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Making the Angry Birds Star Wars cinematic trailer

Making the Angry Birds Star Wars cinematic trailer

Just hours ago, Rovio debuted its three and a half-minute-long Angry Birds Star Wars cinematic trailer, released to mark the official global launch of Angry Birds Star Wars.

In this animated trailer, the Finnish firm pays tribute to the Mos Eisley episode near the beginning of A New Hope by including scenes that echo the arrival of Luke Skywalker (a.k.a. the Red Bird) at the famous cantina, and Luke's life-changing meeting with Han Solo (the Yellow Bird).

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Though it's a sizeable trailer for a mobile video game, it could have clocked in at far longer than its 211-second running time, according to Rovio's producer of animation Ville Lepisto.

"To begin with, the first approved script contained the first half of A New Hope," Lepisto admitted during an Angry Birds Star Wars-themed Google Hangout earlier today.

"Obviously, we were aiming to do a hyper-charged thing. As the project evolved, we maybe focused a bit more deeply into the key story points that would pay off well. So in that sense, a lot of good stuff did hit the edit floor."

Pass on what you have learned

In addition to tough narrative considerations, Lepisto mentioned the hurdles that arise when trying to put well-known movie dialogue into the beaks of speechless birds.

"The key challenge was to come up with the birds' sounds, because - as everybody knows - we have no dialogue," Lepisto explained.

"It's another key thing to overcome, as there are a lot of memorable one-liners and multi-liners [in the Star Wars series]."

"But, in the end, we had two voice actors: one from America and one from Finland. They pulled off the whole cast in the animation, including Cornelius and Ponda Baba from the cantina scene, pulling off the birds, the trooper... everything. The creativity and the talent of those guys just blew my mind."

You can check out the Angry Birds Star Wars cinematic trailer above, or head over to our Angry Birds Star Wars trailer round-up to see the rest of Rovio's video promos.

James Gilmour
James Gilmour
James pivoted to video so hard that he permanently damaged his spine, which now doubles as a Cronenbergian mic stand. If the pictures are moving, he's the one to blame.