ESB cabonite question
- Thread starter christrom
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Riceball
Master Member
It would have to have been practical, they didn't have the CG technology to have done it in post. They probably suspended it from wires from the roof, about the only way that I think they could have it done it back then since they didn't have the tech to paint out wheels or comped in the background to cover wheels using a clean background plate.
They could easily have done a traveling matte to replace wheels with a clean background (the camera doesn't move for the shot where Luke's looking around the corner, the only time we see it floating completely in frame). However, I think they did use wires, with something on a circular track or jib up in the ceiling. Notice the Bespin guard has his fingers on it, I'm sure he's keeping it from swaying back as they walk at the same pace as those operating the track or jib.
edit: while I was writing, robn1 said it more succinctly.
edit: while I was writing, robn1 said it more succinctly.
Most likely a blank plate with the wheeled rig just masked out. Nice and smooth and easy even at the time.
Well, it did not work only three years earlier... Remember the Landspeeder?
As said above, locked off shot means you can shoot a clean slate to mask over. As I said, easy at the time. Personally I don't think wires would have been as effective and would have wobbled. Good size soft wheels would have done the job nicely. However only the guys who were there know! Either way would potentially work.
Riceball
Master Member
While shooting a clean plate would have been easy enough the compositing over would have been more difficult, remember, they didn't have motion tracking technology back then and even though the shot was locked they still would have to have tracked the motion of the actors and the rig to the background. Remember, they were still dealing with optical composites back then and even something as simple as covering up wheels would have been tricky to do back then and I think that it would have looked comped like a lot of the comps did back then.
There are plenty of existing matte shots in the film already, and in other films of the era. It's no different than the lightsaber effects or blaster shots. They're comped into a shot frame by frame. A 5 second shot where you have to physically cut out wheels? Nothing compared to the rest. I'm well aware of what they could do back then. I went to school for it.
That's called rotoscoping and ILM was doing that all the time. A hand-drawn matte, frame by frame. Like here, just a year later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=XWNYh9vfvgQ#t=1706
But in this case you wouldn't even need to roto the actors. Just a box to cover the wheels/cart/whatever. The actors don't overlap the area under the Hansickle.
But still don't think it's wheels because they're on a curve, and there would have to be steering involved.
ILM was probably not looking for any more comp'ing work to keep them busy in 1979. I'm guessing wires, regardless of what was technically possible.
It's funny. There is so little information out there about that whole thing, freezing Han.
It's always just a few sentences like, "Harrison Ford hadn't signed on for a 3rd movie yet during the ESB writing stage, so Lucas left himself an option to write him out." Or "Ford had wanted Han to die at the end of ESB because his arc was done and his obligations to the story were over."
There is practically no other info out there telling the backstory of it. How the freezing idea developed, what mythological stuff it might have been inspired by, no pics of earlier abandoned ideas or stages in the development of the look of the block, etc.
In the ROTJ literature & interviews there isn't much discussion about the un-freezing, either.
It's funny. There is so little information out there about that whole thing, freezing Han.
It's always just a few sentences like, "Harrison Ford hadn't signed on for a 3rd movie yet during the ESB writing stage, so Lucas left himself an option to write him out." Or "Ford had wanted Han to die at the end of ESB because his arc was done and his obligations to the story were over."
There is practically no other info out there telling the backstory of it. How the freezing idea developed, what mythological stuff it might have been inspired by, no pics of earlier abandoned ideas or stages in the development of the look of the block, etc.
In the ROTJ literature & interviews there isn't much discussion about the un-freezing, either.
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Well to be fair, they'd still have to roto the wires out.
Riceball
Master Member
Not if the wires were thin enough and the right color to be lost in the background, that's why a lot of wired stunt work became safer and probably more common place when digital wire removal came into being. Thin wires that would blend into background were no longer necessary since you could now use thicker, safer wires and simply remove them in post.
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Alright. Someone call up one of the guys who did this and find out for sure!
Riceball
Master Member
Something else just came to me that makes me think that it was wires or something simple like that and that's the old ILM book that came out decades ago, the big hardcover book that talks about them from their inception up to Star Trek III. In it they show lots of pics about how they did various effects shots for everything they had worked on at the time and there's no mention of the Bespin scene, if they did something fancy in post I would think that they would have mentioned in the book and shown how it was done. Then again, it was not like the book had a break down of every effects shot they did in every movie they worked on either.
To be fair, basic rotoscoping is far from exciting and if it was done (for wires, wheels, whatever) there would be many more far interesting examples in the film. I'm going to have to watch the scene again. I still think that wires would give you a wiggle. Maybe it was a solid metal shaft that held it to a rig that was rotoscoped.
Everyone is forgetting the obvious. It was floating. Duh.
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