Rogue One VFX Supervisor John Knoll Talks About Matching Movie’s Visuals To Memory

Rogue One, like many other Star Wars movies, was a visual masterpiece, and we have the guys at Industrial Light and Magic to thank for that. In a visit to the ILM headquarters, Screen Rant was able to catch up to VFX head John Knoll and ask him about the work that went into perfecting the look of the film. It's interesting how the movie didn't actually base the look on accuracy — but instead on memory.

John Knoll admits that visiting the Lucas archives and getting access to the original props gave the filmmakers a weird realization — the props didn't look as impressive as they did back then. He explains:

"One thing that was a general theme on the show was match your memory of things, not necessarily the reality of them. What that means is that we were depicting a lot of things that you had seen in the other films like the Yavin base and Star Destroyers and X-wings, and stormtroopers, and a lot of things that are very familiar. But when you go back and actually look at what was in the original film – we went out to the archive building out on the Ranch and we very extensively photographed a lot of those original miniatures. And, I remember them being better than they actually were in reality. So, what we would do was try and match how you remember them, not necessarily how they actually were. Maybe another good example of that are the stormtroopers. I remember those stormtrooper costumes very well, they're super iconic and very familiar in everyone's memory. They have some of the original helmets from New Hope and they kind of look like a high school craft project. They're actually kind of lumpy and asymmetric and really sloppy in how they're painted."

He then goes on to talk about how they remastered the original designs in order to make them look sleeker in modern camera resolutions.

"And it was fine for then on a film that in theaters you were down two optical generations and it was film print that was jumping around in the gate with a lot of grain on it, so there was very limited resolution. We knew we were going to be shooting this with this Alexa 65 camera that's 6.5K on modern digital projectors. You're just going to be seeing these things better. And so, our stormtrooper helmets are a complete reimplementation of that design. It's still the original design, it's just way better executed, and if you put them side by side, you go, ‘Oh my God. That was in a movie? I can't believe that. This is how they should look.' But, you take a few steps back and you can't tell the difference. So it's that kind of thing. It's matching your memory more than maybe what the reality was."

Going back to Star Wars, I could definitely say that nostalgia is one of the major things that makes me keep coming back to it. I grew up with the series, and when I show it to friends who didn't, they usually don't see what all the fuss is about. I remember thinking the Darth Vader and Obi-Wan lightsaber duel being one of the most epic things ever, but going back, it actually looks kind of clunky and slow.

Still, Rogue One is a job well done, and I can't wait for the release of the Blu-Ray on April 4.

See Also: Rogue One's Alan Tudyk Weighs In On Motion-Capture Performances