Clayton Sandell, writing at ILM.com, takes us behind-the-scenes of the visual effects process for Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Skeleton Crew from At Attin to Starport Borgo.
“Very early on, it was apparent that a big part of the intended charm of the show was that it was going to have this sort of Amblin, 80’s movie sort of vibe to it,” Skeleton Crew production visual effects supervisor John Knoll tells ILM.com. “That extends to more than just how you tell the stories. It also extends to choices like embracing animatronics, monsters, and building miniatures and stop-motion creatures.”
Pulling it off would involve hundreds of talented artists at ILM studios around the globe, including San Francisco, Sydney, Mumbai, and Vancouver, along with a few outside visual effects partners.
Over eight episodes, Skeleton Crew follows the adventures of Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and KB (Kyriana Kratter)—four kids living a peaceful, if mundane, life on their home world of At Attin. After discovering a mysterious buried space cruiser, the four friends unintentionally launch themselves into hyperspace and must find their way home by navigating a dangerous galaxy of allies, enemies, pirates, and monsters.
Early in preproduction on Skeleton Crew, Knoll says the ILM team had to determine the best way to approach the show’s varied visual effects needs. “It just read like an expensive show because of all of the different planets we go to, all the different types of creatures, and the different environments,” explains Knoll, who also serves as ILM’s executive creative director and senior visual effects supervisor. “Trying to figure out how to make that affordable was one of the first things that faced the visual effects team.”
Following a methodology first established during The Mandalorian (2019-2023), Knoll says Skeleton Crewproduction was divided roughly into thirds. “About one-third of it was shot in our StageCraft LED volume, one-third was shot on soundstages with conventional sets, and then one-third was shot on a backlot,” Knoll reports.
Galactic Planet-hopping
Skeleton Crew unfolds across multiple worlds that are brand new to Star Wars, beginning with At Attin. The planet’s suburban-like residential neighborhoods utilized a minimal exterior set located near the California State University Dominguez Hills campus in Carson, California. “There was an undeveloped lot that was just adjacent to the campus that was available. So we shot on that,” Knoll says. The practical parts of the set consisted of only the street, a sidewalk, parts of a few houses, and a small patch of grass surrounded by a large blue screen background, says ILM visual effects supervisor Eddie Pasquarello.
“We added all the trees, houses, skies, and trams,” Pasquarello reveals. Even the street was narrowed. “Some things are not seen, and those are the ones that are the most impressive in my opinion, because you’re not saying, ‘Oh, that’s visual effects.’ We’re hoping people watch the actors and enjoy the story versus worrying about the environment.”
Wim and Neel board a tram for the ride to school, a sequence that introduces the more urban areas of At Attin. Artists digitally extended the school’s exterior—shot on another minimal set—and helped create an expansive cityscape designed to suggest At Attin’s backstory.
“[Jon] Watts wanted it to feel like a place that was built some time ago, but it’s been mostly kept up pretty well. And it’s a place where everyone more or less follows the rules,” says ILM animation supervisor Shawn Kelly.
On the ride to school, Wim stares out the tram’s back window as the vehicle drops into an underground tunnel. After the scene was shot, artists were asked to enhance the movement of both the tram and the camera, requiring complex digital layering work to achieve the right perspective. “We had to split apart all the kids inside the bus to get the proper parallax,” Pasquarello explains. “There’s a ton of artists that helped in layout, and comp and environment—all across the board—that made the shot work.”
Pasquarello says a number of ILM teams also worked throughout the production to develop the right look for At Attin’s city architecture. “This was a really Herculean effort,” he notes. “This is a huge environment build from the team. But it also takes the disciplines of animation and lighting.”
In one shot where a malfunctioning hoverbike leaves Fern and KB stranded on the side of the road, Jon Watts asked ILM to enhance the background with a custom building. “He sent us a photo of a mall,” Pasquarello says. “He said, ‘I kind of want it to look like the mall that I remember as a kid.’ And that’s what that is inspired by. We basically took that photo and ‘Star Wars-ified’ it.”
First Stop: Starport Borgo
The Onyx Cinder docks at a nefarious pirate hideaway, a wretched hive called Starport Borgo where the kids hope to find directions back to At Attin. Built into an Outer Rim asteroid overlooking a sea-blue nebula, Borgo is filled with a host of untrustworthy pirates, creatures, and scoundrels. “It’s just a really beautiful, new place for Star Wars,” says Pasquarello.
Port Borgo scenes relied heavily on ILM’s StageCraft LED volume—located at the MBS Media Campus in Southern California. The environment came to life using a combination of practical set pieces along with 3D elements laid out in Unreal Engine and rendered in real-time onto the LED screens. “Creating the content for the volume walls happens nearer to the beginning of our production,” Shawn Kelly says. “There’s a team of generalists, or gen artists, who are talented in a lot of different aspects of computer graphics. And while they are working on the environments, me and a few other people are working on populating those environments.”
“Everything outside is CG,” Pasquarello adds. “When we’re inside in Port Borgo, it’s practical. There’s a lot of storytelling in a very small amount of space.”
Wim, Fern, KB, and Neel disembark the Onyx Cinder and hitch a ride on a bubble-like dinghy piloted by a furry Teek ferryman. Dockside, the Teek jumps on Fern’s shoulder to demand payment—a sequence that demonstrates an invisible combination of digital and practical methods.
“He’s mostly a practical puppet up on her shoulder, but his arm is animated. His arm is CG so we can do more delicate kinds of gestures with his fingers and hands,” explains Kelly, “but we still try to animate it in a way that feels like a puppet.”
“We have a great paint team here,” adds Pasquarello. “It was not a big deal to remove that arm and replace it.”
Once the Teek gets his money, he jumps down to leave—a shot that features a flawless “Texas Switch” between the practical and fully digital version of the character. “At the beginning, he’s a puppet. And once he goes behind Fern’s back, he’s animated,” Kelly reveals. The shot concludes with the ferryman scurrying away, mimicking the speedy movements of the original Teek that first appeared in Lucasfilm’s TV movie, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985).
“He’s this little, very fast-moving kind of funny guy,” says Kelly. “It was really endearing and fun, especially when I was a kid. So we wanted to put a little bit of that fast movement into him. And this is a little example of how we kept that flavor.”
Motion Capture Cameos
Motion capture performers help populate the expansive setting with hundreds of pirates. “A place like Port Borgo needs to be a bustling port of pirates doing stuff,” says Kelly. “So we spent months at the beginning getting mocap performances and animating on top of those, and also key-framing guys selling stuff at stalls, or shopping at stalls. You’ll see guys in the background unloading a ship, and there’s a chain of guys throwing boxes to each other, stuff like that.”
The children pass by a seedy nightclub where four-armed aliens are dancing in reddish silhouette through frosted windows. It was Kelly’s job to direct the scene’s motion capture performers, including two unexpected names: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as The Daniels.
At the time, the directors were helming the fourth episode of Skeleton Crew and would soon win an Academy Award for Best Picture for their film Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). “The Daniels wanted to perform the dance,” Kelly laughs, recalling how it became his job to direct two of his cinematic heroes on how to be better exotic dancers. “I’d say, ‘I think they want it to be sexier.’ They’d just burst out laughing, and do it again,” Kelly says. “They were really fun and funny.”
Escape from Port Borgo
Reluctantly teaming up with the mysterious Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law), the children escape from the pirate brig and navigate their way back to the Onyx Cinder. As the ship pulls away. it’s snagged by a refueling line connecting it to a floating buoy, snapping it back like a balloon on a string. Jod tries desperately to maneuver away, dragging several pirate vessels with it.
“They’re creating havoc,” Pasquarello says. “The whole idea of the pile up and pulling those ships together was a really fun sequence, because even Jon Favreau chimed in. Everyone had some ideas about how to make that really successful.”
The colliding ships are all-digital creations, with the action handled by a team of artists who are now part of ILM’s Sydney studio. “All of these ships are CG, and the environment itself as well,” Pasquarello says. “These didn’t exist as models from a practical standpoint.”As the pirates take aim at the Onyx Cinder with a tower cannon, Jod sends the ship into hyperspace. The fuel line snaps violently, whipping back and crashing into the crowded port. “You can see our animated pirates getting knocked down and running away,” Kelly says. Effects passes helped complete the shot with a variety of explosions, fire, and sparks.
The pileup sequence also gives eagle-eyed viewers a chance to catch a special Easter egg—a Starspeeder 1000 transport, well known to fans of the Star Tours attraction at the Disney Parks.
Read the article in full here and stream Star Wars: Skeleton Crew on Disney+ now.
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