Take a look at new holiday-inspired apparel and other galactic gift ideas. StarWars.com Team
Every Tuesday, Bring Home the Galaxy will reveal new products inspired by the Star Wars saga and showcase the best galactic gifts this year for the whole family. Check StarWars.com each week for a highlight offive select products, including some of the biggest reveals. Plus, in collaboration with UPS this holiday season, special Star Wars Bring Home the Galaxy-themed wrapped UPS trucks will appear along regular delivery routes in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando, and Atlanta.
This week, Bring Home the Galaxy delivers a Sithmas surprise and much more! Set your scanners below for some of our favorite items of the week….
I have been loving the backwards progression of seeing how many people were involved in getting Luke to the point where he could make that impossible shot to destroy the Death Star. Rogue One showed us a team of people that gave their lives just for the hope that someone could save the galaxy. And now Andor is showing us the people that affected those people. Nemik helped save the galaxy by impacting Cassian’s life, and I think that’s worth celebrating.
Loth-cats, porgs, and more await aboard the Disney Wish. Jenn Fujikawa
A Loth-cat dozes in the corner, its body gently moving with every breath, while a wide-eyed porg beckons you over with its soft coos, all while Chewbacca fiddles with buttons across the room. This isn’t a scene from a movie; it’s a real life experience for kids at Star Wars: Cargo Bay on the Disney Wish — which starwars.com recently explored on the cruise ship’s christening voyage.
In Disney’s Oceaneer Club, kids ages three to 12 will get to experience Star Wars like never before by becoming animal handlers in Star Wars: Creature Challenge. They’ll get to feed and care for creatures from across the galaxy using augmented reality-enabled datapads to track and study each specimen. A simple scan on each creature’s tag will give them information and set them on a series of special assignments. As with all missions, challenges arise and Rey and Chewbacca will make an appearance to assist, channel the Force, and even rescue the ship from destruction.Walking into the space is like being on a ship within a ship. The low ceilings provide a cozy feel, just the right height for younglings but spacious enough for adults. The dark room is punched with brightly lit buttons, and wall panels become beacons for interactivity, each knob and switch begging to be pushed and pulled as if you’re on a working vessel…
In Ships of the Galaxy, starwars.com celebrates all the different kinds of craft across the saga. Strap in, punch it, and join us for the ride.
Time for another Star Wars pop quiz! What ship has been called the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, was instrumental in the destruction of both Death Stars, and made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs (we round down at starwars.com)? It’s the most famous YT-1300 space freighter in this or any galaxy: the Millennium Falcon. Let’s strap ourselves in and prepare for the jump to hyperspace as we explore this legendary ship….
For Star Wars: Episode I, Production Designer Gavin Bocquet faced the usual challenges of turning ideas and concept art into three-dimensional sets. But the size and complexity of Episode I, with its many otherworldly environments, presented Bocquet and his team with some extraordinary challenges too. Many of the environments in Star Wars: Episode I had to be created in the studio as sets, since nothing like them exists anywhere on Earth. Building these otherworldly places and making them real for the camera was Bocquet’s job.
“Generally my role is to produce any constructed background that you see behind the actors, whether it’s an in-studio set or on location, including props and set dressing. In short, we deal with any inanimate objects,” Bocquet says. All together, he and the designers and crafts people who work with him built around 55 sets. “About 40 of those were constructed on the stages at Leavesden and the rest were on location,” he adds.
Bocquet himself designed some of the sets, but in most cases he was responsible for bringing to life the elaborate designs of Doug Chiang (Director of Concept Design) and his team. Bocquet would turn Art Department renderings into construction diagrams, figuring out how to build in wood and plaster the fantastic worlds spun from imagination.
The Production Designer also got lots of guidance from George Lucas and Producer Rick McCallum. “George had been thinking about this project for years, and he and the concept art staff had been working together for many months before I signed on. As on most films, our job was to interpret the director’s ideas and convert them into some sort of visual form,” Bocquet says.
Bocquet has considerable experience working for Lucas and McCallum. He was Production Designer for the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, for which he received an Emmy Award. He also has ties to the original Star Wars Trilogy, having been an art department draftsman on Return of the Jedi. His feature film production design experience includes Radioland Murders and Kafka, among his other credits.
On some film projects, final sets can change dramatically in appearance from the way they are first visualized by an artist because of issues of cost, time or design impracticalities. But on Episode I it has been more a matter of subtle changes as sets approached the construction stage. “The development of every environment was sort of an organic process,” Bocquet says. “Using early sketches and foam-core models, reference or location photos and just sharing ideas, the process moved along until we got something much more defined.”
One challenge was to determine in advance just how much of a set should be built on stage and how much would later be done digitally by Industrial Light & Magic. “Since we’re producing one part of the film before digital work is underway, we all had to make assumptions about what we should build and what could be achieved at ILM,” Bocquet says.
Another unusual aspect of working on sets for Episode I is that many could be left standing for planned further use after the completion of phase I principal photography, since Lucasfilm has a long-term lease at Leavesden Studios. “Normally studios are expected to clear out one group of sets and get the next film right in to pay the rent,” Bocquet says. “But it’s a great advantage to Lucasfilm, because it has tied up the studio for a longer period of time, to be able to leave sets up to come back and shoot newly-written bits and pieces if necessary.”
When asked if there’s a single set or even a specific room for Episode I that he’s most proud of, Bocquet grins. “No, and I’ve been asked that question a few times,” he says. “There are five or six major environments that are totally different from each other. And even the smallest set can provide its own satisfaction. It’s not just about scale or things being unusual. Generally, it’s the whole lot of them together that provides the greatest satisfaction.
“Actually, a better time to ask that question would be after we’ve all seen the film. Because until then, we’re never quite sure what’s going to be seen and what isn’t,” Bocquet adds.
The designer points out that even with wildly unusual environments, Lucas likes them to relate to environments that are familiar to the audience. “So we’ll come up with geographical or environmental things like forests or deserts, or architectural styles that are known such as classical or art nouveau-things that give the audience some sort of key. If you try to design something completely in the abstract, something not of this world, there’s less chance that the audience will believe in it. They need to have something to latch on to, even if it’s subconsciously.”
Working with location filming was fairly similar to doing the sets at Leavesden, Bocquet says. “There’s obviously the geographical distance and the communications problems that entails, meaning you can’t get back the information as quickly and as visually as you’d like. So you have to delegate and trust the people you employ to use a lot of their own creativity. I was only in Tunisia once every two or three weeks when the sets were being built.”
The timing of the location shoot was arranged mid-way through the filming schedule, partly to give the production crew at Leavesden a chance to dismantle some of the first wave of sets there and build the second wave in their place. “Since there was only one or two days of shooting on many of the sets, without that break it would have been impossible to get all the sets built-even though Leavesden is a very large studio. One advantage of that size was that we were able to prefabricate a lot of the second group of sets away from the stages where they would be shot.”
Many of the decisions regarding camera angles and specific areas of the sets to shoot were made in discussions as the sets were designed. Sometimes, however, Lucas would decide to shoot from different angles. “Filmmaking and design aren’t fixed sciences,” Bocquet says. “Everything must be as flexible as possible, and you just have to be prepared to get as close as possible to the shot that the director wants.”
Doing a film such as Episode I is a constant learning experience, Bocquet says. “Every day there’s something to learn, whether it’s dealing with a tiny screw and trying to decide which head it should have on it, to the conceptualizing, planning, scheduling and the economics,” he adds. “If you’re not always learning something then your job probably isn’t quite as interesting as it should be.”
The moment we see Inquisitor Reva ignite her red lightsaber and hear its ominous hum, it’s clear anything can and will happen. The Inquisitors provide chills and thrills in the Disney+ limited series Obi-Wan Kenobi (all episodes now streaming), which marks the first time we’ve seen these ruthless Jedi hunters in live-action. Now fans have the chance to relive all the epic Inquisitor battles with the HasLab-exclusive Star Wars: The Black Series Reva Force FX Lightsaber. HasLab is a crowdfunding program by Hasbro Pulse that makes fans’ dream projects a reality, like the Vintage Collection Razor Crest and a four-foot-long version of Jabba’s Sail Barge.
With the Reva Force FX Elite Lightsaber, the HasLab team has poured in all the details and features to make this saber as iconic as the Third Sister herself. This is Hasbro’s biggest and most complex Force FX Elite Lightsaber yet, but with less than a week left in the campaign, the fate of this saber is now in the hands of fans.
When Hasbro’s manager of product design, Chris Reiff, and his team first learned there would be a live-action Inquisitor lightsaber in Obi-Wan Kenobi, they knew they wanted to find a way to make the dream of it available to fans. That includes Reiff himself who, as a lifelong fan, enjoys building replica Star Wars props in his free time. starwars.com spoke with Reiff over Zoom about the design process of the Reva Force FX Elite Lightsaber, the innovative tech behind it, and the joy of sharing new releases with fans.
starwars.com: When did you and your team begin working on the Reva Force FX Elite Lightsaber?
Chris Reiff: Our normal development cycle is 12 to 18 months, depending on how crazy things are. I would say we’ve been working on this for probably eight months to a year.
starwars.com: Wow. So you’re working on the project simultaneously as they are filming the series?
Chris Reiff: Yeah. A lot of times they’ll be developing the props, taking them into the studio, shooting reference photos of them, and sending us the photos the next day. One of the many great aspects of the partnership and trust we have with Lucasfilm is early access to very detailed references. In this case that took the form of a lot of photographs, 3D data, sound files, and conversations about when the saber would appear. We worked with Lucasfilm closely as we developed our own CAD [computer-aided design] from the reference, making sure we really studied every little detail and feature. This includes a lot of little notes and drawings, even a few early models just to make sure the size was right and felt good to wield. For the team to make it look just right, be able to be configured multiple ways like in the show, and fit more than two lightsabers worth of tech into it was a lot of work but we are excited about how cool it is.
starwars.com: How did it feel when you first saw the Third Sister’s lightsaber in action in the show?
Chris Reiff: It was fantastic. We had seen behind-the-scenes stuff of it in people’s hands, but seeing it come to life in the show with full effects and story behind it, it’s a nice, rewarding thing to see because we’ve been spending so much time and got to know it so well, and then it just takes it up another notch to see it in the show coming to life.
starwars.com: Each of the Force FX Elite Lightsabers offers something new, such as Palpatine’s Force lightning effect or Darth Revan’s color-changing blade. What are the innovative features of this Reva lightsaber?
Chris Reiff: Having the fully integrated blade tech is a huge new add. The ability for the saber to know whether it has one OR two blades installed and adjust its effects accordingly was a blast to see come together as the team has been developing it. The Duel Effect and Battle Replay feature we introduced in our latest mainline Force FX Elite Lightsabers are included in this HasLab Black Series Reva Force FX Elite Lightsaber, but the dual-blade configuration allows us to take them up a notch and have effects like Battle Sequence and Blaster Deflect play out across both blades differently than they do with just one blade. In addition to that, it comes with a rechargeable battery, stereo speaker sound, and fans will have the ability to reconfigure the saber from a half-circle hilt to the full circle hilt.
starwars.com: I’m obsessed with the half-circle, full-circle configuration. It’s so impressive, and it’s obviously screen-accurate. Was that an important design element that you said, we have to have?
Chris Reiff: Oh, yeah. We knew from talking to production and our Lucasfilm partners, we knew kind of how much each version of the saber was going to show up in the show. The half-ring or half-circle version that she wears on her belt, we knew was the primary. But it’s such a cool moment when it does go to the full circle and really as part of an Inquisitor lightsaber, it’s such an iconic look to have that full circle. So we wanted to do all that stuff and have fans reconfigure it to whatever they wanted to because a lot of the Inquisitor stuff you see shows up as just a full circle, and that’s it. But with hers being so unique and doing the half-circle, the ability for our fans to reconfigure their own sabers into whichever version they wanted was super important.
starwars.com: Is there a central button on the hilt that activates both sabers?
Chris Reiff: The great thing about this one is that because it is essentially two sabers in one, there are four buttons on this one. So there are two primary buttons and then two secondary buttons. And each of the primary buttons can turn on an individual blade or both blades, depending on whether you press a click, or hold and press, or whether you have both blades installed or just one blade. So because of that, it’s in the design of the saber — there are two buttons on each end of it, and we took advantage of that design and presumably how it was designed to work in the show, and use those same buttons to do similar features on our sabers.
starwars.com: One of the fun aspects about roleplaying with a Force FX Elite Lightsaber is the sound FX. Can you tell us more about the “series-inspired sounds” included in this design?
Chris Reiff: To start, the sounds in this lightsaber are brand new and different from other lightsaber noises we’ve heard before. Some are even unique to the two-bladed configuration of this lightsaber. The production shared the original sound files with us and the two-speaker setup in the HasLab lightsaber lets us really take advantage of all that to deliver audio beyond our regular Force FX Elite Lightsabers, as well.
starwars.com: As the designer, how does it feel when you’ve been working on these projects for so long and finally release them into the world?
Chris Reiff: It’s a moment we all look forward to just because we’re fans too, we’re working on this stuff, we enjoy it. So we get so close to it in developing it that sometimes we forget just how cool what we do is. And then that moment when we do share it with people and the larger fan community in general, that just kind of brings back that energy for us. And it’s an important part of the whole process, just emotionally, for us to see those reactions from people and to interact with fans and talk to people about it. And I think it was one of the beautiful things about being able to get back to Celebration and do those sorts of events again — where we get to celebrate what we do with people and kind of bring that full circle.
