Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The Franchise’s First Stand-alone Instalment, Sends a Squad on an Impossible Mission, and Is Star Wars’ Biggest Change-up Yet.

- Dan Jolin

WE’RE IN THE THICKEST PART of the nuttiest time of the show,” says John Knoll with a weary chuckle. “Full factory mode.” It’s late October and Rogue One, the fourth Star Wars movie that the veteran ILM visual-effects supervisor has worked on (unless you count the 1997 Special Editions), isn’t going to bed without a fight. This is often how it is with big-studio blockbusters in post-production, light speeding to meet their release-date deadlines. Always more chunks of data to crunch, always further finessing to be done on photo-real CG shots. But Rogue One has proven a pricklier beast than most. It’s not been easy for Knoll, and his exhaustion is evident in the weighty sighs that punctuate our conversation.

Yet this is also, he insists, his favourite part of the process. “The results of years of planning, meetings and design work finally come together, and the shots are looking great. Always very energising and exciting to see.” Plus, for Knoll, there’s an additional, especially satisfying layer of gratification to this end-game phase — one which not so many VFX supervisors get to feel. “Rogue One is something that’s sprung from my imagination,” he says. “So that’s fun.”