Even if it was years in the making and people waited for more than a decade to have a new Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is finally here and it manages to break new grounds and bring in front some incredible stories.
But aside from the story, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is also about offering a great new way of doing film making. JJ Abrams, which is the director of the movie immediately stated that he wanted to focus specifically on having real sets, real aliens and that’s why he relocated the entire production in Abu Dhabi in order to make that the perfect setting of Jakku, the starting planet for the new episode.
What made Star Wars: The Force Awakens great in part is the use of realistic sets, great costumes and unique, interesting visuals that do spruce up the experience quite a lot.
They used real pyrotechnics for the explosions and not CGI, all of that in order to maintain a great sense of authenticity and to offer high quality, immersive experiences that are unique, fun and enjoyable. Filming on its own was a huge operation, due to the large number of aliens, extras and other stuff that they had to deal with.
3D CAMERAS
When it comes to the tools that were used during filming, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is widely known to integrate 3D cameras and while the movie wasn’t shot entirely in 3D it did integrate some great effects.
AUTHENTICITY
It’s one of the few movies in recent years that has actually turned its back on digital film and instead it went back to the 35mm rolls. As you can expect, this was all thanks to the authenticity. They seem to maintain the trend with Episode VIII as well because that will also be shot on film as well.
DROID
The BB-8 droid is real however there are a few shots in the movie where it was entirely CG all so that they could pull off a few incredible stunts that the droid was unable to do.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens did integrate 65mm cameras as well because the movie was created with IMAX in mind and that’s where the entire experience manages to shine.
In regards to the special effects, there were quite a lot of them but the Star Wars: The Force Awakens crew wanted to make the experience immersive so they just used CGI only when they couldn’t pull off the results they wanted to.