Skellig Island

I was on Skellig Michael 2 days before filming and it made the impression on me like a place from a different planet, so everything is fine for me.

 

I agree with the OP. It was too earthy. A couple of suns/moons or even a slightly more extreme colour grade would've helped.
When you look at Tatooine or Hoth these are sand and snow deserts that are void of other details other than the Star Warsy sets that are constructed.
You believe they could on another planet far far away. Jakku worked in the same way.
But Ahch-To did just feel like an island off of Ireland!
Maybe there was no avoiding that due to the fact this was an ancient site that was bound to feel untouched by technology and thus slightly medieval.
But yeah, bung another sun or moon in the sky and we're back in a galaxy far far away...

 

i can sorta see what the OP is referring to.

in my opinion Skellig Michael is so stunningly beautiful as it is... i would have filmed it exactly as it is as well. Sure they could have jazzed it up in post production to make it look alien, but it would not have been as beautiful in my opinion.

I'm sure that in some galaxy far far away there is a place just like skellig michael.

 

Looks more like gorilla than a walking carpet. Brad the gorilla would be a close enough match.

 

We saw Ach-To for only 2 minutes, in this short period of time we witness a small part of this planet. But there is much more to explore in EPVIII for sure. And don't worry, the location will probably be altered in that movie (caves, animals etc.). So you should wait for the next instalment.
Personally I'm glad they showed us an unaltered version of this beautiful island.

 

I got an off topic for my post? We are talking about Earth somehow being part of the SW universe? Am I wrong?

 

As far as them fleshing out Ach-To, pictures are already circulating of possible on set creatures being added to the landscape to give a more other world feel. I can certainly understand the OP's concern but as far Ach-To goes like another poster said we only saw the planet for a few minutes. I think for that scene and for it's tone adding in some creatures might not have done the scene any help.

 

Oh wow lol, JJ would never do that to us... would he? Yeah Brith would have been an easy add. I'll have to re-watch that scene and look for local fishing boats that made it passed post preduction lol.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 29, 2016, Original Post Date: Sep 29, 2016 ---

Just a quick update on this subject... Even though i'm at work, I always keep all the star wars movies on hand and reviewed the finale Ach-To scene. There are flying animals in most of these shots but they fly fast and are somewhat hard to noticed if you're focusing on the actors and the gorgeous island itself. The birds are moving so fast that it's hard to see any massive detail on them. It's very well possible they thought for just this scene it was just the perfect amount of wildlife.

If anyone has the time we should find the most detailed freeze frame of one and see if there was any post production work on them. I'd love to see if they actually thought of that. If I don't see anything by the time I get home, i'll try and do it myself! Thank you to OP for bringing this up though, I love looking at the lil details!

 

As per my earlier post, I said I would look at the scenes of the birds to see if they did any post production work on them.
Here are my findings:

1. From looking and the birds of Ach-To frame by frame, I can see no post production editing.
2. There are countless shots that have the birds in frame.
3. When watching the movie you also can hear them squak'n.
4. The way the birds are captured on film, makes them seem stretched and really hard to see what kind of bird it really is.

I took some captures and the birds and i'll post them. The one thing you can't really tell in the photos is that there's a large amount of birds in
a few of the shots. So from the looks of it they didn't do anything to the birds to make them appear more from a galaxy far far away. I think for these series of shots, the level of foreground life was perfect and suited the scene.

 

No chance, they had a ban mile around the island during filming.

 

I was kinda joking about the whole car that was caught on film during the shooting of the first LOTR movie and made it to the big screen by mistake lol. I could just imagine seeing a fishing crawler off in the distance as Luke was gazing at Rey lol!

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 30, 2016, Original Post Date: Sep 30, 2016 ---

Oh!!! I forgot to upload this screen cap of the on set creature being setup for shooting on the episode 8 Skellig shoots. Not sure if this thing will even make it into the finale cut but they are taking steps to flesh out the environment.