Neal Scanlan is the Special Effects Supervisor on Rain Johnson’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” He served in the same capacity on “Star Wars: Rogue One” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” He’s also an Oscar winner for his work on “Babe.” Oh, and he’s responsible for bringing the latest popular addition to the “Star Wars” universe to life – those adorable Porgs. But where did these creatures come from exactly?
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According to Scanlan, after Johnson visited Skellig Island – the location where Rey (Daisy Ridley) finds Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) at the end of “Force Awakens” – he discovered a unique bird that made the isle its home, and it provided some unexpected inspiration.
“At certain times of year, [the island is] full of these little puffins. It’s a sanctuary for puffins and they are everywhere,” Scanlan says. “And [Johnson] described these things as Porgs and I think if you close your eyes and you say ‘Porg’ it kind of suggests something visually. To us, at least. And he described them as a cross between a puffin, a seal, and a pug dog. And he’d written these little vignette moments into the film, which I think are moments when you can reset yourself emotionally and in a way, take a breath. And so these little guys were really there to play that role.”
Scanlan adds, “I think Last Jedi is also a film about friendship. And friendship can exist outside of the human race and can exist between a Wookiee and a Porg.”
As for how Johnson characterized them, Scanlan says the idea behind them was “that they are these little mischievous, inquisitive, numerous species that live quietly on the island. There is a moment where one of them in particular cuts through that emotional barrier that maybe we’ve seen a lot of in Chewie, in the fact that he’s quite dismissive and off-handed about certain things. There’s this little guy with these wonderful doey eyes that happens to press a few emotional buttons and it’s a nice little [part of the] story.”
You may find this hard to believe, but the Porgs are mostly practical effects. Scanlan and his team used puppets to bring the Porgs to life with a little assistance from his colleagues at Industrial Light and Magic.
“I put together the team of artists that design and build and perform them,” Scanlan says. “We kind of work as one big entity and we’ve all worked with each other for so many years now. So many of us have come from very similar backgrounds through the love of people like Jim Henson and the love of ‘Star Wars’ and Ray Harryhausen and all these, what we call, greats. A lot have come from theater as well.”
Johnson also wrote the Porgs as real characters in his script and that meant Scanlan’s puppeters were effectively actors on set.
“You think, okay, there are two Porgs and this is the scenario that takes place and you look at things like the great cartoon moments and all of these sort of things as your inspiration. You might describe it as a John Candy moment or as a Joe Pesci moment. All of those influences are true and they’re real and you can put them into your little Porg. It’s true, traditional puppeteering. And then, where we can’t do that because of the physical limitations of practical effects, then the digital folks at ILM pick up. They pretty well work very close on the performance. It’s a sort of combining of those techniques and hopefully in a seamless way that allows them to feel real to the audience but also be more expansive than what a practical effect could be because practical effects, by their virtue, are somewhat limited in comparison to what CG can offer. But it’s very important to the Star Wars world that we feel that what we’re watching is real. One of the great things that George [Lucas] set up is that we may be in a galaxy far away, but it feels real. It feels comfortable. It feels familiar.”
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is now playing nationwide.