Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/786150
j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 7 c g w 9 ILM ONCE AGAIN CREATES BELIEVABLE DIGITAL HUMANS, A BRUTALLY HONEST DROID, AND DRAMATIC SPACE BATTLES It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet. Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy.... BY BARBARA ROBERTSON Images ©2016 ILM, a division of Lucasfilm Entertainment Co. Ltd Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the eighth Star Wars feature film and the eighth for which artists at Indus- trial Light & Magic (ILM) have created the visual ef- fects. With a 1,700-shot total, this "outlier" squeezed into the Star Wars timeline between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope ranks among the most intense. Produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by Walt Disney Motion Pictures, the feature, at press time, was a weekend away from becoming a billion-dollar box-office hit. The idea for Rogue One came from ILM's Os- car-winning Chief Creative Officer John Knoll, who was visual effects supervisor on Episodes I, II, and III, and supervised the effects for the 1997 special editions of Episodes IV and VI. For Rogue One, Knoll was executive producer, writer (story by), and overall visual effects supervisor. Gareth Edwards directed Rogue One. Felicity Jones, who received an Oscar nomination for The Theory of Everything, has the starring role as the renegade Jyn Erso. Diego Luna plays Rebel Alliance Captain Cassian Andor. "On most pictures, I'm a visual effects supervisor, and the boundaries are pretty well defined," Knoll says. "On this picture, it was interesting to have a say in the broader part of how the film was made. I still did the same VFX job, but I could exploit more detailed knowledge to make that more efficient. I could priori- tize things knowing which shots were more stable and what was likely to change."