Star Wars: The Force Awakens - 10 Behind-The-Scenes Secrets We Learnt From ILM

9. Even The All Digital Shots Were Rooted In Reality

Of course there's no avoiding the fact that there were dozens of shots in The Force Awakens that were completely CGI - around thirty according to Pritchard - many in the Escape from Jakku. However, even these totally unreal elements still actually had a grounding in reality, with footage from the set used as basis. In reference to that Millennium Falcon sequence, Pritchard said:

"We'd already done all the photography at Abu Dhabi a lot of what we do at ILM is we take as much reference photography on set as possible so we always have something to base our work off and that really helps when it comes to building those all digital sets. We're always looking for real, physical, photographic reference."

Things will probably have been less concrete for Starkiller base, another location where much of the work was all-digital, but even there there were sets to work from too.