FIVE CREATURES DEBUT ON ‘ROGUE’ WORLD
NEAL Scanlan, who won a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is once again responsible for creating the creatures that inhabit the world of “Rogue One.”
Working with Scanlan marked director Gareth Edwards’s first time dealing with the iconic creature-maker and he admits that he was a bit overwhelmed.
“They did all these different creature designs,” comments Edwards. “It was an embarrassment of riches. But when the first decision day came; we had to pick five and we only had an hour. I had dreamt of making a creature for Star Wars and doing anything I wanted but when I had to say which ones it would be, I didn’t want it to end.”
Collaborating with the director and getting in touch with his vision for the film gave Scanlan and his team creative freedom and a chance to develop the characters in a new way. “I’ve never worked with a director like Gareth before,” explains Scanlan. “He wants the characters to be spontaneous and so you don’t come onto the set with a preconception of what you are doing. The performers have no idea when the camera will find them, whether they’re in the front or the background. And that has a brilliance to it as it allows the characters to really evolve naturally. It’s about Gareth finding those moments.”
The end result is that the creatures are treated the same as the other actors on set, even to the extent that Scanlan asked the hair and make-up team to add dust, grime, sweat and grease to the creatures, just as they would any of the other cast.
With his crew of 130 people, Scanlan designed and created 30 creatures for the film that can move and articulate.
In addition to the numerous background creatures and aliens, there are four creatures that play parts in the film, namely Pao, Bistan, Moroff and Bor Gullet.
Pao was one of the first creatures Edwards really responded to, a sort of reptile with a hinged mouth of gigantic proportions. Describing him, Scanlan says: “Pao has tiny eyes which he squints through and he spends most of the time with his mouth shut, but when he opens it, when he screams in battle, his mouth opens to an extraordinary extent.”
When you look into Pao’s throat, you see right down inside the performer Derek Arnold’s throat. When performing Pao, Arnold is rendered almost blind.
Bistan was another design immediately favoured by Edwards, who was amused by the play on the idea of putting an actual monkey in a space suit. Performed by Nick Kellington, Scanlan believes the attraction lies in the fact that it’s actually Kellington’s own eyes fronting the character.
The creation of K-2SO took the combined skills of Scanlan and his team of creature and droid experts, and the Industrial Light and Magic visual effects studio. K-2 was first created as a full-scale maquette by Scanlan’s team and then realized by visual effects.
Scanlan describes the design: “Gareth described K-2 as like a lazy sprinter; he’s quick and incredibly powerful and it’s almost as if he doesn’t class himself in the same bracket as other droids. The Empire version of a droid would be something you could take into battle. So, he’s tall, very stealth-like and has long limbs to cover ground.” – Supplied