the udder, then the puppeteer on the inside duly obliged.”
You can see the
[H/T Nerdist]
