JUST SOMETHING RIAN JOHNSON WOULD SAY ON THE SET OF 'THE LAST JEDI'
About ten minutes in on his commentary track for the recently-released DVD/Blu-ray of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, writer-director Rian Johnson talks about the beautifully stylized scene in which a Resistance gunner sacrifices herself to the cause:
We used a special camera to do this. We actually used, like, a digital camera that has a smaller sensor, so we could get the depth of field for that shot. And then, this little bit right here was really fun to cut together, and to kind of... um... on set, I would say, We're gonna De Palma this moment. We're gonna stretch it out, kind of to a ridiculous degree, and do these slow motion shots where we stretch this moment of her trying to kick that thing down. And then when it actually falls, it was a question of just how long can we stretch this out for, and we kept pushing it and pushing it, and eventually hit a place where it's like, okay, this is the moment.