Visual Storytelling: Star Wars A New Hope Opening Scene

If you live anywhere civilized on planet Earth, I'd venture to say you're probably more than well aware of a little movie called Star Wars. Before its release nearly 40 years ago, many people in the filmy industry thought it was going to flop. It took writer and director George Lucas more than a few pitches to get the backing of a studio and throughout the entire shoot, film crews thought the ideas were more than a little strange and called it a kids' movie. Even stars Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford (I instinctively wrote Han Solo) were guilty of goofing off on set and not taking the whole thing very seriously.

But as we all know (well, you should know by now) Star Wars turned into a huge success. Among other things, the movie was praised for its ground-breaking special effects, which indeed played a very large part in the success of it all. But are a few flashy effects and stunning visuals all it takes to turn any movie into a smash hit? As much as Michael Bay wishes, that's not the case. If that were true, movies like Gods of Egypt would be enduring classics. What does, however, go a long way in propelling a movie to success is the use of special and visual effects to help the story of the movie. It may seem like common sense, but there's actually a lot of subtlety involved in telling a complex story visually. It's something that a lot of movies have a hard time with it seems. It's one thing to show what's going on, it's another to imply so much more about the characters and underlying situation while doing so.

Star Wars is an example of a movie that nailed the subtlety of visual storytelling. I believe that this artistic (and technical) success is one of the reasons why Star Wars ultimately blew people away. In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that without this successful visual storytelling, the movie probably would've been a flop. From the very first scene, Star Wars relied heavily on visual storytelling, and the first scene itself is probably one of the most impactful uses of visual storytelling in the entire series.

It's the scene where (after the opening title crawl) the camera pans down to reveal a huge planet with the Rebel ship flying in from the top of the screen, followed by the approach of the massive Star Destroyer. It seems so simple, yet it really is quite a powerful scene. But when you think about it, there's plenty of ways that this scene could have been set up, and each of these would've had a different effect.

According to the book Industrial Light and Magic: The Art of Special Effects, this scene was described very simply in the original script of Star Wars as a ship flying towards a planet. Perhaps the simplest way to set up a shot like this would be to have the planet on one side of the screen with the ship on the other and the camera at a flat angle. While this would accomplish what is described in the script, it does so in a way that is far less dramatic as the final version in the film.

Having the ship fly from above the camera towards the planet below, as it does in the film, helps add perspective to the shot and helps us have a better idea of the size of the ship. Having the ship essentially fade off into the distance also gives us clues as to how vast the planet below is, and how vast space itself is, making it all seem much more convincing and real than if a flat angle shot was used.

But the shot wouldn't be complete without that giant Star Destroyer looming overhead. With the previous few seconds establishing the scale of everything, we can now get a sense of the scale of the Star Destroyer. It's clearly gigantic since it takes several seconds to reveal itself in its entirity, while the Rebel ship was fully on screen in a fraction of a second. The Star Destroyer is obviously much larger than the Rebel ship.

In just a few seconds, this tells us so much about the Rebel Alliance, the Empire, and the relation between the two. From this shot we can infer that the Rebel Alliance its much smaller and weaker than the Empire, which is overwhelmingly powerful. As the Rebel ship fleas from the Star Destroyer and its bombardment, we instantly know that the two are at odds and that the Alliance is just barely avoiding utter extermination. The similar fly in from above the camera also makes the Star Destroyer take up a large portion of the screen, which implies power and dominance

And you don't even have to think about any of this while watching the movie. You just know, because the shot is so wonderfully constructed and shot. It's subtle elements like these that no doubt won over the hearts of movie goers way back in 1977.

The Difference Between Special Effects and Visual Effects

In the present day and age, effects are all over the place in movies. Due to advances in the creation of CGI, directors and producers can literally put anything they want to in their movies. With all the effects these days, we hear terms like "special effects" and "visual effects" a lot. These two terms may seem like two different ways of saying the same thing, but there's actually a difference, and it's quite important. So what is that difference?

In broadest terms special effects (SFX) are effects that are created on the film set itself. These effects can be as large or small in scope as needed for the specific scene. Special effects are often referred to as practical effects. Now it may sound like SFX just means things like explosions, but in reality there's a lot more encompassed by the idea. SFX includes other area effects like smoke, fog, and rain, all of which can add a tremendous amount to movie scenes.

Mechanical effects like moving set pieces and animatronics are also considered SFX. These may seem like lesser used types of effects, but there's probably more uses of them than you may realize. Animatronics have been used to create some of the classic creatures from films in recent decades, including the T-rex and Velociraptors from Jurassic Park and Treebeard in Lord of the Rings. This may seem like an effect technique that is used rather infrequently, but there's probably more uses of it than you might think.

Other SFX include miniature photography, used in hundreds of movies over the past few decades, even movies like Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl and The Dark Knight. This is probably the most iconic form of SFX due to movies like Star Wars, and the one that most people seem to lament the loss of. Miniature effects are still used quite frequently however, and some recent uses of such effects may surprise you.

Some more miscellaneous forms of SFX include the use of special lenses, lighting effects, or camera movements to achieve a unique look for the finished scene. These types of effects are used less frequently. This does not include things like panning or zooming of the camera, which are traditional elements of cinematography.

Now as for visual effects (VFX) things (on paper) are a bit simpler, but the range of effects is just as broad if not more so than that of SFX. VFX is considered anything created through the use of computer technology, or in decades prior, hand drawn animation. VFX can essentially create anything done by SFX, which is why many people fear that SFX are being used less and less frequently. VFX includes the creation of digital 3D models, used in animating certain elements in a scene, or even entire sequences of a movie. VFX also includes other more subtle techniques like color and lighting correction.

So I hope that clears some things up!

Thanks for reading. As I'm sure you've noticed, right now the blog is a little bit empty. I'm working on getting out as much quality content as quickly as possible, so if you liked what you read please stop by again soon!

An Entertinmanet Theory Reboot!

Hello everyone!

I've decided to try and reboot this little old blog. I've got lots of ideas for new content that I'm sure people will love, featuring everything from movie reviews, hardcore analysis of movie scene composition, and everything in between.

In our modern world, we're almost constantly surrounded by some sort of entertainment. While on the surface, things like movies, video games and television shows may seem like just a simple way to pass the time, in reality, there's a lot of complex and subtle things going on that make it all work so well. There's hundreds, if not thousands of artists and designers working behind the scenes on everything we see to bring it to life. So let's peal back the curtain a bit and see how it all works!