JJ Abrams And Other Crew Members Discuss Bringing Back Leia For 'The Rise Of Skywalker'

By: Dominic Jones

One of the most discussed aspects of the film going into Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was how the film handled the character of Leia Organa, since her actress, Carrie Fisher, died almost three years before the film's release.  Now that the film has been in theaters for a few weeks, and audiences have been able to see how the filmmakers created the character's role using footage shot for The Force Awakens, some of the key crew members for The Rise of Skywalker took part in a group interview with Vanity Fair's Anthony Breznican about how they created Leia's final performance.

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'Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey' Documentary to Premiere at SXSW

By: Dominic Jones

The world premiere of one of the bonus features from the blu-ray release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens will take place next week during the annual South By South West festival in Austin, Texas.   The feature length documentary, Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey will premiere on March 14th, followed by a Q&A with The Force Awakens visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett, supervising sound editor Matthew Wood, and co-producer Michelle Rejwan. 

StarWars.com describes the 70-minute documentary as, "the complete story behind the making of The Force Awakens, revealed through in-depth footage and exclusive interviews with the actors and filmmakers in this feature documentary."

SXSW takes place in Austin, Texas from March 11th-20th.

Source: Entertainment Weekly

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'The Force Awakens' Wins Best Special Visual Effects At BAFTAS

By: Benjamin Hart

The 69th British Academy Film Awards ceremony was held Sunday night in London and Star Wars: The Force Awakens was among the films honored at the annual event. Episode VII took home the award for best special visual effects, beating out other nominees such as Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, Ex-Machina and Ant-Man. Special effects supervisors Chris Corbould and Roger Guyett, animation supervisor Paul Kavanagh and creature effects supervisor Neal Scanlan were all present to accept the award.

Later, the winners winners took part in an interview and were joined by The Force Awakens star John Boyega, who had also just won the BAFTAs Rising Star award. The group discussed their work on The Force Awakens and looking ahead to Episode VIII. You can watch that below(Interview begins at 1:24 in the video):



Congratulations to The Force Awakens crew for this incredible honor!

Source: Variety 

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