VFX Supervisor Sue Rowe discusses her studio’s work producing 533 visual effects shots, 267 of them taking place amidst the sprawling fields of crops and silos on Mina-Rau, on the second and final season of Lucasfilm’s critically acclaimed ‘Rogue One’ prequel series, now streaming on Disney+.
Imagine scheduling your filming far enough ahead that you can actually plant crops that will grow in time for your shoot. Such as it was with the grainfields of Mina-Rau for Lucasfilm’s Andor Season 2, which Scanline VFX digitally enhanced as part of its visual effects work on the series. The final season of the highly acclaimed series is now streaming on Disney+.
Here’s the final Season 2 trailer:
You can also enjoy AWN/VFXWorld’s playlist of 13 clips, featurettes and trailers here.
And if you want more video, enjoy the VFX breakdown reel too:
Production Designer Luke Hull was behind the massive effort to actually grow ancient rye. “It’s so cool,” enthuses Sue Rowe, VFX Supervisor, Scanline VFX. “They literally planned so far ahead. You’ve got to love Star Wars teams. They planted a large field of this ancient grain, waited for it to grow, and then we went and shot in that environment. It gave us a great start for what the fields would look like.” The grain silo was a different story. “There was just an orb that was 15 foot high and wide in the center of the field,” Rowe says. “We see our heroes walking in and out of the main orb. From that we built all of these huge silos. The idea is that they’re farming at an incredible industrial scale and that’s where the grain is kept. We’ve done some brilliant shots where you see Cassian Andor in the TIE fighter flying across the ancient grain, attacking the silos, the grain falls like a tsunami wave all over the Stormtroopers. That’s my favorite shot.”
The dry weather meant practical explosions weren’t possible. “It was a hot summer so they could not have lit a match without getting into trouble,” explains Rowe. “We did have a couple of close-up shots with squibs of tiny bits of earth going off and Stormtroopers falling. When you see some of the laser fire chasing the Stormtroopers we did those as quick DMP projections to blacken areas. Also, when the Stormtroopers are running through the grain, about 10 feet of that was real, but of course, we were able to extend that further to make it look like they’re running for their lives.” One dramatic shot shows Andor’s perspective from the TIE fighter as he fires at the Stormtrooper convoy. According to Rowe, “That was shot on a bluescreen stage and Mohen Leo [Production VFX Supervisor] shot a drone plate for us that we were able to extend and enhance to give it more ‘bang for your buck.’ Then we added in the laser beams and explosions.” Noting laser beams shot in daylight do not have the benefit of a stark contrast with the black night sky, Rowe adds, “We were lucky in our shots that the angles worked well for us. It is a problem if you’re against a bright sky that you can’t always see them. We did need to enhance them a little bit but if you’re judicious in the calibration as long as it tells the story you can move past it.”
For the TIE fighter, a full-size model was physically constructed. “We did add CG guns and some of the weapons on the underside of the wings as well as reflections,” remarks Rowe. “It’s the little things that help you out and tie it together. Quite often on sets like this there is no glass in the windows. Obviously, the windows of the TIE fighters are the iconic octagonal shape. Many times, there was no glass, so we would put the glass in and then reflect the field onto it, which was a lovely touch.” ILM was responsible for the digital version of the TIE fighter and shared the asset with Scanline VFX. “Our asset was slightly altered because it’s from a different time [in the story], so ours was more scuffed up and has some damage to it,” Rowe says. For the scenes that took place in the daytime, she continues, “It’s all about lighting and matching into the plates. We got a lot of great references like HDRIs. After that there’s always a bit of artistic license. Against the bright sky it always looks cool if you silhouette the TIE fighter for a moment and then as it comes around, you have to hit the light. If anyone asks me, ‘How do you want this?’ I go, ‘Three quarters backlight.’ Everything looks great like that!”
Considerable work went into figuring out the physics of the falling grain. “The thing that always breaks visual effects is when you ask an effects artist to do something that doesn’t have the right physics involved in it,” notes Rowe. “In the end we asked for more grain, and I was pleased with the results as well as the subtle things, like the dust that comes off grain, which added an extra layer of complexity. Then we added smoke and debris within the grain. It was a gift to have that shot of the Stormtroopers running towards camera and seeing them engulfed in the grain. Mohen did shoot something practically to get us in the ballpark and understand how the grain would fall. But when the time came for the shot, we were asked, ‘Can you add another couple of tons?’ We did and it looked great.” Rowe adds that it was important to retain as much of real photography as possible, explaining that “For some of the reflections in the helmets of the Stormtroopers, you needed to add a layer on top of the real footage, so it feels integrated. It was a good combination of practical effects with visual effects to add that extra layer of believability.”
Contributing to the sense of depth of the miles of grainfields were the pockets of industrial farming. “Whether it was north, south, east or west, we were always properly oriented in the way we were looking at the silos,” Rowe shares. “One of the things I liked about those bigger open spaces was the play of light on the distant fields. How a cloud overhead that you see that in the distance travels over an undulating surface was the key for us. Mohen showed me some reference that he had found from one of the shoot days captured by a witness camera and you could see how far back we needed to go. The light play of the shadows gave you that depth cueing. That connected to the smaller foreground area and once we went past that into our digital matte painting, we made sure that was always alive and had some light play travelling slowly across it. Then [we added] the depth cueing you get naturally in that environment and a little bit of atmospherics. We did a lot of that in DMP and 2D work because it was cost effective. But using an artistic eye can get you so close to perfection.”
“Hats off to the digital matte painting department because they gave me 360 degrees of this environment that we were going to be replacing,” Rowe continues. “The silos themselves were CG assets built for close proximity, with lower levels of detail for distance work. Some of the distant shots where you see the inhabitants of Mina-Rau was inspired by Louping, China, where the mountains come out of the paddy fields and the natural habitat is all yellow. There’s a drone shot of a small area of ancient grain that we had; then we go over the habitat of the people of Mina-Rau. You can see them moving around doing their day-to-day farming. Then we end up with our heroes in the center of the field. That was one of the first shots I started and was the last shot I finished!”
Noting a particular piece of concept art that drove the design process, Rowe reveals, “We studied that concept art, which had such detail, that you can see a well at the bottom of the mound where our heroes live. You can see the actual pulley system where they’re taking buckets of water up to the top of the area to feed the inhabitants. All of that was in one single concept. I loved it because that brought the whole thing alive.”
Reappearing in Season 2 is the jungle planet of Yavin 4. “I love those temples,” remarks Rowe. “We had lots to look back on from other Star Wars movies and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I built one hero temple and made multiple combinations for the distant temples. We had lovely establishers of the TIE fighter coming in to land and it was an airport landing pad. The client-side team had built a section, so we had humans moving around. We made extra props to make it look like an active landing pad. Then we used that asset for multiple times of day, night, and dusk. I also enjoyed putting vines over those temples. We grew the vines procedurally with our environment team, which got us 99% of the way there. Then we did some DMP additions so you can see the vines crawling all over those temples.” Atmospherics were also inserted. She adds, “For the nighttime shots where you see them working on the inside of a temple, we were able to add sparks and illumination as if building work was going on. Gags like that helped to bring those shots alive.”
One particularly dramatic sequence takes place in a hospital on Coruscant. “That was a whole episode!” states Rowe. “A huge set was built, and the client spent a lot of money on those corridors because we had a lot of action taking place. One floor had been built, and we did a CG extension for the floors above and below for those dialogue shots. Mohen asked us to do big establishers of what the hospital would look like, and they got some beautiful scale. There are couple of shots where you look up towards the hospital and in classic Star Wars fashion, we’ve got air traffic going behind and in front as well as people walking that were sprites.” At one point, an explosion goes off. “The Rebels had planted bombs in one of the carparking levels of the hospital and we found ourselves in an elevator with Stormtroopers. From their point of view, explosions go off that rock the set. Those were all CG explosions. We also created the cars along with sprites of people put into the set.”
The hospital had numerous windows with a lot of refractions and reflections. According to Rowe, “Mohen shot with several witness cameras, so we were able to take some reflections from other elements that had been shot and put those onto the glass. There were some late-nights and hard days working on those reflections. When I first looked at the script and saw the footage, I knew that it was going to be a technically challenging sequence. Our compositing team did a lot of this work in Nuke. We kept it within the 2D team to get those reflections working efficiently because there were at least 100 shots in the hospital.”
Scanline VFX was also responsible for exterior shots of the wedding on Coruscant. “When I first saw the turnover for the wedding some of those shots were so long,” Rowe concedes. “The opening shot was nearly a minute long and was a oner. You travel around the set and our heroine is meeting people, cars are landing, and everyone is coming in for the wedding. That shot was captured on a huge set piece but with a greenscreen, so the whole mountain environment is a 2.5D and 3D digital matte painting based on the Dolomites. The environment was created referencing stills and a drone shot that Mohen had done.”
Other contributions include a couple interior extensions and the Discobot. “They built a practical Discobot that had wires coming out of it so it could never travel through the environment that we needed it to,” Rowe notes. “There was a LiDAR scan and photographic reference we used to recreated it. It’s our digital version that enters the wedding party. We added all the lights, glass, and metal! If someone asked me what the one piece of Star Wars memorabilia would be I’d walk away with, I would take the Discobot; that would be amazing!
In total, Scanline VFX was responsible for 533 visual effects shots with 267 of them taking place on Mina-Rau. “The grain explosions were definitely fun to work on because I love blowing shit up!” laughs Rowe. “I love practical effects and if you can’t get it in camera then visual effects will pick it up and enhance it. In some of those angles and the field of grain they couldn’t get it, so they leaned into VFX, which we enjoyed producing. That was one of my favorite moments. I loved the hospital because of the technical complexity; we had to work smart to turnaround that number of shots in the time that we had.”
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.
