Creating another movie - Q&A with DVD Effects Supervisor Pablo Helman

Q: How many people worked on the DVD, and how long did the process take?

PH: I think we had a crew of about 100 people, actually over 100 people. And it took between six and eight months...

Q: How does the process compare from doing a film versus completing the scenes for the DVD?

PH: Well the process was pretty much the same. At ILM we take pride in every frame that we create, every pixel. So the process was basically the same, taking a look at the old content we needed to put together into 300 or so new shots. And taking a look at every one and all the history of Star Wars and the Star Wars universe. And again, we had to create the scenes so that they would cut right into the film if needed to. It was pretty hard work but it paid off.

Q: Did you transfer it to film, or did you keep the final scenes in the digital realm?

PH: No, everything was delivered on film.

Q: In the world of Star Wars what is a "quote, unquote" deleted scene, and in essence what did you have to do to actually create these scenes?

PH: Well all these scenes that you're going to see on the DVD were at some point in part of the film. There were over 300 shots of scenes that were not part of the movie. And there was all these descriptions, all these different shots, and I basically sat down one night with a glass of wine and took a look at the videotape and I think I told you the story before, as the videotape kept going I was pouring more wine and more wine because the idea of producing all these really quickly, you know six to eight months, it was something that we had to think about. Again, you know when it comes to content, everything that was in that videotape was at some point in the movie. And it was deleted or not produced for a specific reason at the time.

Jim Ward: Pablo, what state were those scenes in? They were basically blue screen, right? So you had to go and...

PH: Yeah, the majority of it was blue screen, and a lot of it was a lot of sketch work, you know artwork basically pencil drawings.

JW: So when you say it was in the film, it literally was a placeholder?

PH: Well, yeah, but in terms of content it was at some point it was part of the film, somebody, obviously George had thought this is what I want in my film. In terms of how we went about filming all that blue screen and all those blanks, we had a huge library of elements, and again there was a history of Star Wars so there was really very little leeway to go wrong. And some things we shot, elements we shot. A lot of it was CG. And some things that we couldn't do before for different reasons.

For instance the waterfall scene, at the time they were doing Episode I, it was very costly to do. There was a lot of R&D in that. And by the time that they were working the DVD basically the whole facility was working on water because there were a lot of water projects. So waterfalls were a perfect way for us to develop that technology and put it to use.

Q: Did you do any other work beyond the deleted scenes?

PH: Yeah, we did the outtakes too. Those were a lot of fun.