John Knoll Talks Star Wars 3-D

ILM's acclaimed VFX supervisor discusses the challenges of converting the Star Wars saga to 3-D.
Posted In | Magazines: VFXWorld | Site Categories: 3D, CG, Films, People, Visual Effects

Image
The Empire Strikes Back will definitely have a 3-D force.

 JK: Yeah, I would say that, in general, the prequel trilogy are denser than the original trilogy and the most obvious contrast is comparing the space battle at the end of A New Hope with the space battle at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. There's a lot more going on and definitely a lot more stereo possibilities there. But there's nothing about the original trilogy being older that makes them harder to convert. If anything, they might be a little easier because they're less dense than the prequel trilogy. A lot of the labor-intensive work is if you have an army of 4,000 droids getting them separated from the background, generating the second view and then cleaning up the background where they were. And it's harder to do when you've got hundreds or thousands of characters as opposed to 10 or 15.

BD: Is there a favorite film or moment you're looking forward to converting?

JK: I always liked Empire Strikes Back. It's just packed with great stuff: I love the snowspeeders and the walkers. I love the asteroid scene. I think that people misunderstand what stereo's good at and what it isn't. It's not necessarily about vista; it's most effective when you're in close with your characters and all those scenes with Yoda are closer, intimate scenes. And I actually think those are going to look nice in stereo, and the bigger challenge is what are you going to do with the Return of the Jedi space battle where those shots are relatively wide?

BD: Any plans to do tweaking?

JK: No, there are no plans to revisit shots or do any new work. This is just doing a stereo conversion of what we've got. This is a long process if done right and I have no intention of doing something that damages the brand. I think we're going to set a new precedent for what conversion can look like?

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.







Comments


When I left the theater from Menace I was 30 at the time.The movie blew me away.Then I got on the net and started to read people bashing it and I thought,its a different world now.People dont appreciate stuff and their warped.

Anonymous (not verified) | Tue, 11/02/2010 - 17:43 | Permalink

Shut up man! Stop bashing Lucas! You people piss me off so much because you can't get over The Phantom Menace! It was 11 F**king years ago! GET OVER IT! And I actually liked the Prequels. Episode I & II were okay, but III was fantastic! And If you have no desire to see Star Wars in 3D, don't see it! The world has bigger issues than you complaing how much money Lucas makes. John Knoll probably enjoys working with Lucas. Anyone who grew up with the Orginal Trilogy (Such as myself) would love to work with George. So worry about YOUR own life, and stop complaing about others. Damn Democrat. BTW, "STAR WARS IS FOREVER AND YOU CAN SUCK IT!!!"- Jimmy Mac.

Anonymous (not verified) | Tue, 11/02/2010 - 17:21 | Permalink

"I'm all angry but I know I'll be there to check it out. Damn."

That comment sums it all up. You sir, are a tool of mega proportions.

G. Shumway (not verified) | Tue, 11/02/2010 - 15:59 | Permalink

I don't agree with the negative comments ITT.
It seems to me that JK gave a good interview and made appropriate comments and evaluations about the styles of two of the most well done stereoscopic pictures released to date.
I'm glad to see that Lucas is spending the time and money to do a good job that's supervised by a person with high visual acumen like JK. If this kind of work is going to be done, at least have it done well.
Good article.

Anonymous (not verified) | Thu, 10/28/2010 - 11:24 | Permalink

Anyone who thinks John Knoll was insulting Jim Cameron is completely misinterpreting his comments. John supervised the end battle sequence shots in Avatar, and Cameron and John have tremendous respect for each other, going all the way back to John's work in The Abyss.

I know John personally, and he's a great guy. He's incredibly intelligent and talented, and people who insult him are talking smack about a guy who co-developed Photoshop, has worked on the biggest FX films of all time, has won an Oscar, and works at ILM largely out of his passion for visual effects and filmmaking, not because he needs George Lucas's paycheck.

Jon A. Bell (not verified) | Wed, 10/27/2010 - 10:57 | Permalink

Aww, cut Knoll some slack. It must suck hard for someone of his stature to have to kiss Lucas' ass and work on yet ANOTHER effing Star Wars do-over - AND make it sound interesting and not the obvious money grab that it is.

I can't wait for this tripe to prove unprofitable, and unprofitable it will be, oh it will be.

dparks (not verified) | Wed, 10/20/2010 - 09:29 | Permalink

"I think Avatar did a really good of transporting you to an exotic alien place where the stereo is mostly used to give you this powerful sense of presence."

Yeah. What a condescending *ss hole!

"a lot of the DreamWorks seems to be about one-third forward, two-thirds back -- and that's fixed for the shot. So even for the character that's walking forward, we don't rack convergence with them. And we're going a little bit more toward that style than Jim's style."
OOOOOoooo SLAM! Do you hear that Jim. They like the Pixar way of doing things a little bit more. SUCK IT!

Wait... where did they imply James Cameron isn't as sophisticated in his use of stereo?

Anonymous (not verified) | Sun, 10/17/2010 - 16:12 | Permalink

I like how this pompous *ss subtly tries to suggest that James Cameron isn't as sophisticated as them. Do I need to say that James C. is probably at least one hundred times better at directing then Lucas. I don't care if he invented Photoshop, John Knoll hasn't done anything great movie-wise as far as I know, yet he still talks like he has. Dude, THE PREQUEL TRILOGIES SSSSSSSSUUUUCKED!!!! BOX OFFICE RECEIPTS don't mean ANYTHING! And you had nothing to do with the ones that are good, in fact, you had everything to do with ruining those ones and this will continue. I guess Davey Jones was a good effect though. too bad those pirates movies BLEW chunks too. This guy is George Lucas' lackey through and through. I feel bad for him because he probably can't tell the guy that his ideas are absolutely terrible. I'm all angry but I know I'll be there to check it out. Damn. When will Star Wars just stop?

Final advice for Lucas: Let it go. You're rich enough.

Anonymous (not verified) | Fri, 10/08/2010 - 10:16 | Permalink

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Use <!--pagebreak--> to create page breaks.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.