The instant bread in Star Wars: The Force Awakens wasn't CGI

'I’m gonna be famous for Star Wars for nothing else but this bread!'

Never mind the planet-destroying super lasers and giant holographic villains, it was Rey’s instant bread that drew a collective ‘ooooo’ from the audience in my screening of The Force Awakens.

Most assumed it was some sort of CGI trick, but Star Wars VFX duo Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould, who have earned an Oscar nomination for their work, revealed today that it was, in fact, real.

Okay, they didn’t invent instantly-formed food a la Star Trek, but there was certainly no computer graphics involved.

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Snippet at 17mins:

“I’m gonna be famous for Star Wars for nothing else but this bread!” Neal explained. “It was a little gag which was incredibly successful, everybody thought it was CGI.

“It’s a secret I assume?” DP:30 asked him.

“No, no it was very simple.

“We moulded up an inflatable bread so that it was deflated underneath the liquid and then we slowly inflated it and sucked out the liquid with vacuum pumps at the same time to produce this bread coming up and forming.”

“It’s a terrible admission,” Chris, who also worked on the film, chimed in. “But I thought it was CG too!”

Practical effects was something director JJ Abrams was keen to bring in for The Force Awakens, in line with the original trilogy.