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.
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