One reason I watch every sci-fi film I can get my figurative hands on is the chance they give you to escape into a world/s wholly and utterly different to your own.
To create those immersive worlds, films depend heavily on visual effects (VFX) which are advancing at such a rate that alien environments and near-future places feel almost as real and substantive as our own.
What is fascinating is having the curtains pulled back by the great technical wizards that orchestrate these effects and seeing what goes into making them come to full, glorious fruition.
In this instance, Industrial Light & Magic’s impressive VFX for Star Wars: The Force Awakens are broken down and the result notes io9 are amazingly impressive:
“This four-minute video pretty much goes from the beginning to the end of The Force Awakens and shows all the layers and details that went into many of the film’s biggest scenes. Things start simple; an actor and a set or maybe nothing at all. Then sections fly into the frame. Seeing the trench on Starkiller Base dropped in piece by piece, for example, is mind-blowing. Just try to imagine the amount of time that went into that work versus how fast it flickers before our eyes.”