Day 15: Building Empire (A Star Wars documentary)

I didn't do anything today except eat chili and watch documentaries. Not too shabby. In the last 2 days I've eaten 10 bowls of chili. Is that too many?

Today I watched 'Building Empire', a fan made doc about The Empire Strikes Back. I'd heard about this a few years ago and never watched it. It was just as good as I expected.

Leave it to a documentary to ruin the magic

Part of a series (1 for each of the 6 films) this one focuses on the 2nd film, providing behind the scenes footage, early drafts of the script, and commentary from the director and actors. The film runs chronological to the film, adding info and trivia as the film progresses.

What I learned: A good deal, considering I'm a pretty big Star Wars nerd already. All the Hoth scenes were filmed in Norway, where the average temperature was 27 below. The Emperor was conceived as a cross between Nixon and The Wizard of Oz, which makes total sense to me. And the guy who played Darth Vader (David Prowse) didn't know Vader was Luke's dad till he watched the completed film in theaters.

What I liked: A great deal of it. I really liked that it was layered on top of the movie, kinda like pop-up video, so you learn this stuff as you go, and you still feel like you're watching the film. I appreciated hearing from the directors and technicians about how difficult a lot of the scenes were to construct; it makes me appreciate them more. This doc taught me how little I understand about filmaking. The fact that it's shot in multiple locations, and never in order, is still somehow mind blowing to me. Every movies shot that way so I don't know why I'm just thinking about it now- something I knew but never realized I guess. It just seems like it'd be so confusing to do it that way.

What I didn't like: If I had to pick something, I guess it'd be that most of the commentary and notes were too technical for my taste. They focused on how the special effects were done, and that's all over my head. Conversely, I was really hoping to hear more about the creation and evolution of the characters, and how they came to be. I think have never watched the official SW documentaries that come with the films so I imagine that's the kind of stuff those cover.

I'm excited to watch the other 5 films sometime, especially the new ones to see what they have to say about them. You can watch them on youtube.

And here's a well-edited video that always makes me laugh.