Fine Fettle

It's funny — as this thing progresses, I'm spending more time worrying about accuracy. IG-88 looks like a gray 2-liter bottle with eyes, but Boba Fett's helmet is scaled to the nearest millimeter. I'm gaining confidence in my skills, I suppose, and the internet offers up a heck of a lot more detail on Boba Fett's armor than IG-88, so it's easier to set my sights higher. But I hope I haven't lost sight of the amateur charm of the project.

...On second thought, I'm pretty sure there will be enough goofiness on-screen to carry me through. I'm using Silly String instead of lasers, after all. Being amateur enough is probably not my primary concern.

Anyway. For Boba Fett's helmet, I'm wrapping sheets of styrene around an old bicycle helmet. Here are some of those aforementioned templates being traced onto the styrene:

The trapezoidal wedge of graph paper is there as a spacer — the bike helmet tapers in the back in a way the real helmet doesn't, so the wrap-around panels need to be extended.

Here's the assembled helmet, pre-painting. That milky T is what's left of the translucent protective sheet that styrene comes covered by. I peeled most of it off, but left it in place over the visor, so it'll remain transparent when I paint the helmet. Clever!

Looks a bit like Jango, actually.

The rangefinder is foam core, and the circular "hinge" it rises from is the end cap of a poster tube (IG-88's left arm, actually). Duct tape covers up the holes in the helmet, and holds gray acetate in place against the visor so it won't be totally see-through. Note the screen-accurate dent in the forehead.

Internet templates also provided me with the chest armor, here portrayed by corrugated cardboard. (Fett only appears from the chest up, so I don't need to worry about the rest of it.) Once they're painted, I'll attach them to a light blue turtleneck I found for $2 at a thrift store.

Finally, his rocket will slide through loops in my hiking backpack and be seen poking up over his shoulder. I made mine out of a few cups, a mop handle, some leftover posterboard, and the panacea that comes on a roll, duct tape:

If weather permits, I'll put a couple of coats of spray paint on tomorrow afternoon, then detail the helmet with sponged-on acrylics when the spray paint is dry.

In the last few days, I've also: spent some time figuring out how iMovie's voice over features work, tested my microphone with said features, greebled my Star Destroyer model so it doesn't look quite so clean, and bought black starfield fabric for miniature photography.

Boba Fett was the last big build before principal photography on Sunday. Once he's all painted and pretty, I'll still need to futz with the lights in IG-88's dome and make a couple of asteroids out of napkins and glue, but I'm very nearly ready to take off my modelmaker / costumer hat and put on my director hat. Almost time to start figuring out lights and camera angles!

It's not easy being green screened

My Empire Uncut chunk includes a scene in the Millennium Falcon cockpit, with asteroids and laser blasts moving past outside the windows. If it's worth doing, it's worth overcomplicating, I say, so I decided to recreate it in a composite shot, using a green screen and a cockpit miniature.

I have an alcove in my bedroom that's just about the right size for the cockpit, so all I need to do is turn the end of it green. Fluorescent posterboard from CVS, taped together and supported with foam core struts, makes a dandy green screen:

Or possibly a hang glider. Unless I've reinvented baseball.

Then I sketched out the cockpit window struts on graph paper, pinned it to foam core, and began cutting out window panels:

Once I had my cockpit miniature, I set it up with my camera and a black background and shot a few seconds of footage to test the concept:

Finally, I shot the back of my head against the green screen, and combined the footage in iMovie:

And there I am in the cockpit, with Tom Servo (actual height: 4") saying hi from outside! For the scene itself, I'm going to have to pay more attention to relative scale and lining up the footage — my head's too big, and in the wrong place. But for a ten-minute test shot, I'm pretty pleased with how well it worked.

That was all last night. This afternoon I took another trip to Blick to get materials for the Boba Fett costume, which is already coming together. His dented helmet is staring at me from the coffee table, waiting for the weather to brighten up so I can give it a coat of paint.

Oh, Sith

Initially, I was planning to put a diving mask over a black zentai hood and call that Darth Vader, but Kendra convinced me that a Dark Lord of the Sith deserved at least a fraction of the attention paid to IG-88 (who is, in my mind, the star of the scene). Another trip to Blick netted me a sheet of black foam core, and on Monday evening I went to work.

I knew the chest plate would be easier than the mask, so I started there. It's just a cross pattée of black foam core scored, folded, and glued to make the base, then a few scraps of white foam core for the buttons and lights. I used blue and red markers to color the buttons and a silver oil-based Sharpie paint pen for the box details. (I love those metallic paint pens.)

I really had no idea how to approach the detailed origami piecework involved in making Vader's mask, but I knew I wanted to incorporate a broken pair of sunglasses I had lying around, so I measured them, drew them on graph paper, and sketched around them until I had something that looked plausible. Then I made a mold of my lower face in aluminum foil and pulled some estimates about angles and distances out of my butt (keeping in mind that someone else would end up wearing the costume). I held the partially completed mask to my face at each intermediate stage, coming close to putting out an eye with the pins I was using to hold the joins until the glue set. Here's the final mask, with ribbons for wearing:

And here's the full look, with cloak, black shirt, zentai hood, and biking gloves:

(It turns out it's quite difficult to take a picture of yourself with an iPad while looking through a black z-hood and a pair of polarized sunglasses. This is as good as we're going to see until someone else puts on the costume.)

I think the mask looks more accurate off than on; I'm seeing a little Tusken Raider, a little Baron Karza, a little Doctor Doom in the finished product. But it's recognizably Vader, provided you don't hold it up next to a movie still. I toyed with a lamp shade for the helmet and cowl, but I don't think I'll be able to get it to work in the time remaining. The hood of the cloak is perfectly serviceable, Kendra's needling notwithstanding.

It's going to be a claustrophobic, legally-blind kind of shoot for my Vader, but she'll sure look good.

The last remaining big build is Boba Fett. Ten days to principal photography!

Foam Wars

Two of the shots for my Empire Uncut! scene are miniature space effects shots, with a Star Destroyer pursuing the Millennium Falcon. For that, I'm going to need some miniatures, so on Wednesday I convinced my long-suffering wife to drive me to the art supply store, where I acquired some sheets of foam core, a steel straightedge, and new blades for my X-acto knife. I adapted some papercraft patterns I found online, and set to work:

It's fifteen inches long, all stuck together with plain ol' Elmer's glue, and weighs a grand total of four ounces. To crease the layers of superstructure, I scored the underside with the X-acto knife, then used the butt to crush the foam down to create a hinge. The support rods slide through holes in the interior supports.

That's the beauty shot above, all smooth and gleaming white. Unfortunately, it'll actually be shot from this angle:

The nose-on angle really highlights every flaw, thanks to my old enemy foreshortening. If I have time, I might spackle the little gaps beneath the creases, and add some greebles.

Then, tonight, I put together model #2: a one-inch Millennium Falcon. The tiny sensor dish is the top layer of paper on the foam core, cut free and flipped up.

Awwww.

Last night, I made a list of everything I have left to do before filming: Vader's costume, Boba Fett's costume, the green screen cockpit windows, a couple of screen tests, and a few other lesser bits and pieces. I found some of the necessary elements at a thrift store today, including a fetching blue turtleneck for Boba. At a party tonight, I think I completed casting. Principal photography will be Sunday the 7th, with VF/X a couple of days before that, which gives me a little less than two weeks to get everything together. Delivery on the 11th!