Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker served as the final installment of the Skywalker Saga and has taken its visual effects limits to a whole new level. With General Leia's on-screen presence and even featuring a flashback scene of her and Luke, the Industrial Light & Magic VFX team certainly have a big job on their hands but managed to magically bring The Rise of Skywalker to life.
Vanity Fair revealed The Rise of Skywalker VFX reel which provides a breakdown of how the crew utilized the late Carrie Fisher's unused footage, clips from the archive to include a flashback scene of her in training, created a simulation of water in Rey and Kylo Ren's battle at the ruins of the Death Star, and how the heroine leaped over Kylo's TIE Fighter, amongst other stunning scenes in the movie.
"When you watch the movie you just want to believe that Carrie's there, and it's just completely natural within the scene," VFX supervisor Roger Guyett said. "Basing it around the performances that she'd given us previously was the key." He also revealed that they often used "motion control."
As for the flashback scene, it was previously revealed that they used shots from "original dailies" and Billie Lourd, Fisher's daughter, served as the stand-in performer for that scene considering that she has "a lot of similarities" that they were able to draw from.
Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley's seaside battle required simulation of 133,700,000 gallons of water, with each shot having somewhere between 110,00 gallons and 4.2 million gallons. The only real water on the set was from water cannons that would occasionally fire at the actors. "If we hadn't done that, then Daisy and Adam wouldn't have anything to work against," Guyett added.
Aside from the aforementioned scenes, the VFX reel also showcases the process of C-3PO's scene with Babu Frik, the massive Resistance fleet made up of 16,000 ships, Emperor Palpatine's Force lightning shot, and tons more.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now showing.
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