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Rey's Amazing Space Bread From The Force Awakens Wasn't CGI

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The special effects in ‘The Force Awakens’ were, it can be generally agreed upon, spectacular.

But strangely it was one of the smallest that has garnered the most appreciation – and as it turns out, it wasn’t CGI.

We refer, of course, to Rey’s brilliant space bread, which magically inflates once mixed with water in her bijou AT-AT home kitchen.

Inflates is the operative word here, because that’s exactly what is happening, according to Oscar-winning SFX supervisors Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould, the pair behind the practical effects so key to J.J. Abrams’ movie.

“I’m gonna be famous for Star Wars for nothing else but this bread!”, says Corbould during an interview with DP/30, posted on YouTube.

“Everybody thought it was CGI, but It was a little gag which was incredibly successful.

“It was very simple, we moulded up an inflatable bread, if you like, and that was deflated underneath the liquid.

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“Then we slowly inflated it, and sucked out the liquid with vacuum pumps at the same time to make this bread coming up and forming.”

Scanlan then chips in: “It’s a terrible admission, but I thought it was CG too.”

“My finest hour, and everyone thinks it’s CG!” replies Corbould, who won the Oscar for special effects for ‘Inception’ in 2011, and is now, along with Scanlan, up for another for ‘The Force Awakens’.

In a separate interview with MTV, Corbould added: “It started off with the mechanics of getting the bread to rise and the liquid to disappear, but then there was the ongoing problem of what color should the bread be? What consistency should it be? Should it have cracks in it? Should it not have cracks in it?

“It took about three months. The actual mechanics of it was fairly simple, but the actual cosmetic side took a lot longer.”

Simple, perhaps. But still impressive. Most impressive.

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Image credits: Lucasfilm