EP VII Millennium Falcon

i ignore alot of misinformation being thrown around by the blind leading the blind here but i had to pipe up when i saw somebody type that the first star wars movie was done for 1.5 million total. NO.
about 2 million in 1975-77 dollars was eaten up by ILM alone...the rest of the movie took about 8 or 9 million more.
good day.
as you were.
 
i ignore alot of misinformation being thrown around by the blind leading the blind here but i had to pipe up when i saw somebody type that the first star wars movie was done for 1.5 million total. NO.
about 2 million in 1975-77 dollars was eaten up by ILM alone...the rest of the movie took about 8 or 9 million more.
good day.
as you were.

I stand corrected... $11 million was what it took for the first movie!
 
Well then...I stand corrected & will never talk about the practical Falcon model here, you are correct...nothing but CG discussion here!.

Don't take anything I say personally. Not really directed at any one person.
Not trying to kill any discussion about the movie, Just trying to remind people to keep the thread on-topic in hopes of SteveStarkiller returning with an update. :)

On that note, some screens from the VFX footage:

Grainy and blurry, but it's all we have to work with till TFA hits blu-ray. :)

Some of these may be useful for photo-matching a model to:

14.png2.png3.png4.png5.png6.png7.png8.png13.png1.png12.png10.png9.png11.png
 
shee, a guy steps out for a little while and things start getting hot...

my opinion is that VFX should be like a magic trick, every time you see an effects shot you should go "Whoa, how'd they do that!" You know it's fake, but you can't figure out how exactly. And that can be done practically, or with CG.

maybe CG is like a stage trick that very few people have really figured out how to perform correctly without it coming off as fake. Or maybe like, the act works 9/10 times, but the 10th time the trick is really obvious.

take BB-8 for instance. Now I know it was a practical prop quite a bit, but also a CG prop sometimes, and I really couldn't tell the difference. Except when something obvious happens that gives away the trick. Like the spiderman cables. Even the much loved torch-thumbs-up just sticks out for me.

same with the CG Falcon asset. I knew it was a CG trick for the vast majority of the film, but I enjoyed the trick 9/10 times. I know it's fake, but I love the show. Then that tenth time the trick just doesn't quite land, like the snowy crash.

but just like a magic trick, it doesn't ruin the whole act. It just stands out for a moment.

just give enough time, and the trick will work every time.

hmm, in fact, that makes me think about practical models. Before Star Wars came out, model shots were painfully obvious. In virtually every movie before then, with the exception of 2001, you saw a model shot and it stood out worse than any CG. 2001 and Star Wars polished the magic trick and raised the bar.

So CG is still in the phase that practical effects was when you could see the fishing wire and feel the fakeness of the scale and physics. But I think it's well on its way.
 
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One of the things I'm starting to notice in my search for good references to guide my own 3D Falcon is that the different studio models made for the films are not identical. The 5' ANH Falcon quad turret doesn't look the same as the 32" ESB quad turret, and neither of those look like the full-size prop built for the POV shots looking outside. One of the things I've noticed is that the barrels on the quads look thicker and beefier as the models scale down from 1:1. This makes sense from a production standpoint because you don't want parts of your model breaking off the middle of filming!

Should we be focusing on the 1:1 elements of the Falcon where possible as the ideal of what a "real" Falcon might look like? Just a thought.
 
I've studied the 1:1 set pieces deeply, and I would say definitely not. For me the 5' is the "real" Falcon. It's was the first one, and everything after it was patterned from it in one way or another.

But I should also say that there isn't really a "real" Falcon. All the varying designs prove that if you get the shape more or less right, and add more or less the right details, and a good enough paint job, you'll end up with a Falcon. I kind of love that. Before I started really looking, I didn't know there was any difference between any of them. It's a magic the Falcon has, and I wouldn't want to take it away by defining what the Real falcon is supposed to look like...

that said, I have see some pretty awful looking ships that claimed to be the falcon... so I'm not saying you can get away with anything...
 
One of the things I'm starting to notice in my search for good references to guide my own 3D Falcon is that the different studio models made for the films are not identical...

The biggest shocker for me was the Hope falcon had 3 landing gear vs the 5 in Empire going forward. :)
Han made some huge personal modifications there between movies.
Spoiler:
And a lot more has changed greeble-wize on the sides in TFA.
I like how Rey and Han were noticing inadequate changes to her systems through their dialog. And Rey's enthusiasm when she ripped out an uneeded component in the cockpit. "bypassing" something and saving the ship mid hyperspace.
 
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I've studied the 1:1 set pieces deeply, and I would say definitely not. For me the 5' is the "real" Falcon. It's was the first one, and everything after it was patterned from it in one way or another.

But I should also say that there isn't really a "real" Falcon. All the varying designs prove that if you get the shape more or less right, and add more or less the right details, and a good enough paint job, you'll end up with a Falcon. I kind of love that. Before I started really looking, I didn't know there was any difference between any of them. It's a magic the Falcon has, and I wouldn't want to take it away by defining what the Real falcon is supposed to look like...

that said, I have see some pretty awful looking ships that claimed to be the falcon... so I'm not saying you can get away with anything...


I wonder. :)

Just continuing my thought experiment a little further - Given the resolution sacrifices going from 1:1 sets to the 5' ANH model, and props like the details on the landing gear and the ramp, I don't think anyone would wish for a definitive Falcon to use the resolution of the 5' model. It would be silly to ignore that level of detail (unless you were just replicating the 5' model itself). Here's an obvious example: The cockpit interior details on the 5' and 32" models barely hint at the level of details there in the full-sized 1:1 cockpit set. The same goes with the gunner's wells. If the production provided us levels of detail that are approachable and acceptable to us fans (who have shown no aversion to crazy levels of detail), I think we might be doing ourselves a disservice by failing to avail ourselves of the visual data we have.

Just my humble 2 cents. :)
 
Don't take anything I say personally. Not really directed at any one person.
Not trying to kill any discussion about the movie, Just trying to remind people to keep the thread on-topic in hopes of SteveStarkiller returning with an update. :)

On that note, some screens from the VFX footage:

Grainy and blurry, but it's all we have to work with till TFA hits blu-ray. :)

Some of these may be useful for photo-matching a model to:

View attachment 579471View attachment 579463View attachment 579464View attachment 579465View attachment 579466View attachment 579467View attachment 579468View attachment 579469View attachment 579470View attachment 579462View attachment 579475View attachment 579472View attachment 579473View attachment 579474

It's all good, sorry for my comment & really appreciate your input & yes...back on topic.
Any Falcon discussion though is just heaven though aint it!.
 
Some more gorgeous FX breakdowns:


I've studied the 1:1 set pieces deeply, and I would say definitely not. For me the 5' is the "real" Falcon. It's was the first one, and everything after it was patterned from it in one way or another.

But I should also say that there isn't really a "real" Falcon. All the varying designs prove that if you get the shape more or less right, and add more or less the right details, and a good enough paint job, you'll end up with a Falcon. I kind of love that. Before I started really looking, I didn't know there was any difference between any of them. It's a magic the Falcon has, and I wouldn't want to take it away by defining what the Real falcon is supposed to look like...

that said, I have see some pretty awful looking ships that claimed to be the falcon... so I'm not saying you can get away with anything...

The VFX guy Dave Fogler says the 5 footer is 'The Bible"

J
 
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I like the all the action the Falcon gets in TFA, but there are a few minor issues that bugs me.
The cockpit glass must be really thick - huh - or made of a super alien transparent strong kind of metal. Perhaps not glass, but some kind of energy shielding instead. It ought to have broken in this shoot.
The Falcon has been rotated 90°. The ramp can be be seen in the VFX video. That means, that when Rey and Finn run to the Falcon, they run towards the front, but when we see them from the ramp, they come from the rear....
 
I like the all the action the Falcon gets in TFA, but there are a few minor issues that bugs me.
The cockpit glass must be really thick - huh - or made of a super alien transparent strong kind of metal. Perhaps not glass, but some kind of energy shielding instead. It ought to have broken in this shoot.
The Falcon has been rotated 90°. The ramp can be be seen in the VFX video. That means, that when Rey and Finn run to the Falcon, they run towards the front, but when we see them from the ramp, they come from the rear....

Energy shields I think. No other explanation really. It ripped through several trees seemingly unscathed as well!

Good eye on the scene inconsistency -I totally missed that. Did they flip that scene where they are running up the ramp?
 
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