Another technique that was used extensively in the Star Wars trilogy. Matte Shots involve removing a static portion of the image and replacing it with something new. For example, the emperor's enterence in Return of the Jedi. They never built that set. (thank god!) What we saw were about twenty or so people in the middle of the screen moving around. The rest of the image was STATIC. Not moving. It was a painting! Matte Artist's work is highly respected.. imagine having to create a painting that looks so real that people will mistake it for a real setting... Nevertheless, the technique added vistas to all three Star Wars movies, and expanded to scope of the universe in ways that definately payed off to the movie-goer.

In Star Wars : Macbeth, matte shots were used to create the illusion that the high school was the Death Star! When Rob, Ray and Mike run down the stairs, the high school windows were removed and replaced with the emptiness of space. This was relatively simple, and it involved telling the computer to place an image in front of a certain section of the frame for a certain period of time. The catch was that we couldn't move the camera.. or else we'd have to move the matte.

Our favorite Matte shot takes place during my soliliquy, (Luke Skywalker's Lament) As I walk through the room, the windows behind me are showing a scene from Empire Strikes back. I continue my whining as if nothing has happened. :-)

Traditional Effects

For all the high tech wizardry involed in producing a movie, sometimes Ockham's Razor proves corrrect. (come on, didn't you ever see Contact?) The simplest explanation is often the best one. During Young Siward's fight with Darth Vader, which we patterned after the Obi-Wan fight in "A New Hope", we had to make Young Siward dissapear when Macbeth swung the saber at him. We used a fishing rod and fishing line to hold up the Siward's robe, and we let the line out when the saber came through to make it look like Siward had vanished. It looked pretty good on video, much like the original version in "A New Hope."

Fishing line was also used as "The Force." It made Luke's saber fly towards him during the final battle. Strangely enough, more people asked about that simple effect than about how we made those light sabers. Go figure...

Lighting

All good movies MUST have good lighting. Its essential to the atmosphere of the picture. For our low budget production, Imperial Officer Carl Erik Fisher doubled as our lighting technician, and he dutifully flicked the lights on and off as we ran down the hallways. We did this essentially to make the scene look a bit more exciting. Kind of like the Death Star was exploding or something...

We shot the final battle on the high school stage, right next to the cafeteria. Here, we could afford an expansive dark background, as well as some neat colored lights that gave a neat feel to the tension and dread as Macbeth and Macduff met face to face. We also employed a full-strength industrial fan in order to spruce up the epic quality of this scene. Between the wind and the heat, we felt like we were in the middle of a storm up there. :-)

The Millenium Falcon Escape

The great Act III climax of Star Wars:Macbeth involved our heroes escaping from the exploding death star wih the Millenium Falcon. This scene required the use of just about every effect under the sun. :-) First, our heroes had to run towards the Millenium Falcon as Carl attempted to shoot them. We used a toy Millenium Falcon (a collectable now I think!) and we superimposed this image using the bluescreen on top of the three of us running in the gym.

After we made it inside the Millenium Falcon, we used the blue screen to superimpose Han Siward, Macduff, and Malcolm in place of where Han, Luke, and Leia had once been : the interior of the spacecraft. To get the effect of flying around the gym, we replaced the viewing window with a "fly-by" of the high school gym (we moved the camera around like it was an airplane).

Conclusion

In essence, the special effects used to create Macbeth are not very difficult in theory. The trick came in knowing when to use each technique, and how to create an illusion that looked clean and professional. In this case, we weren't aiming for realism of course... we'll save that for ILM.