The Cinematography of Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Dan Mindel, the Director of Photography for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, recently did an in depth interview with the Global Cinematography Institute on his experiences and approach to shooting the latest installment of the Star Wars franchise.
Mindel, a veteran DP and previous collaborator of JJ Abrams on the Star Trek and Mission: Impossible franchises speaks for 12 minutes on topics ranging from how far along pre-production was when he was brought on board, his approach to working with the special effects team, and the advances in technology that have made the job of the D.P. easier in recent years.
It’s a fascinating interview and gives some insight into how production of the look of The Force Awakens came into being.
Check out the video below.
Coolio.
Interesting video. It’s interesting that J.J. and his team never use proper pre-vis or storyboarding and a lot of it is decided on the day during filming, an unusual technique, especially for a giant $200 Million movie haha!
It seems to have worked for him so far, so I cannot complain too much.
This is especially interesting to me as it contrasts so strongly with Spielberg’s approach of having very detailed storyboading done.
Forget storyboards (love his terrible, terrible scribbles though); ever seen the pre-viz Speilberg did at ILM for the Utapau chase in RotS? Man, that would have been a great sequence.
I worked in the film industry doing Boom operator as well as Audio Post production (ADR, Foley, etc.) and I can tell you from some of my director buddies, a lot of times things feel totally different when you have the set, actors, lights, everything right in front of you. It’s easy for a DP to change a camera angle, or use a different lens or technique when you’re there, but hard to visualize that some times.
Also, post production has become so dynamic now a days that a lot of times your shooting is really enabling post production. A good director knows all the tools available to create a great finished product and has to think differently than the golden days of Spielberg when the work of the DP really had to carry the film.
What a brilliant interview.. really informative
They didn’t shoot in 3D correct? I want to know how they edited up to 3 weeks ago and had time to complete the post 3D stereoscopic so fast. They must have had multiple takes completed that JJ could edit with. That’s a ton of extra work.
Why is there no news today ?!?!?!? GRRRR. It’s only premiere night ….. =p
After the premier, shut down the internet until you see the film! I am! This week will be full of spoilers including who lives and who dies. No news is good news (IMO)
I know !! But I am weak !
I know, right!
I just hope we can come to this site and not have spoilers in the headlines. I am interested in all of the activity around the premiere and such, so I’d love to be able to keep an eye on the scene without getting a big spoiler.
BTW, I totally understand that I can simply avoid social media and the web to certain.
From what I understand, Disney put a moratorium on reviews until sometime tomorrow.
That is the most boring thing I have ever sat through
dropping major spoilers…
Confirmed he was pupil of Luke.
Helps destroy new Jedi order
IS the son of Han and Lea
and
The Knights of Ren…..are the Knights of Revan. All just released thanks to a leak from the visual book, that someone is posting online.
where are you seeing this?
they deleted my comment…look on reddit, but it’s all over. some 12 year old kid posted pictures of the visual book.
dropping major spoilers…Kylo Ren
Confirmed he was pupil of Luke.
Helps destroy new Jedi order
IS the son of Han and Lea
and
The Knights of Ren…..are the Knights of Revan. All just released thanks to a leak from the visual book, that someone is posting online.
And….Luke, is already a force ghost!
Helps destroy the new Jedi? Great! More OT “homages”.
How does Ren = Revan and Luke die? Wouldn’t the big question be who was Luke Skywalker and not who is Luke Skywalker?
There’s also references in the book to the Clone Wars.
I’ll wait till I see the finished film but I really wish all the trilogies had a uniform cinematography. Watching all of them again and the change in each one can be rather jarring, Especially in-between trilogies.
Although I do wish Suschitzky was onboard, I just went back through the whole 6 films over the last six week with the kids, and Jedi is really the only major bump for me in terms of visual flow from one to another. The PT is enough of its own thing (and certainly, as it was largely executed by John Knoll and ILM, it’s at least visually consistent) that the different styles between trilogies doesn’t bother me. Certainly nothing as godawful as comparing the photography of Raiders, ToD, and LC to the bland shit-smear look of KotCS.
I’m not sure what happened to Indy 4 other than Speilburg lying like he did about the supposed lack of CG. In early interviews he said they were going to keep it as close as possible to the first three but it came off looking like a bad technicolor film instead.
I’ve seen the contents page of TFA Visual Dictionary. Interestingly there are no listings for Luke or Snoke. Someone posted a leaked photo of Snoke a few days ago (not Collider), and claimed the image was taken from this book. That does not appear to be the case.
Please guys, don’t post huge spoilers in the comments. Just wait for a few more days. Don’t ruin it.
I’m now going dark as far ass comments go. I will no longer be reading comments on any videos or articles of any kind, to beware of spoiler trolls.
Ok, if you insist. Just shocking, but good stuff!
Thanks for the reminder, and for all your brilliant work on this site. And yes, there already are some HUGE, HUGE spoilers out there if you know where to look.
Thank you for removing the spoilers that some jerk posted before.
russian accent.. always easy to recognize
It sounds like they got a great work ethic, it’s so cool how the Effects Director is literally shooting the 2nd unit scenes to make sure they mesh properly with graphics. This is how it should be done, everything tying in and communicating with each other.
It strikes me the contrast between this film and its allegedly similar peers like Hobbit and Avengers 2.
Both those films were strapped for time and had to be rushed to the last minute – at great personal expense to the Directors. Both P.J. and Whedon have gone on hiatus with their hair a few shades grayer.
Star Wars, on the other, while going high-speed, does not appear to be rushed. It seems KK is making sure this series gets the time it needs to be done properly – as opposed to the MCU’s over-packed, director-killing work-model.
The production on this film seems great, even if it turns out to be insipid fan-service, the Producers on this deserve respect.