Which, if any, of the Star Wars sets you worked on have included ceilings?

Very few ceilings are ever built on a film set, unless the set is very small, like Anakin's Slave Quarters on Episode I. We also built ceilings for Watto's Shop and the interior of Padmé's Naboo Royal Starship on Episode I , and the starfreigher hold and Padmé's Naboo starship on Episode II.

You may build part of a ceiling, when the camera is seeing off the top of a bigger set. Even in this age of digital enhancement, it can still be cheaper to build a small piece of ceiling, than to add it digitally. One key reason for not building ceilings on film sets is the need for the Lighting Cameraman to be able to light through that space from above, as opposed to the restriction found on a location.

So even before the digital world existed, ceilings were generally not built, and were added by matte paintings, glass paintings, or foreground miniatures. On Gone with the Wind, all the grand ceilings you see were painted by a matte artist, either on glass in front of the camera, or in postproduction.

Posted: by Jedi Power