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Today’s episode is coming at you from the Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco, CA – not coincidentally where the workaday offices of Lucasfilm happen to be.
I recorded this in the courtyard by the Yoda sculpture and fountain (yes, another one, a brother to the one in San Anselmo), and talked about what Pablo Hidalgo had to say about porgs for the official website. (Yes, that’s a porg you see pictured here.)
There are a couple of things to which I’d like to call your attention. Notice that when his interviewer, Dan Brooks, asks Pablo if the porgs are friendly, here’s Pablo’s response:
Given how rarely their island has visitors, their curiosity outweighs any skittishness they may have.
Now, that doesn’t address whether they’re friendly or unfriendly, does it?
And other thing to flag for you is how the porgs are “realized” – moviespeak for the means by which someone or something appears in a film. Here’s Pablo’s answer to that:
The porgs are realized through a variety of effects, depending on what’s needed. Sometimes they’re puppets, with the puppeteers digitally removed from the shot. Other times, they’re entirely CG.
Now why, you might wonder, would they need to do porgs in CG? The simplest possible answer is to get them to do things the puppeteers can’t do. And the number one thing for that would be to put them into action sequences of some kind. It could be as simple as realizing a flock of flying porgs, off in the distance. Or it could be that the porgs get rough-and-tumble in on the action – whatever “action” that may be.
What are your thoughts about all of this? Have your say in the comments!