EchoBaseNews.com: Bo shuda! Today we have Part 1 of a very special two-part interview months in the making. It's an interview with Jabba the Hutt! Well, not exactly, but it's the closest we could get. Chris and I were able to chat with four of the amazingly talented puppeteers and sculptors that brought everyone's favorite loathsome slug to life in Return of the Jedi nearly thirty years ago.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Echo Base News interviews Jabba the Hutt
EchoBaseNews.com: Bo shuda! Today we have Part 1 of a very special two-part interview months in the making. It's an interview with Jabba the Hutt! Well, not exactly, but it's the closest we could get. Chris and I were able to chat with four of the amazingly talented puppeteers and sculptors that brought everyone's favorite loathsome slug to life in Return of the Jedi nearly thirty years ago.
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5 comments:
If I didn't know any better, I'd hypothesize this article was posted just for me. Whether it was or not, I'll take it.
One of the backlashes from Lucas's recent CGI fetish, I think, is a fascination with how we EVER managed to do it before computers. In reality, I think the amount of production time is likely about the same; though in 1981 the time was heavy PRE-production while today it's heavy in POST-production.
In a world where a scene in a film can be ruined for the audience when the animators couldn't get the proper shading or light-quality on an element to match its surroundings, "doing it for real" makes a lot of these problems easy. The light-quality on Jabba matched everything around him because he was IN that scene, not super-imposed on it later in postproduction. And that's to say nothing of how "real" a character like Jabba appeared to audiences precisely because of the talents of people like Dave Barclay, Toby Philpott and John Coppinger.
A agree that the current climate of overuse of CGI it is almost mystical to some people that we can do physical effects. The cost of doing a physical effect now could be considerably less than the CGI effect but the labor pool of craftsman has been shrinking for decades. It is really concerning to me that the puppetry discipline within film is one that has been in decline for decades. Puppets have such great texture and personality that people do not get from CGI.
It's always interesting to hear about the process used before CGI became the norm. Seeing what could be done with cables and other similar remote operation and puppetry just becomes even more amazing when you see how many people would have to work together on a single complicated figure in order to make all of the axes work. Even with all of that complexity, it's interesting that some bits are not complex at all (such as the comment by the one man that he had his hand inside the tongue to make it work)
0_o
does my smiley sum up the enthusiasm i have to the mere idea of being able to meet with the puppeteers of one of the most loathsome characters of my child hood film obsession.
Too this day i am a star wars fan and grew up watching the original star wars films (pre-special release with those stupid added cg crap that had nothing to do in there, sorry sounding like kevin now)
Jabba the hut is one of the largest characters from the show (i.e. compare jabba to Yoda). especially looking back on when return of the jedi was done and how brilliant the puppet looks. I miss the days before the world of film became obsessed with CG
I feel very privileged to have worked with Greg Aronowitz this past summer and look forward to working with him in the future. He and his crew at Barnyard FX are still making creatures and battle the trend of CGI. I spent a lot of time around Jabba this summer as Greg has one that he made in his living room. From the perspective, I'd argue that this article was written for me, in that now I know what all went into making the bug guy. In all seriousness, I got really into creature making this summer and I would love to get into this field. I find that having the character in the room, with the human actors, under the same lights adds so much more than can be done in post. I hope that filmmakers still see the value in this craft and that CGI doesn't completely wipe out the puppetry and creature making industry.
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