Maryann Brandon, editor: The last time I actually was with Carrie was in the last [audio] session on VII. I got there before J.J. arrived, and she took me aside and was very upset, and said to me, "I look terrible in this film, you have to make me look good. Promise you will always make me look good." And I said, "Carrie, that's my job, I'll always make you look good. That's what I do." So I started on this film, and J.J. told me we were going to use the footage from VII. I felt so obligated to make her look good — because she had asked me, and it was all I ever heard. And of course I loved her so much.

Terrio: One thing we knew is we were going to put Leia in the Jedi pantheon in this movie, and we knew that there was the promise that was made in 1983 that "there is another" and that is Leia. I remember that from my childhood, and I always wished that I could see Leia as a Jedi. And so when we came into this movie, we didn't have Carrie. The problem of this movie was how do we finish Leia's part without actually having Leia? Ultimately we came up with a story that someone would come along who would pick up Leia's saber and would finish her Jedi journey for her. So every day, whenever all the bells and whistles were happening, a cast of thousands, [shooting in the desert of] Jordan, we would say, "How do we tell the story of the two twins, the promise of the two twins being fulfilled," which are Luke and Leia.

Abrams: Obviously we all loved her and were heartsick that she wasn't there, and yet we knew the character had to be. So we started looking at what these shots were, we started writing scenes around these shots, completely new contexts, new locations, new situation. We did a test, but it was really like, "Will this work? Let's just try this.” The one thing I'll say is that whenever you see Carrie, we completely constructed, lit, and composed the shots around the original pieces that we had.

While Fisher’s expressions were never digitally changed, everything except her face was rendered by visual effects artists.

Roger Guyett, visual effects supervisor: When you watch the movie you just want to believe that Carrie's there, and it's just completely natural within the scene. Basing it around the performances that she'd given us previously was the key. Then, of course, we had to stage the scenes and create those shots. It required a tremendous amount of planning to the nth degree to make this work. I mean the absolute detail of it. All the footage that we were using was quite often lit in different ways. We had to be really careful.

Dan Mindel, cinematographer: [Roger’s] a huge ally of mine and I pay a huge amount of attention to what he's telling me. Sometimes it's counter-instinctual and it's completely backwards, but I've seen him do his stuff.

Guyett: Dan and I have a lot of experience together. So the real trick was just matching that lighting every time. That's not an easy thing to do sometimes.

Abrams: Sometimes there was a shot we wanted to use as an exterior but [the original] wasn't. And Roger's like, "No." And I say, "Yeah, but yes." And then he'd say, “Ah, and no." And then we'd go back and forth.

Guyett: That was part of the thing about it too, we didn't want it to look as though we'd taken footage from another movie and used it. We wanted it to look as though it was really part of this one.