Meet the VFX Team of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

For over 40 years, the Star Wars films have pushed every boundary when it comes to delivering jaw-dropping visual effects, and in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker the VFX artisans once again rose to the challenge of creating groundbreaking visuals that both felt firmly rooted in the traditions of the galaxy George Lucas created and pushed the art form further than ever before. ComicBook.com sat down with the film’s key VFX heads for a deep dive into crafting the on-screen spectacle.

During our conversation, we spoke with visual effects supervisors Roger Guyett and Dominic Tuohy, special creature effects supervisor Neal Scanlan, and Industrial Light & Magic visual effects supervisor Patrick Tubach.

ComicBook.com: Once you were given the story, read the screenplay, and knew what was ahead of you, what was the thing that gave you the biggest night sweats? That thought of, “If we don’t get this thing right, this whole movie is not going to work,”?

Roger Guyett: Obviously it’s a huge production, and what’s fun about us answering your questions together, we were just talking about what a collaborative process is and how the tangible quality that’s in a Star Wars movie really comes from trying to practically photograph things, puppets or creatures, and try and do as much of that in camera as possible, as many special effects as you can. So that’s the sort of the basic spirit of it.

But I think when [director] J.J. [Abrams] started talking about the movie, we knew we had two or three really big challenges. One: the end battle with just the sheer number of ships involved. Colossal, I mean as a digital thing … a huge technical issue! The water: making that scene with Rey and Ren fighting. We knew we had to up the water technology, and make that a more detailed and just more as a character in the movie in that moment. And then, of course, Leia.

And Leia was something that we knew we had to get right in the process of photographing the movie. It wasn’t something that we could put off, because we just needed to solve that sort of foundational element of making sure that she was built into the story, and work within the context of any of those moments. So that was a huge challenge, too, and the technology we brought to bear on that … I mean, he really wanted her to be acted by Carrie Fisher. If you want that to happen, then really what you’ve got to do, and in some ways it’s sort of an interesting, game-changing idea about taking footage from previous movies or whatever you can take it from.

And in our case, we basically took it from [Star Wars: The Force Awakens], the outtakes, and you’re building a character performance from that. And when you see her in the movie, essentially she’s a new character in the movie, because she’s wearing new wardrobe, she’s got new hair, new jewelry, but it’s really a digital character built around the face of Carrie Fisher. And to do that, obviously, it’s not an easy thing to accomplish. It wasn’t the simplest route, and you want to build her into all of those scenes.

So there was a tremendous amount of integration involved and thought process, but also just it resulted in a performance that was basically delivered by Carrie, which is exactly what we wanted.

There’s an aesthetic to Star Wars that is practically baked into all of our cultural DNA at this point. And it must be challenging to find the look and style that fits all the films, but also pushes things forward. So tell me a little bit about those challenges on this film, taking it one degree further without getting too far from what we know and feel is Star Wars.

Guyett: To me, it’s so important that it’s all rooted in the physicality of, say, [Star Wars: A New Hope]. Okay, what does that mean? That means that if you can, shoot something on location, go to that location. If you can do it through special effects, any of those devices, and also embrace the charm of the puppetry and the characters and all of that sort of stuff. But at the same time, if you’re saying it should feel real – in other words, tangible – the interesting thing is you have this marriage of just simplicity of … well, not simplicity, but of an approach where you say, “Okay, we’ll go to that location.” But at the same point you can say, “Actually, we can actually rebuild that location.”

So, for example, in the speeder chase, you’re going from real location photography of a place with a certain number of Aki-Aki characters. In fact, hundreds of real Aki-Aki characters with thousands added in the background and kites and everything else. But then, in the speeder chase, we’re building the desert. The desert is digital, right? But to me, I think the guys did such a phenomenal job. It looks real and so the end result is the same. It’s the same feeling. You’ve got the same tangible quality.

Dominic Tuohy: The whole thing about style and it’s collaboration, it’s all about making it look like you feel it’s seamless between [the sequel trilogy], and, like you say, trying to find something that just takes it to the next level, but not taking it too far out of the reality of where you are. Because we know that there are creatures, we know there’s people dressed in suits – we know that, but we embrace that. And that’s the same for us and on the special effects side … the pressure is trying to keep it true to where we are.

Patrick Tubach: I think our version of going forward too is a little bit different than other films, because … Maz is a great example, right? We created Maz as a digital character in [The Force Awakens], and a lot of people would say, “Well, what are you going to do next? How are you going to up that? How are you going to change that?”

And, in truth, what we did here is we made a practical version of the thing that we had previously created in CG, which is such a strange way to think about it, but it’s such a Star Wars thing to do. It’s like, “Well, if we have the opportunity, and J.J. was supportive of it, let’s do a real version of the thing that we had previously done in CG.” And most franchises would never do something like that. But I think we had an opportunity and we took it and Neal did a fantastic job making Maz a real physical thing that we could film with.

Tuohy: It’s a very demanding world, Star Wars. And I think it demands artistry from you. It pulls the artistry out of you. One, you need to become intimate with George [Lucas’] world. You need to be respectful to it. You need to be here, but at the same time you need to be able to bring it into the modern audience, and give them their Star Wars world, but also give them something special and new and refreshing. And I think, all of us I’m sure would say the same. It isn’t just a technical exercise. It actually pushes artistry, not only of us, but my team. Not just, “Is it technically brilliant? Is it artistically right as well?”

And I think that’s a really important part of visual effects: that they aren’t just sort of there to just wow you. They’re there in subtle ways, in noticeable ways, in seamless ways, and in ways that you find delightful as well. In the way that you should respond to anything. So just personally, that, I think, is something that the world that George set up. Which, was a phenomenal world on all of those levels or something.

And that’s a great segue to something I wanted to ask each of you, as artists take inspiration from the Star Wars that has come before. Beyond solving those big picture problems, you get to sort of “sign your work” by putting a lot of attention into a little moment that might not only be a few seconds on screen but feels right in honoring Star Wars. So I wonder if you can give an anecdote about something like that, where you’re like, “I know I put a lot of time into this thing, but it’s because I loved doing it.”

Tuohy: Certainly for us it would be Babu Frik. Little Babu is our nod to the wonder of Frank Oz, Stuart Freeborn, Yoda, all of those characters, he’s there and he’s our [The Rise of Skywalker] of each version.

Tubach: We created a whole new AT-ST walker for the film, which didn’t get a lot of screen time, but those sorts of things that you do on planet, on Kijimi, back in the background. You’ll notice those AT-ST’s walking around, they’ve got these giant claw arms – which, the entire story is they go around and terrorize the citizens, tear roofs off, they pick up people. And we put a lot of effort into designing these vehicles that ended up very small on screen or only have a moment.

But I like doing that because I think that is part of Star Wars fandom, to be able to hold onto those details that nobody paid any attention to and then get more into it and read about it and then it can be used in another project later. So I enjoy doing that sort of stuff.

Neal Scanlan: For me, it’s the black sands, doing that practically on location in Jordan. The infrastructure that was in that location, there were six containers that were buried and each container was linked together. Each container had its own separate rig that was allowing the artists to fall through a real surface. And that is something that I embrace and J.J. embraced within making this collaboration of this film. And you can kind of say we’ve not done that before, and it is something that’s new to Star Wars, but it’s so fitting because it fits within what we believe leads you on to the next scene. You see the snake, and it just looks seamless. And I think that’s the difficult thing, just making it look seamless.

Guyett: The thing about being a visual effects supervisor is, of course, you’re haunted by every shot and the fact that you want to make. I think one of the things that I always, we work very hard at, is trying to bring a consistency to the work and J.J. is a very inspiring person to work for. And I’ve always felt that you try and make every shot in the movie a something of some storytelling or interest or give every moment. And of course, that’s very demanding.

But there’s certain aspects of this, like the dramatic element of the lighting: I mean, the lightning, one thing that I really enjoyed doing on this movie was just using that as a visual device and lighting those moments with the Star Destroyers coming out the ground towards the beginning of it, all that sort of stuff. It’s not just about how you do that, it’s about lighting those scenes in a way that really generates, I think, the right drama, and their images in movies, and we just love creating those.

But maybe more specifically, I think historically, Star Wars, of course, mirrors our own journeys through this business. You’re working on a movie that really has defined so many aspects of our world, our jobs, and the people involved, and our heroes who do the things that we do, and the technology that they often created. So it’s kind of an interesting thing to be part of from that perspective.

And really, some of the love letters, if you like, that we in this digital age where sometimes there’s a tremendous emphasis often on just trying to make it cost-effective and all those sorts of things. We did blow up our planet as a little nod to the Alderaan planet explosion. I really wanted to do that. I think fans will watch it and kind of understand the sentiment of that. But also doing stuff in camera, like the Sand Crawler at the end of the movie, which is, of course, a perspective miniature. But we still allowed ourselves to enjoy just throwing those things in there and putting images of the stars from [A New Hope], and we use some of the original matte paintings.

Actually, you’re the first person to have done that. We went up to the ranch, we scanned all the matte paintings previously being used, so some of the planets in the background are originally based on photographs of matte paintings that they did that sometimes weren’t used. So I think it is kind of a love letter, knowing that it’s the ninth and maybe the final film in this particular story, and it is an amazing thing to be part of.

Let me ask you about working with J.J., especially the experience he has on large-scale, effects-heavy movies, and Star Wars in particular. What’s the fun of working with him?

Guyett: Well, number one is he is an incredibly inspiring man. He’s always fun to be around and he really challenges you, and I think the one thing that he does is he trusts you. And I’ve worked on five or six movies with him and we know each other and we’ve all worked on this scale of movie many times before, but the thing that he does is he kind of lays the parameters out, and then it’s up to us to offer up a solution to that specific thing. And he is technically knowledgeable enough to comment, in a meaningful way, on our approach and say, for example, “This is the spirit of what I’m trying to achieve – how do we go about doing this?”

And we can then, obviously, in the collaboration in pre-production. We have a continuous stream of meetings. He’s going, “This is what I’m trying to do, blah, blah, blah.” “All right.” Then we go away and we go, “Okay, well, we think we can build a hundred feet of Star Destroyer deck, but we can’t do this. But we could do explosions. But maybe their horses will be, there’ll be dressed up as Orbaks…”

I think what you’re doing is you’re creating a world he could work with. In other words, we don’t work from a lot of previews. We have the script, we have the notion of some shots, but generally he is being inspired by what’s happening in front of him. And that practicality allows him as a director of that magic, which I think is so much a part of movies is saying, “What’s going to happen? These actors, where are they going? What are the choices they’re going to make?” And that that creates a very dynamic and sometimes, well, frightening situation for us, but it creates a much more dynamic world and more inspirational.

Tubach: One very specific example of what it was when he, when we were working on stuff like the lightsaber battle with Ren and Rey, one of our artists came up with this great idea of when they swing their sabers at each other and they’re going to do the Force push, putting this like streak where you can actually see the Force on the sabers. And those are the sorts of ideas which you didn’t get asked to do that, right? But you go ahead and present it to him and his enthusiasm is such that you’re not afraid to bring those things to him.

And I think good leaders do this thing where when you have a good idea, they’re happy to give you credit for it. And if it’s a bad idea, he’ll take the blame. You know what I mean? He doesn’t mind you putting stuff out there for him.

Scanlan: But he’s very much in that collaborative spirit. We all want the best image up on the screen.

Tuohy: I think being involved in practical effects and Star Wars being one of those rare places where practical effects is sort of welcomed in a sense or a necessity in order to be authentic and respectful to the films that have gone previous, to have somebody like J.J. who I think fundamentally is a fan. He grew up in that period. He’s inspired by the great artists and the Rick Bakers of the time. It’s that trust that he places in you, and sometimes he actually surprises me because he has a greater ambition for the practical effect than I do, a greater belief in it. And that is an amazing place to be in.

When you have a director that’s actually putting the carrot out there for you or your extra expectations, it can be terrifying to try and meet that expectation, but to have somebody who is an amazing visionary and leader, you rise to the challenge. He forces you to do things. Maz, for instance, is possibly the most complicated animatronic we’ve ever made, certainly. And that was a direct result to J.J.’s beliefs that it was even possible to do that. So incredible.

Guyett: I think it’s interesting to know when you have obviously who doesn’t have all the answers, but neither do we, and that’s just the way it works. But the spirit of it is when you’re working with people that you’re really collaborating with, you’re trusting them and they’re trusting you. He doesn’t know everything about visual effects, he’s extremely knowledgeable, but I would say to him, “There’s a few things we need to stick to. We need to pre-plan Maz, which is in the middle of writing the script and trying to get everything else going on.” it’s hard to find time to do those kinds of things, but he absolutely embraced that. He said, “Okay, I get it.”

And likewise, we’re out in the Jordanian desert spending a lot of money warbling speeders around in the desert sun where some producers ask, “Why are we doing that here? Can’t we be on a green screen back in England?” “Well, no, because…” And he would and he said, “No, I get it. We want the sun, we want the sun on them from Jordan, not from balsa wood in England.” So I think it is fun working with somebody who is so energized and imaginative and so many of the things you see in the movie are really a process of him coming up with an idea and maybe us kicking it around, but often time it’s so much part of his DNA, isn’t it?

Scanlan: You set up a plan, you show him the test, he signs off on it and then you think, “Oh, that’s it.” Then you turn up on the day and he says “I know that’s really good, but I’m going to come from here because this is really interesting and he can think on the spot.” And he suddenly makes it even cooler than it is. And everyone embraces that and everyone goes with it. And you’re kind of like, “Wow.”

I mean, we’re in the scene with three trees that Rey cut down. We only dropped two, but somehow in the scene you see three dropping and it was because we were chasing the sun and J.J. was like, “Put the tree back up. We’re over here and now we’re over here.” And I was like, “I’m confused, man.”

Guyett: I was always, even in the days of Mission: Impossible 3, his experience of working in television, I think, somehow has really lent him this sort of ability to take the pieces that you’re given and go, “What’s interesting? How can I make something really cool out of this?” And he’s really great at doing that.

Tuohy: When you watch the movie, the movie is J.J. and it’s J.J.’s mind and collaboration. You need to see it at least three times before you even start to find all the stuff that’s in it. I think that’s pretty good. It’s a great way of sort of summing J.J. up. It’s an enormous genius. I know what to look for, and I’m still finding things!

*****

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is in theaters now.