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www.postmagazine.com 24 POST JANUARY 2017 suite of proprietary software for previs and postvis, the company invented Random Cam for Rogue One. The Third Floor had previously provided previs for Edwards' Godzilla and realized that the director wanted to introduce "those happy on-set accidents, that sense of randomness" into previs. So The Third Floor wrote a new script that takes the previs environment and the object of interest, sets up variable camera angles and auto-generates different perspectives. "You wouldn't want to use the majority of those images, but there are always a couple of new and unique ones," says Howell. "Gareth sorted through the images for the big de- struction scene on planet Jedha and gave three or four to a concept artist to paint over. Moviemaking often falls back on tried and true ways of showing action, and this allowed us to view shots with fresh eyes using angles one would not normally think of." Rogue One was shot with Arri Alexa 65 65mm cinema cameras. "The 6.5K image sensor captures a wonderful amount of detail, but it's a lot of data to transfer and that adds to the volume component," says ILM's Sumner. "A large percentage of shots were driven and created in 4K; the rest were created in 2K and upscaled." According to Sumner, one of the biggest chal- lenges was tying the ethos of 2016's Rogue One into 1977's A New Hope. "The technology at our disposal is very different now, but we wanted to re- capture the essence of the original movie and rec- reate it in this storytelling. Part of that is achieved with the characters, creatures and designs, but it was up to us to come up with new ways to bridge the aesthetic and technical gap while retaining the ethos of the movie." One method involved the legacy vehicles seen in Rogue One. When the animators built the mod- els for the vehicles in the original Star Wars, they detailed them with model kits. "Our model super- visor Russel Paul embraced the same notion," says Sumner. "He tracked down the original model kits, scanned them in 3D and we populated a parts library to help build out digital models of the iconic vehicles and flesh out detail on new vehicles using the design language of 1977. For me, accessing the practical models from our archives was a childhood dream come true!" Environment supervisor Enrico Damm and his team used Autodesk 3ds Max and Chaos Group's V-Ray to craft set extensions for the planet Jedha based on location photography in Jordan and to recreate stunning aerials shot in the Maldives. They also utilized SpeedTree to create the lush tropical landscape surrounding the Imperial base on Skarif. ILM also introduced a successful new approach to shooting virtual sets, which involved a basic form of set construction. "It didn't make sense to do a full set build for most scenes in the cockpits, so we cre- ated a low form factor, proxy version of the set for the actors to work in and the DP to frame and light, then we replaced that with mattes of the virtual set," Sumner explains. "That gave us an advantage over bluescreen because there was more natural Creative teams worked with K-2SO actor Alan Tudyk. The Third Floor used proprietary tools. The production aimed for a 'legacy' look.