Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days

by John Knoll

The Barnes & Noble Review
Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days by John Knoll -- the three-time Academy Award-nominated visual effects supervisor for the Star Wars prequel trilogy -- is a visually spectacular, absolutely essential book for Star Wars fans. This intimate, lovingly produced look at how the various environments in all six Star Wars movies were created contains literally 1,000 full-color behind-the-scenes photographs (some quite candid!) and insightful commentary by Knoll, as well as a bonus CD-ROM with cool QuickTime panoramas of some of the sets included in the three motion picture prequels.



From the old-school motion-control photography in 1977's Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope to the revolutionary refinement of digital cinema in 2005's Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, this book contains it all -- from creating low-altitude shots of the Death Star out of plywood to producing breathtaking digi-matte paintings of the Jedi Council Chamber skyline and aerial views of Coruscant and Naboo. Jaw-dropping surprises abound as well, including deleted scenes, a look into LucasFilm's archive buildings, and a rarely seen Darth Vader custom design concept from 1976.



Chronicling the almost three decades between George Lucas's founding of Industrial Light and Magic in 1976 and the release of Star Wars: Episode III in 2005, Knoll's shelf-bending brick of a book (744 pages) is the equivalent of sitting down with an old friend and looking through a gigantic photo album containing stunning pictures of his travels abroad -- except in this case, the journey happened to be to a galaxy far, far away. Simply put, Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days is one of the most enlightening and entertaining books Star Wars fans will ever come across. Prepare to be blown away. Paul Goat Allen

Genres: Star Wars, Nonfiction, Art, Reference, Media Tie In, Film

744 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

John Knoll is an American visual effects supervisor and chief creative officer (CCO) at Industrial Light & Magic. One of the original creators of Adobe Photoshop (along with his brother, Thomas Knoll), he has also worked as visual effects supervisor on the Star Wars prequels and the 1997 special editions of the original trilogy. He also served as ILM's visual effects supervisor for Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact, as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Along with Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and Allen Hall, Knoll and the trio's work on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest earned them the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Reviews

[3thn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Plain brilliance in the way Lucas and his team filmed the whole Star Wars series nearly 50 years ago. Broken down nearly scene by scene of how they were filmed and props used. Fun fact: Luke Skywalker's landspeeder appeared to hover as they used a mirror to hide the wheels on Tatooine's desert as he cruised through the dunes.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A photographic run through the first six Star Wars film, concentrating on behind the scenes - the design, the decisions made and the artistry involved - which helps to highlight the huge leap forward in computer technology between the two trilogies. Dennis Muren provides the foreword and writes, “There is a potential danger, however, with these new [CGI] tools. If not properly handled, digital techniques can inject an artificial presence into a movie. Today, a lot of contemporary visual effects look computer-generated because many of the artists haven’t studied nature”. Well said, sir. John Knoll, in his introduction, says he was surprised that the equipment at ILM wasn’t the best he’d seen until “it became apparent to me that it was all about the eye of the artist. A good artist needs good tools but the talent is the most important thing”.
One downside for me is that John Knoll was only involved in the prequel trilogy (and took lots of photos) and so those three films take up the lions share of the book. Of the originals, Stars Wars has 88 pages, Empire 70 and Jedi 66 (plus 8 for the special editions) whilst Phantom Menace gets 142, Clones 178 and Revenge 170 - a tad lopsided (though the Phantom coverage does highlight how many miniatures were included in the film). Clones also suffers because Knoll discovered a way to create fish-eye panoramas and they get tiring pretty quickly. That film also shows how many miniatures were used to extend the sets but it doesn’t explain why, when incorporating them with so much CGI, they were made to look so unreal and, well, computerised. Revenge Of The Sith, which was also filmed digitally with better cameras that meant they had apparently had to filter the image to make it not so sharp, feels longer than the Clones section, probably because a lot of the entries seem to consist of “George Lucas changed his mind after we’d shot this so we had to CGI the background” and there’s a lot of pieces where the only part of the set built was the floor. The best/worst of this is “361: Alderaan Queen’s Balcony” which is literally a seat and a bit of floor in front of green!
Oddly, for a Lucasfilm book involving Rinzler, there are some strange errors and omissions - actors (such as Andrew Secombe) are not identified in shots and Knoll writes that the yellow speeder in Clones ‘was a homage to the yellow sleek machine that Harrison Ford drives’ in American Graffiti (when, of course, that’s Paul LeMat’s car) - which are quite jarring.
Overall, I enjoyed this, but really it was only for the original trilogy and Phantom Menace entries. The last two films suffer from the fact that you’re either looking at a fish-eye panorama (which isn’t anywhere near as good as Knoll seems to think it is) or actors standing in front of/sitting on/surrounded by blue or green screen but there’s a lot of pages devoted to them because Knoll was on set for the production. To that end, unless you’re a Star Wars completists, your enjoyment will undoubtedly depend on a) your favourite trilogy and b) your tolerance for looking at people standing in a sea of a blue or green screen. Of the two-thirds I enjoyed (including the page about film credits and who’s responsible for the length of them - and why), I would very much recommend it.

[Michael Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very cool behind the scenes book that covers all 6 of the Star Wars films. It goes scene by scene for every movie and gives you a bit of info on the effects for each scene. There's a lot of interesting stuff, especially how a lot of stuff is reused in multiple scenes but is repainted or shot from a different angle to make it appear like something else entirely. It's also cool to compare the first three films with the second three and see the move from practical effects to digital ones. For the second trilogy an entire set might be composed of a railing and a bit of floor, with everything else drawn in digitally. Where as with the first trilogy huge sets like Jabba's sand barge were actually buile.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm conflicted about this book. It was a gift to me from a friend, and it is actually a really well done book.

My main issue is with the size of it. It *should* be a bigger, coffee table sized book, but it's not. It only measures 10" x 6", and that makes looking at some of the photos difficult without a magnifying glass.

Otherwise, it is actually a very cool book. It covers the Original Trilogy and the Prequels, and flipping through it, you really get a sense of how much work people put into these films. They were creating whole new technologies in filmmaking during the films' production.

I just really wish it had been bigger.

[Saimi Korhonen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun and informative book about how the different worlds and sets of Star Wars were created for the first six films. There’s also a lot of great and fun behind the scenes pictures.

Of course this book is a great read for any Star Wars fan, but I’d also recommend checking this book out if you are interested in how films were/are made.

[Dariusz Stochmal · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say, it's Star Wars!

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Same old gist but great pictures.

[James Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of a kind, and excellent for Jedi coffee tables 😁

[Jaime K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This starts as 4.5-5 stars and ends as a 2.5-3 stars.
I like that the intro provides a lot of background, including the fact that this book shows and explains how and why environments were created. It also delves into aspects of special and visual effects innovation.

I also like how one section is for the special edition originals.

What I don't like is that the last third of the year is solely spent on the effects of III--after already going into episode III. It was redundant and boring and made me drop a star rating for the book. Utterly ridiculous. It would have made SO much more sense for each episode to span two months' time--about 60 days each. Or even to knock that down a bit so that the S.E. OT could have some room. So let's say 55 days per episode. The amount of time spent on the PT began to feel sloggish and then I was hit with 3 months' extra worth of ROTS special content.

I do like the title pages for each episode

Here are my thoughts as I read through:
- Some pictures and descriptions are all over the place.
- I like how this breaks down what was real and what was matte for different models
- Some of this talks about Behind the Scenes info, like that some of the sets were only half done and effects took care of the rest.
- I like seeing how many sets were reused, and how.
- It's cool that the graphics during the briefing in ANH were among the beginning of computers in films!
- I knew a lot of things from reading different media in the past, but not the steps of the Death Star development. That is awesome.
- I love learning how perspecive and orientation can completely change a scene
- I'm constantly amazed at the details of the matte paintings
- The matte painting on day 92 is gorgeous
- There are very cool juxtapositions of matte -> model -> life-sized things.
- It's interesting to see the transition from "they" to "we" at the S.E. OT in that Knoll started working at Lucasfilm then.
- The models used for Theed city are AWESOME.
- I always love reading of how they handled the effects of Tunisia storms while shooting TPM.
- I love the panoramic of Palpatine's office in AOTC.
- On the speeder chase traffic--that is SO COOL to see the CG tool!
- I really like that Lucas wanted Aayla in the PT, even though she had only been in the comics until then.

LUCAS is the one to change the end credits to include everyone! Hollywood went from there! Awesome!

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor of Industrial Light & Magic sums up the book perfectly in the first sentence of his introduction.

"The object of this book is to reveal how the environments of Star Wars were created, and to explain why some were done one way and some another."

Specifically, there are 365 chapters. They are chapters because one of them talks about the founding of ILM, and the other on the staffing. Both of which I think can't be done in a single day. The rest of the chapters are on how they create the sets, props, environment, vehicles and ships.

Not just creation, the book also includes how they the props were used to create illusions. For example, Luke's speed was supported by a welded pipe, shot out of frame or blocked by an object like R2D2. To show the speeder movie, a mirror was place underneath it to reflect the ground, creating the illusion that it's floating on air.

The book is very thick because each chapter has two pages. The left explains while the right provides the photos, often spilling over. This book is easily a nice photography book without any text.

The chapters cover all the six episodes. One can easily see how movie making and technology have evolved since the first Star Wars movie. The book also comes with a CD, containing additional photos and videos on the props creation.

This should be another wonderful addition for any Star Wars fans.

This review was first published on parkablogs.com. There are more pictures and videos on my blog.

[Jeff Lanter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this book a high recommendation to fans of Star Wars or anybody interested in set design in Science Fiction movies. This short, brick of a book is full of images of the sets in the Star Wars movies which has a paragraph or so of text on each page with some insight into the set design. The original trilogy cover roughly the first third of the book and are the most interesting because the author covers information that I've not seen elsewhere and gives great insight into how the movies were made. The prequels section is pretty strong but suffers from some of the sets being too similar, especially in Episode II and III where there are a lot of personal living quarters and meeting rooms which aren't as interesting as say Dagobah or Hoth. Even if you don't like the prequels, seeing some of the miniatures ILM made will more than likely be impressive and interesting to most readers. I've bought and read the two making of/behind the scenes books for the prequels and found this one to be more interesting and a great value for the money. For these reasons, I think most Star Wars fans will love this book. I know this will be a highlight on my bookshelf for many years to come.

[Alan Tabrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of incredible images from the first 6 films. Concentrating on sets and environments, this is packed with many previously unseen images, and for a lifelong fan seeing images from the original trilogy for the first time is very exciting, and there's plenty if them. I've not looked too much at the refuel images due to lack of interest, but to be honest, what I have seen is actually still good too. Good art is what it is, and despite Lucas' over blown and under achieving prequels, the art involved is still I credibly good, and should not be ignored!! That's why I do have the 'Art of' books, but have no wish to see the films again!! The Tarooine shots from A New Hope are especially interesting, and give lots of visual cues to how these films were made, and in some cases 'thrown together'!! Although a slightly awkward book, it's still worth the price for the original trilogy stuff, and much of the prequel stuff.

[Jo]

Star Wars

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredible pictures that should have been in a bigger book. great for reference.