P95～105
June 26, 1997
Gavin Bocquet/ Production Designer Normally you're some- where for a week or two, and you get a chance to catch a deep breath. But this was relentless from the first day. Every two days we were moving to a completely new environment with new characters and new action and a new style.
Production commenced on June 26, 1997, at Leavesden studios. The cast and crew were called for 8:00 a.m., the first shot of scene 77 was taken at 8:32 a.m., with the clapperboard indicating that the director was "Yoda."
Scene 77-EXT. CORUSCANT-BALCONY OVERLOOKING CITY-NIGHT
DARTH SIDIOUS and DARTH MAUL look out over the vast city.
Darth Sidious (lan McDiarmid) tells his apprentice Darth Maul (Ray Park) to go to Tatooine, kill the Jedi, then return the queen to Naboo and force her to sign the peace treaty with the Trade Federation. McDiarmid had played the Emperor in 1982, aged 37, for Return of the Jedi (1983).
lan McDiarmid It was an incredibly unique opportunity. I am basically myself in this film—though I got about 10 years' help from a hairpiece. Palpatine looks like me. That's fascinating.
In my career as an actor I've often played older than myself, but you don't often go backwards in time—when you're really 15 years older—to play a character younger than yourself, and far younger than the same character you've already played.
David Tattersall The first shot of the day was always a master. After that, it was a matter of moving in to get two- shots, over-the-shoulders, and close-ups. We then switched to the reverse angle and repeated the process. It's a classical way of getting coverage, and so many other directors tie themselves in knots, from an editing standpoint, by not doing exactly that.
Two cameras were generally used to cover every setup - one wide and the other tighter, but at the same angle. The first camera would cover for the storyboard, while the second would get something else - it was fairly conventional. The first unit would start with George and then the second unit with cameraman Giles Nuttgens would follow up behind to pick up their material. Giles shot several episodes of Young Indy, so he was somebody familiar with our procedures.
The great thing about doing a wide master first is that nobody on the set is in any doubt about what's going on in the scene, which is important when there are so many effects. If a director begins with the close-ups, or something in the middle of the scene, confusion can very easily occur.
There were eight setups for the scene, and 20 takes, each of them with a blue screen background where the nighttime city—scape of Coruscant would be added later by ILM.
David Tattersall We had a surveying team working with us during the shoot, collecting spatial and topographical information, but the Arri Camera Data Capture System recorded everything regarding the camera itself: focus, aperture, zoom controls, the geared head, the dolly, ef cetera, and fed it into a laptop. Together with the information collected by the survey team, ILM had a very good idea of what we were doing on each shot; they could replay any camera move in the virtual environment, which avoided the usual laborious match-moving process. The DCS required the camera assistant to do about 30 seconds of extra work on each take, but overall it had very little impact on our work.
The crew moved on to scene 127, where Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) and Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) are in the anteroom of Palpatine's quarters listening but not understanding what is happening inside. The short scene was completed in seven set- ups and 46 takes. However, since Jar Jar is in the scene there are multiple reference takes with and without Jar Jar in the shot, and also shots for light reference.
John Knoll We can take a clean plate—a scene with all the actors but without Jar Jar—and add a CG Jar Jar into the shot. That's one option. But when we started shooting in the set, the way Ahmed Best cast shadows on the walls and set. and the way that he interacted with the lighting, meant that the shots were going to be a lot better if we could use as much of his performance as possible, so that's the approach we're taking.
Also, we had two lighting exercises that we went through for every setup that involved a CG character. When you're putting a CG character into a shot you want to capture what kind of lighting was present on the set at the point where the character is standing. So we had a sphere. One side of it was a matte gray - the same 17 percent gray as our standard gray card - and the other side was chrome. For every setup we would shoot facing gray side toward camera and then chrome side toward the camera.
The chrome side was useful because you get to see where all the lights are in the room-the key and fill lights - and the ratio of all the lights.
The gray side, you can see what the key and fill ratio were, and what color the different lights were. When we were working with the image, a quick way to get the lighting is to put a CG gray sphere next to the sphere on the image, and move your CG lights around until the two spheres look like each other. Then you can put your CG character in the image. knowing the lighting is pretty close, and then start refining it.
Also for all the Jar Jar, Watto, and Sebulba scenes we had painted models that we'd film turning around in the light so we had color reference. For Jar Jar we had a full-size head and shoulders painted silicone model. For Watto we had a half- size model of the full body. And for Sebulba we had a half-size head and shoulders. This way, when we rotated the Watto model we could see how bright the blue body was, how bright the yellow belly was, how much accent and shadow the wings have, and so on.
Finally on the first day, shooting began on scene 128, where Palpatine tries to persuade Queen Amidala to call for a vote of no confidence in Senator Valorum. They filmed eight setups and 29 takes, with the scene to be completed the following day. Generally, there were more takes for the first setup as cast and crew learned their positions and refined the scene.
The first day finished at 8:00 p.m. after 12 hours of filming. Shooting days at Leavesden were often longer than 12 hours and rarely shorter.
1997年6月26日，华纳的利维斯登制片厂，早上八点拍摄正式开始。第一个场景摄于上午8点32分，西迪厄斯和摩尔俯瞰着科洛桑。场记板上写着导演是尤达。
剩下的内容是第一天的拍摄细节和拍摄手法。