Rogue One: A Star Wars Story releases later this week, but Ian MacDonald has built a special preview shot in LEGO with help from a bed sheet and some extreme forced perspective in his basement. Rogue One takes place just before 1977’s A New Hope, when the Death Star was being built. Ian’s scene depicts Jyn Erso walking out of the hanger on Yavin IV, where the Rebellion is based. His scene matches a shot seen 44 seconds into the second official trailer, and 2000 bricks went into just making the huge hanger, let alone our view into the distance.

I just had to quote Ian’s description of putting this scene together, as I’m sure many builders will recognise their own experiences in these words: So many things had to go just right to make this image. There’s 3 layers of background, a bed sheet for a sky, and a couple lamps, one of which is broken. All shot in my basement.

As you can see, the end result is fantastic, but I really enjoy seeing ‘behind the scenes’ photographs that show the work and thought that goes into this kind of cinematic LEGO shot. The forced perspective of the layers of background gives the impression of differing size and scale with huge mountains at a distance, a tall pyramid-like structure and then the expansive hanger itself. A lot of effort for one shot but the finished shot is awesome.