Though he’s usually likes to give away as little as possible about his upcoming projects, J.J. Abrams has been happy to drop little hints when it comes to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, understanding that this will be one of – if not the – most scrutinised releases of the year. He’s now opened up to Collider on a couple of topics, including the balance of practical and CG effects and that much-debated broadsword-style lightsaber.
Talking at the Visual Effects Society Awards where he was given the Visionary Award, Abrams revealed that there will still be a lot of traditional techniques in the film’s set pieces. “I feel like the beauty of this age of filmmaking is that there are more tools at your disposal, but it doesn’t mean that any of these new tools are automatically the right tools. And there are a lot of situations where we went very much old school and in fact used CG more to remove things than to add things,” he says.
“There are obviously an enormous amount of CG effects in the film, and I can’t wait for you to see the combination. But it was very important that we build as many sets as we could and that the film have a tangible, sort of authentic quality that you believed that these things were actually happening in a real space with real sunlight, if it was an exterior scene, or if we could build a big portion of a scene and not have anything be blue screen, do it where we could. It was a very important piece of work.”
As for the use of IMAX in the film? Turns out there won’t be as much as some suspected. “It’s really one sequence so it’s not a ton, but it’s a good sequence.” And what of that lightsaber, which sparked plenty of discussion when the teaser trailer finally hit online back in November?
“I will say that what’s been funny is, since the lightsaber’s come out, I cannot tell you how many contradictory emails I have received from people who have both defended it with unbelievably detailed graphics… I’ve gotten things that are nuts, and I’ve gotten people who’ve shown how it’ll kill you and how it doesn’t make any sense. It’s been the funniest thing to see the arguments that have developed over this thing.” There’s apparently a story about how it all came about, one he’s saving for a later date. He’ll likely be saying more before the film arrives on December 18...