What Star Wars: The Awakening of Skywalker Scorching screens in 2019, Polygon staff were skeptical about the film's openness and many unanswered questions, though some of the questions were answered in supplementary material, and even though it seemed like the end of the Skywalker Saga confusion.
But one thing we've put together: Babu Frik, an 8-foot-tall Anzellan mechanic who pulls out the secrets of Sith in the C-3PO in the movie. His slender pearls, smiling faces, and friendly packaging put many Polygon people at the "Oh my God, I would die for him" space where accepting professional assassination mixes with open-hearted excitement about something good.
Therefore The rise of the Skywalker is now available for digital broadcasting, and coming to Blu-ray on March 31, it seemed like a good time to talk to the creator behind our favorite part of the film: Creation and Design manager at the company Neal Scanlan, a longtime industry worker has worked extensively on Jim Henson projects and to his effects company before signing up to manage creature effects on Star Wars sequels. He also spoke to us, how many hands are needed to make Babu Frik work, what made up the characters of Star Wars projects, and how his team interacted with projects like The rise of the SkywalkerAncestors desert festival, or converting Maz Kanata from a digital character into the most vivid Star Wars villain.
This discussion is organized to be clear and concise.
He spoke here and there about the importance of inventing Star Wars characters to fit into a Star Wars setting or myth. What does that mean for you? What are the design rules for a Star Wars character?
I think the important thing with Star Wars is that whatever form it may be, be it an alien or a droid, a car or a space … There is a kind of point where you can believe it exists in some way – what I mean is that it confirms or fits our expectations of the world we live in right now. For example, a Porg can sit on a tree at the edge of your garden, because it is so unusual that it does not follow the laws of nature. Either way, the composition, or form, we feel like we may have seen elsewhere before.
And I think that's a really important part of Star Wars, because that's what makes the Star Wars world feel so familiar to us, and so real. When you go beyond this, and things become very mythical, and you don't follow the laws of nature, or get used to our current world, they become equally important. They may have the same presence, the same good qualities, but they aren't compatible with Star Wars. We all feel that if you look at a droid, it may look like a cooling unit in your home. Have you ever seen something like it elsewhere, even if you can't put your finger on it. Maybe it's from a piece of agricultural machinery, or an automotive tool that somehow makes you think, “Yes, I feel comfortable with that,” or “I feel like it's part of my world, just like it's part of Star Wars World. ”
How does that work to create a character like Babu Frik? What gets you from the principles to the actual conclusion?
So you take on someone like Ernest Borgnine, or Joe Pesci. He says, “What is it about these players that draws you to them? Do they have a certain look, or a certain expression, or a particular style? When working with Babu, we started with players who could play him, if you put them in costume. “Let's find influences from other movies or roles that sound like J. (Abrams) spoke to us. And then, "Now we have to make him 8 inches tall."
We had to consider in design: What is her role in the film? So what would his behavior be? What is her backstory? Maybe you have a complex eye, or a seizure, or have a wound at some point, or have developer hands. Then you try to use the real world stuff you recognize about people or animals, and bring those and the little things that make him out of this world. Babu Frik has a huge influence on him – there is something totally wrong with that or that. Once you have that as a base, you can start having fun, and do things like login. So we could give him a marble set, which doesn't really work, but they're happy, because they're right in his head, and a set of gauntlets, and those kinds of things. This is another very important aspect of Star Wars – most of the characters we try to make, trying to make them feel like they should smile when you see them. There is a sense of humor in them. Not with a slap or a lump, or a bit excessive in any way, but with a slight touch to them that makes you want to smile.
So wait, was Babu Frik literally based on Ernest Borgnine and Joe Pesci?
No, not directly, but he got into the discussion, completely. As do many players. So it's not based on her, but she comes from my memories of Ernest Borgnine's excellent list. I would quote him during our interviews, and the other players would be quoted to me. So it was the influence, among many, many others who helped us create the kind of verbal language because we thought this character should look like. We do that wherever we can, with as many characters as possible. It always helps if we can bring them back to our world.
Is his small auction based on anyone?
All of that is Shirley (Henderson), the character who produced and helped make her. Shirley came to our classroom and learned how to use Babu's mouth control, smiles, lips, and other servos related to her verbal ability. And then he got the word from his relationship to a small wave. When we talked to Babu, Shirley was drawing lines, and that laugh came from her. The puppies answered him when he laughed, and he answered what they had done with a laugh and brought it to future exercise. It was the first time they had done that, to get someone outside of our team of traditional chefs to come and learn how to use our fly controllers, and to have them on the set, and to make them part of the day's work. And we were on solidity most of the time. She is smart. Wait until you see the exit.
What do you need to consider when trying to do something small and detailed, with the potential for that level of emotion and movement?
A character like that would not have existed in the analog era, before digital technology existed. Behind Babu were five puppies, dressed in green suits. So you'd think there was very little of the left set – there was very little left, except for this sea of blacks wearing green suits. Without the fantastic work of ILM and the ability to literally wipe out those people and set the background, we wouldn't do it.
So the first thing is that digital technology allows us to do things we have never done before. But the other side of it was actual miniaturization. The smaller motors we can now use, the animatronic engineers I work with, the smaller batteries. Babu's fingers were unbelievable – each of the joints went the same way as ours, through a series of tiny cables that ran around his arms in a small servo pocket that held the rod in charge of his shell, which was held by the man who made his right hand. And then that was controlled using the radio control to allow us to move our fingers. There is a huge amount of technology in Babu. Some of them are exterior, because they are too large to fit inside. But most of it is inside – his face had 23 motors, to do the slightest and blink of an eye. Technology has advanced, and we are using it. But fundamentally, the ability to work alongside a digital platform allows us to create functional characters in that size, which are too small to make an alternative.
What are some of the biggest challenges you faced in this movie?
If you are looking for a tour of the Aki-Aki village, that involved 500 active Aki-Akis. So we created 25 very animatronic types. Their tents are shaking, and they have no explosions. After that we made 25 less complicated ones, then 25 easier. And when they left there, they had pullover masks, and then later, something new we developed, which was a pullover fabric with a three-dimensional printer on it. In the distance, they looked like three-dimensional cases, and in fact those heads were like paper bags. The dancing dancers in that sequence were about 500 soldiers in the Jordanian Army who came to surrender. Paul Casey, our photographer, worked with them for a week or so in a place in Jordan, to do that dance sequence live. The last one is compatible with most digital Akis. But much of that shooting is in place. Think of all the infrastructure needed to get dressed and done. The Aki children, those were small lungs, and they were also part of the sequence. So when we shoot, we have about 525 characters working on finding one thing. So that kind of thing requires a huge amount of planning and background work. It passed your eye almost for a moment in the movie, in fact it was a great thing to pull it off.
The snake under the black sand, the whole set was built around the snake. The snake was designed to be healed as a working doll, so Rey and Poe had something to respond to. That is actually shot inside a cave much larger than what you see in the film. These were really great things to do, because the set worked, and all the elements around it had to work to shoot J.J. he wanted.
What was the process of turning Maz Kanata away from the CGI character he used?
Because The Army Awakens, Maz's design has come a long way, too late. The eureka moments for Maz came around the end of the scan. So we couldn't make him useful, because we are out of date. However, we made some beautiful, lively, life-size images to give CG a scan, and use it as a reference. So it was a huge bonus that when we decided to make him Maz this time around, we already had one that worked for him. We hadn't just raised him using animatronic methods. So the quality of the skin, the glowing quality of the skin, the color of the eyes, all those things, we had just set up a real world model, so that we could do the CG kind of thing.
We had to consider the sympathy of Maz's sequence, since he was involved with Carrie Fisher's many sequences, all shots of Carrie's sequence would be included later. We wanted it to look authentic. So, it turned out to be the smartest pig we ever made. We have used real-time performance, often used for CG characters, in dynamic captures. The difference was, at this point, all of Maz's body movements were discovered by a handful of women wearing a data suit. Her name is Claire Roi Harvey. When Claire delivered, the animatronopop version went off. It had an amazing intelligence, a fully-fledged robot. His arms, fingers, shoulders, back movements, were all driven by facial robots. There was a 1: 1 relationship between Claire and Maz animatronic movements.
So Claire was able to be an actor that day. There were not a few around Maz, he just worked as a character in his own right. There was no actual indication of how he was resurrected. The header and conversation was also made by a second-grader using what we call the mitt, which has been around since the beginning of Jim Henson and the Mippets, where you use your hands to lick your mouth and lips. to sync. The puppy uses his hand to do that, and his voice to spell the lines, while the second child is responsible for making sure Maz's eyes are on the line. The focus on the eyes and all those things is very important. So there were three people working together who were on the sidelines of the trial when J.J. , who could see Maz live on the set, but also could see what the camera saw.
And so it was the first time in my knowledge that a puppy was built and made that way. So when Rey talked to Maz, he was actually having a conversation with Maz. He was there and Maz was answering him, with no flies in the field of Daisy (Ridley) viewing. He was just treating Maz as another character. That was so important to J.J., the authenticity and respect of those collections in which Carrie or her daughter were involved, but also our honor, that we could at least try and hold our own against the amazing version of Maz that has already been created. So we have to step up our game.
Are there any corresponding developments in how you handle the effect of the droid on the film?
D-O is a new character, and we've gone to him very much in the same vein as we did with the BB-8, with a very similar rod system, and digital technology to pull it off. We were able to build a D-O that could be made without sticks on it. So what we're getting now is droids – open Press Awakens, we relied on a traditional kindergarten to survive. But by The rise of the Skywalker, and as we move forward, we can make droids more independent. They may appear droid-like, because they are not independent of the swelling.
Man always wants to give it a try – whether it's a droid or a creature or a stranger, humanity is everything. Performance is everything. So the very roots, we want to make them characters. We want viewers to interact with, and have a relationship with, or love. At stake, we were able to use technology to do that more, without focusing on the filmmaking process. That gives tangible results a new lease on life.
