rogue-one

We all have known that Gareth Edwards had to tap directly into ‘Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope’ when filming ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story‘ as his film would be leading into the movie that started it all but we didn’t know he would be using unused footage from it! For all of the tie-ins to prior films and cartoons, the greatest tie-in was using discarded shots from the original film which had never been digitized.

According to Edwards:

“We went to Skywalker ranch, and there’s the archives there. And as we’re walking around, and doing all the cool things and looking at the Millennium Falcon and trying on Han Solo’s jacket and things like that, in the back at the bottom was all these cans of film. And we said ‘what are they?’ and they said ‘Oh, it’s Star Wars.’”

So his next question to those who were giving him the grand tour and what really sparked that light bulb moment:

“… has someone gone through all this? And it’s like ‘not really, they’re not fully like digitised at all.”

The best part were footage and recordings being made for the run on the Death Star at the end of the film:

“We got the neg documents and found the clips from A New Hope that hadn’t been used. And there’s pilot photography and lines that were never featured in A New Hope.”

Specifically, the footage used was the filming done around this scene in the original film:

With the help of ILM, alternate lines and shots which had never been used in ‘A New Hope’ seem to fit perfectly with the dogfight in ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’:

“Through the magic of ILM [special effect studio Industrial Light and Magic] they cut round them and manipulated them and stuck them into our cockpits. It’s the sort of thing you think, ‘how many people will notice?’ Do you know what I mean? It’s like, is this a lot of effort for very little reward?”

Clearly, it was for fans as Edwards reveals:

“At the world premiere in LA, there was this massive cheer at a particular point in the film. It was the only time during the premiere where I actually punched the air.”

Trust me, Edwards, many of us left the release with huge smiles plastered across our faces. From namechecks to subtle scenes like this – you did a fantastic job in bringing us a story from a galaxy far far away.

Source: Radio Times

horizontal line

Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!