One of the funnest Star Wars special effects in The Force Awakens is actually REAL
It's proof, if ever we needed it, that Star Wars is better with less CGI
One of the biggest criticisms levelled at George Lucas' Star Wars prequels was that the films used too much CGI. so it's little wonder that JJ Abrams and co wanted to keep The Force Awakens special effects as realistic as possible.
What we didn't realise was just how real some of the shots actually were – with one of the most impressive examples involving not laser space battles or weird alien species but Rey's amazing self-raising loaf of bread...
In the film we see the young scavenger return to her AT-AT home on Jakku and drop a sachet into some water to create a magical piece of bread. What we didn't cop, however, was that the effect wasn't CGI at all.
Nope, it was actually all real, as revealed by special effects supervisor Chris Corbould in an interview after his Oscar nomination came through. Even his co-workers didn't know...
About 17 minutes into the interview he reveals that the dehydrated 'bread powder' Daisy Ridley dropped into the water was actually landing on top of a deflated piece of fake bread, which was then pumped up as the water was sucked out of the bowl.
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And it took about three months to develop, apparently.
"It started off with the mechanics of getting the bread to rise and the liquid to disappear, but then there was the ongoing problem of what colour should the bread be? What consistency should it be?" Corbould told MTV news. "Should it have cracks in it? Should it not have cracks in it?"
As tasty as it looked though, Rey's loaf wouldn't get the Paul Hollywood seal of approval.
"You wouldn’t want to eat it!”, Corbould laughed.
