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Galactic News
Tuesday March 11, 2003
Episode III Locations |
The Official Star
Wars Site has information on some Episode III locations that we
can expect to see. Though it is still early in Episode III's
development, deadlines are looming ever closer as this summer's
start date for principal photography begins to draw near. George
Lucas is still assembling the story, but Production Designer Gavin
Bocquet and his team have already begun transforming stage-space at
Fox Studios Australia into familiar otherworldly locales.
"We've been in Sydney for about four weeks now, and the
department is about fifty percent up and running in terms of
personnel," says Bocquet. He currently heads a team of about 35
workers, and departments like construction, props, special effects
and plaster are beginning to form. To meet the schedule, his team
has tackled the returning environments first rather than the brand
new locales, which are still being developed.
"We do have four or five sets that are being repeated from
Clones and a couple of the other Episodes, which gives us a chance
to work quite quickly on those. They don't need any great design
input or even technical drawings, because they have existed
before," he says.
In addition to the Jedi Council chambers, the Senate Rotunda and
Palpatine's office, two environments from the original trilogy are
being carefully recreated for this earlier era in Star Wars history,
much like the Lars Homestead was faithfully reconstructed for
Episode II.
"It's always quite interesting going back to those historic
elements of the saga," says Bocquet. "I think these ones
are a little bit easier than the homestead, because they're
studio-based and not location-based. They have quite precise
drawings that we managed to extricate from the archives, although
the archive isn't quite as full for A New Hope as it is for Empire
and Jedi, simply because nobody knew what the films were going to
become! We're working from the few drawings they do have, plus the
stills and looking at the films, and breaking things down and trying
to reproduce it."
While there is a sense of nostalgia in recreating environments from
the original trilogy, for one of the sets it's particularly personal
for Bocquet. "It's quite interesting for me, because I was on
Jedi years ago, as a draftsman. So, occasionally some of these
drawings that come through are actually mine! All the Art Department
suddenly scours around my drawings to see how good they were at that
age, but I do stress to them that I was only a junior at that
point."
Aside from these two classic environments, Bocquet's team has begun
preliminary work on two new locales -- one space-based and one
planet-based -- that will each be the stage for intricate action
sequences. "We know from a set-building point of view that will
be a fair amount of building for us. In fact, Dan Gregoire, Erik
Tiemens, Ryan Church and Ben Burtt are working up the animatics for
those action sequences, because we need that information to suggest
what and how much we should build."
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Posted:
by Jedi
Power
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