JJ Abrams reveals "old school" approach to making new Star Wars film

The film hits cinemas on 18th December

Published 6th Feb 2015

Director JJ Abrams has discussed the making of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ revealing that he and his production team often took an "old school" approach to the film’s visuals.

Speaking to Collider, the director admitted that although there was "an enormous amount of CG (computer-generated) effects in the film", he tried to keep the scenes as authentic as possible.

He said: "It was very important that we build as many sets as we could, and that the film have a tangible, sort of authentic quality - that you believed that these things were actually happening in a real space with real sunlight.

“If it was an exterior scene, or if we could build a big portion of a scene and not have anything be blue screen, do it where we could.”

Discussing the role of computer-generated graphics, he said: "I feel like the beauty of this age of film-making is that there are more tools at your disposal. But it doesn’t mean that any of these new tools are automatically the right tools.

"And there are a lot of situations where we went very much old school and in fact used CG more to remove things than to add things."

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is set for UK release on December 18th 2015.

The story will begin 30 years after the events of ‘Return Of The Jedi’, however details of the exact plot have not been released.

The cast includes returning trio Harrison Ford, Mark Hammill and Carrie Fisher, alongside Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Lupita Nyong'o, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow and Andy Serkis.

Photo Credit: Sonia Moskowitz/PA Photos