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Location, Location, Location!
Finding the Star Wars universe in your own back yard
The sweeping sands of Tatooine. The lush forests of Yavin and the Endor moon.
The mellow plazas and villas of Naboo.
Any fan film set in the Star Wars galaxy must find some way to emulate the
look and feel the audience has grown to expect. And while the saga has always been
known for its cutting-edge blue screen sets, it has never failed to stun with its
practical locations. REVELATIONS has met the challange face on, seeking out unique
locations to add depth and texture to the exciting plot.
One of the first considerations for any locations must be scale. This isn't just
the size of the location but the number of actors and extras it takes to fill the space
and make it seem real. A large ballroom for a glittering ambassadorial reception
will need to be filled with scores of extras but a poignant scene like Luke staring out
at the Tatooine sunset needs only one character silhouetted against a vast empty landscape.
A clandestine meeting can occur in the middle of a crowd or hidden away from prying eyes.
Which scenario creates the desired mood? Can the scene be reworked to fit the available
location? Will it fit in with the rest of the movie?
Take, for instance, the nightclub scene. The meeting between Taryn, Declan, and Cade
could have happpened anywhere - a dark alleyway, a quiet back room, or even outside. But
REVELATIONS wanted to pay homage to the bars and clubs already seen in the SW movies.
After much searching (a local laser tag arena had an ideal lobby area but could not agree
to terms) PanicStruck found a club willing to let them film in their party room. The pillars,
club benches, and cocktail tables needed no modification to fit into the speakeasy atmosphere
the scene called for. All it needed was forty extras, some lighting, a little smoke, and viola!
The hottest spot on Corellia was open for business.
Anyone not present at that shoot would never realize that the space seen on-screen comprised
less than one-quarter of the physical locaton. That's one trick to a great location --
what you get is not always what you see. Careful scene set-up can make parts of the same room
seem far apart or set two different places side-by-side. Director Shane Felux and Jack Foley,
Director of Photography, blocked out what angles would be filmed, creating a virtual floor plan
quite different from the real one. And don't forget, exit signs, wall plugs, doorknobs, all the
trappings of modern life had to be removed, hidden, or worked around so as not to jar the
audience right out of their viewing experience.
There was little need for such considerations at the quarry shoot. The only man-made
element that had to be avoided was the port-a-john and several brave volunteers pushed it out
of camera view early in the morning. (Yes, the movie business is just non-stop glamour, thank
you very much!) There were two keys to making the most of this awesome and unique location.
The first was filming the prisoners interacting with their environment -- walking on the uneven
surfaces, moving the rocks, falling to the ground -- all reinforcing the tactile reality of the
location. The second was emphasizing the size of the place. The action occurred 600 feet down,
across a huge vista of cliffs and bare rock. With gifted camera work, including taking a camera
crane up one of the access roads at the top of the walls and filming sweeping panorama views,
Jack captured the true scope of the location. After all, people just standing next to a stone
wall may or may not be interesting to look at. But filming them and then pulling back to reveal
a towering cliff blocking their escape is instant drama!
A working quarry. A dark nightclub. An elegant art museum. A Civil War battlefield. These
are the locations PanicStruck has traveled to for REVELATIONS. And mid-June, principal filming
will wrap with a two-night shoot in a living cavern system. None of these sessions were simply
a matter of arriving with a camera, lights, some actors, and filming on the fly. They were the
products of much hard work behind the scenes by Shane and producer Dawn Cowings. They used
every resource at their disposal to find these locations, from the Virginia Film Commission to
contacts in the 501st and on the various Star Wars boards to their own
knowledge of the area. Dawn and Shane worked with one simple idea: It doesn't hurt to ask.
And that's it. That's the big secret to great locations. Ask, ask, ask. For every location
used in the movie, at least half a dozen others were considered. Most were asked and simply said
no. A few, like the laser tag arcade, seemed to feel that this was a big-budget Hollywood
production rather than an amateur, non-for-profit endeavor and priced themselves out of the
running. But PanicStruck kept asking and made sure to always be patient, professional and, above
all, polite. In the end, the yes's won out and REVELATIONS began to come to life.
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