Secrets of The Force Awakens Premieres at SXSW

Daisy

The behind the scenes documentary, Secrets of the Force Awakens, premiered today at SXSW in Austin.  EW has some of the highlights of the feature.

 

JJ Abrams was on hand to introduce the feature that covers the process of making The Force Awakens.  Production on the film had taken place under immense secrecy and Abrams went out of his way to reference the great work of the many talented individuals who worked on the film.

 

“This is something that I’m really excited for you to see,” Abrams said. “What’s so cool about this is that it shows and highlights people who put their heart and soul into making The Force Awakens. They were the greatest group of filmmakers, artists, and storytellers. To get to see the people behind the scenes was fun, frankly, even for me, and I was there.”

 

jj-abrams

While only attendees of SXSW got a complete look at what went into creating the new Star Wars film, EW was nice enough to write up some of the highlights to give as taste to whet our appetites ahead of the full release.  Some of the highlights include:

 

  • Daisy Ridley, the actress who won the role of Rey, auditioned with the scene in which her character is questioned by Kylo Ren. In the room, Ridley wowed the casting directors and Abrams with her ability to go to a very emotional place — even working up some tears — and taking direction with ease.

 

  • Oscar Isaac was originally wary of the role of Poe Dameron because the ace pilot died in an early version of the script and the one the actor first read. He told Abrams that he was “sick of dying early on” in movies, since he had in a few recent projects. By the time Abrams called Isaac to offer him the role, the script had changed, and Poe would survive.

 

  • Abrams based the look of Maz Kanata on his bespectacled former teacher Rose Gilbert.

 

  • Adam Driver had some extra motivation for his character Kylo Ren. The villain’s complex costume and helmet combination were so cumbersome and difficult to put on that Driver was “so pissed by the time we were ready to start shooting I felt totally ready.”

 

For the full list of highlights from EW, head to their article here.

 

 

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31 thoughts on “Secrets of The Force Awakens Premieres at SXSW

  • March 15, 2016 at 1:32 am
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    What about the craft services?

  • March 15, 2016 at 4:10 am
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    Not for nothing, but how in the heck is there more footage / pics of ~1 week of Ep. VIII than MONTHS of ‘Rogue One’?

    • March 15, 2016 at 9:05 am
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      they are waiting until episode 7 out on blu ray and digital then they will get ‘general audiences’ ready for rogue one. the ep VIII is all set shots from people and a small teaser just for people already interested. im keen though but there’s no rush, at least not for me

    • March 15, 2016 at 2:00 pm
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      I think it’s just owing to the fact that EpVIII is currently being filmed in a public location whereas Rogue One has been more closed off during its production. All the stuff we have seen on Ep VIII in Dubrovnik has been from fans taking photos/videos. Nothing has been released officially by Disney/Lucasfilm aside from the start of filming announcements and so forth. So, officially, we have been given just as much if not more on Rogue One already (as little as that is). But I’m with you. I’m ready for some Rogue One news. 🙂

        • March 15, 2016 at 8:33 pm
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          Shean Connery, ish thaht yoo?

          • March 15, 2016 at 9:14 pm
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            GREETINGZSSSHHH, HIGHLANDA!

          • March 15, 2016 at 10:26 pm
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            Han Sholo – THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

      • March 15, 2016 at 4:59 pm
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        Don’t you, as a SW fan site that presents scoops and spoilers as your bread and butter; have any “insiders” or sources that can spot stuff related to Rogue One? I find it hard to believe that your site can’t get any Rogue One-related material being that you are a spoiler/scoop site. Come on, I’m just there’s a guy or two that is very close to the front lines and get some leads from the production.

        In other words, please do the job that you’re suppose to do and get us some scoops!

  • March 15, 2016 at 4:12 am
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    Hearing the reasoning behind Poe Dameron spontaneously being not dead, I’m liking his character’s reappearance in the movie more. Before I was thinking “he’s not dead? Okay, shifty screenwriting.” but hearing that was more or less a request from Oscar Isaac “don’t kill me, I’d like to play a character that DOESN’T die” it becomes kinda a meta statement, having Poe show up like “Hell yeah! ‘Thought you could kill me?”

    • March 15, 2016 at 9:50 am
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      That is kind of funny, because Poe was the guy who did it!
      Without him: Leia died, Resistance died… may be Chew, Finn and Rey could have survived, but how long…
      The force was with him.

  • March 15, 2016 at 5:01 am
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    Do the people who run this website take feedback or need help with admin. From a technical POV it is one of the slowest loading and cluttered websites I have ever seen. If you need help, ask.

    • March 15, 2016 at 10:59 am
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      Can you give me more details on the issues you have. Please send me an email at viralhide@gmail.com
      Page speed defers depending on your location, device and OS. I am confident to say that our site is one of the faster loading sites out there. I am constantly doing tests. According to this:

      http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/YwOyj/http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/

      our site loads for 2.7 seconds and is faster than 60% of all tested sites.

      Also Google Insights gives us mobile score of 97 out of 100 and desktop score of 81 out of 100 which is really impressive.

      https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.starwarsnewsnet.com%2F&tab=mobile

      Please send me an email and we will discuss further.

      Anyone else with loading issues?

      • March 15, 2016 at 12:06 pm
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        Slow for me too, im on a Nexus 5x (Android Marshmallow), in Australia. On my previous phone (Nexus 5) it was pretty much unusable.

      • March 15, 2016 at 2:10 pm
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        It tends to load slow on my computer. Text comes up, but not the images, then it hiccups and throws everything up almost 10-20 seconds later. Sometimes I have to reload to get the pictures as they never come up.

        • March 15, 2016 at 8:32 pm
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          That’s it exactly – plain text loads, pisses off somewhere for a while, then Disqus eventually pops it all back up again.

      • March 15, 2016 at 5:29 pm
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        It’s a bit slow for me too on my Firefox browser (though I use Firefox when I’m at work when I access this site so there might be more on my end going in that’s causing the site to run slow). That said, even when I access this site when I’m at home via my Chrome browser, though it’s faster than the former, there’s still a bit of a slowdown (though not as bad as it is on Firefox).

        On my iOS device (iPhone 6S Plus), it’s a little slow as well and I’m not really a big fan of the new “slick” mobile version of this site as it doesn’t seem very user-friendly to me).

        Furthermore, the comments area doesn’t seem to load quick on desktop in general regardless of web browser (and in mobile, not all comments seem to load).

      • March 15, 2016 at 6:16 pm
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        A quick speed up would be to compress all the .jpg images into .png or a similar, more compressed format.

      • March 15, 2016 at 7:34 pm
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        Same problems. My type tends to be slow too or delayed. The Disquis system sometimes doesn’t load at all either.

        I use Safari and Edge.

      • March 15, 2016 at 8:31 pm
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        For the record, I’d agree. FF is slow to load pages – Chrome is a little better though. On FF, if I’m on a page for more than a couple of minutes, I’ll also get unresponsive script warnings popping up every minute or so.

      • March 15, 2016 at 8:53 pm
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        Also, Flash. Please get rid of using that plug-in and use a better-efficient one. Besides, it’s on its last leg.

    • March 15, 2016 at 3:34 pm
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      I use Firefox with ABP and the site loads fine.

  • March 15, 2016 at 5:16 pm
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    Whet* whet our appetites

    • March 15, 2016 at 8:36 pm
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      Thank you! That bugged me, too!

  • March 15, 2016 at 7:31 pm
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    Look at Daisy’s arms before. She sure got in shape for this.

  • March 15, 2016 at 8:29 pm
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    Oh, wah, “costumes are haaaaaaard”. Suck it up, Adam you big baby – you’re the big bad guy in Star Wars for fucks’ sake. The septuagenarian did half the movie with a shattered leg.

    • March 15, 2016 at 9:58 pm
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      Tif you watch the clip, its

      • March 15, 2016 at 10:02 pm
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        I’m in my office, busily avoiding doing any real work, and so behind IT’s wall of doom at the moment.

    • March 16, 2016 at 3:33 am
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      Good thing he wasn’t cast to play The Elephant Man hey.

      • March 16, 2016 at 8:25 am
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        Jesus, can you imagine?

  • April 2, 2016 at 11:56 pm
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    I really like this documentary, but TPM’s is legendary,

Comments are closed.

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