The Making of Star Wars — Pioneering Special Effects, VFX, and Sound Design

Star Wars Behind the Scenes of A New Hope — a look back at how George Lucas and ILM pushed special effects, visual effects, and sound design to create a blockbuster from a galaxy far, far away.

The Making of Star Wars ►► https://bit.ly/hs-sw
StudioBinder Blog ►► http://bit.ly/sb-bl

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Chapters:
00:00 - Intro — Star Wars Behind the Scenes
00:54 - Effective Budgeting
01:32 - Chapter 1: Practical Effects
04:05 - Chapter 2: Compositing Effects
08:36 - Chapter 3: Sound Design
11:26 - Takeaways

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Edited by MIKE STEELE

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Special thanks to:
Eyes On Cinema ►► https://bit.ly/sd-sw
Roadtrip Nation ►► https://bit.ly/bb-sw, https://bit.ly/fe-sw

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STAR WARS BEHIND THE SCENES — THE MAKING OF A NEW HOPE

The making of Star Wars A New Hope is stuff of legend. Today, blockbuster movies are a dime-a-dozen and the magic of how they’re actually created has all but disappeared. But in 1977, George Lucas and his team at ILM were still magicians, crafting never-before-seen imagery that changed the industry forever. In this short making of Star Wars documentary, we’ll explain how they evolved practical effects, compositing techniques, and sound design.

STAR WARS MOVIES SPECIAL EFFECTS

Compared to the scope and vision of George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, Star Wars was a low-budget production. One of the ways they were able to pull this off was to use practical effects. This ranged from making Luke’s landspeeder to be a functional vehicle but appeared to float above the ground, to the extensive use of matte paintings that could extend the sets and add extras.

STAR WARS VISUAL EFFECTS

What the crew couldn’t accomplish on set, the visual effects team handled. For example, some of the most dazzling sequences in the film are the space battles. But up until that time, the compositing techniques for photographing a ship in space was very limited. To capture the WWII dogfight footage Lucas shared as inspiration, the ships needed to have more dynamic mobility. The solution was something called the Dykstraflex, a motion-control camera that could be programmed precisely to execute the same movements multiple times. This allowed them to capture as many elements as they needed while giving the ships the desired movement and energy in the frame.

STAR WARS SFX

The final element in creating a fantastical yet believable world was the sound design. To be fair, the concept of a sound designer didn’t even exist yet. Ben Burtt, responsible for the sound effects coined the term for himself, essentially creating a new filmmaking role in the process. Here, too, revolutionary changes were being made to create the most iconic sounds like R2-D2’s bleeps and bloops, Darth Vader’s ominous breathing, and, of course, the hum of the lightsabers. To do this, Burtt mixed the sounds of a humming projector with a TV set — the swinging sabers were created by playing this sound through a speaker and waving a microphone in front of it.

Without all these innovations, there’s a good chance Star Wars would’ve simply gone unnoticed. Instead, it raised the bar for filmmaking in Hollywood with low-budget techniques to create an unforgettable cultural experience.


#FilmTheory #VideoEssay #Filmmaking

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♬ SONGS USED:

"Main Title" - John Williams
"Dojo Tradition" - In This World
"Princess Leia's Theme" - John Williams
"Imperial Attack" - John Williams
"Ben's Death and TIE Fighter Attack" - John Williams
"Cantina Band" - John Williams
"The Last Battle - John Williams
"Rescue of the Princess" - John Williams
"The Princess Appears" - John Williams
"Glass" - Claudio Laucci
"The Blue Danube (Excerpt) (2001 A Space Odyssey Soundtrack)" - Johann Strauss II
"1986" - Angel Salazar
"Mouse Robot and Blasting Off" - John Williams
"Assembly Line Dreams" - Ostin Drais
"The Little People Work" - John Williams
"The Walls Converge" - John Williams
"The Throne Room and End Title" - John Williams

Music by Artlist ► https://utm.io/umJx
Music by Artgrid ► https://utm.io/umJy
Music by Soundstripe ► http://bit.ly/2IXwomF
Music by MusicBed ► http://bit.ly/2Fnz9Zq

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