Star Wars: Episode VII will go on hiatus for a couple of weeks in August, but is still set for its December 18, 2015 release date.
Clerks director Kevin Smith visited the film's Pinewood Studios home last week and was moved to tears by the experience.
"So we go to the set and they're actually shooting - and this is what I can't tell you, what they were shooting - but what I saw, I absolutely loved," he gushed.
"It was tactile, it wasn't a series of f****** green and blue screens in which later on digital characters would be added. It was there, it was happening.
"I saw uniforms, I saw artillery that I haven't seen since I was a kid. I saw them shooting an actual sequence in a set that is real - I walked across the set, there were explosions - and it looked like a shot right out of a f****** Star Wars movie.
He continued: "[Abrams is] building a tactile world, a world you can touch. And he's replicating it with all the love of somebody that has the world's greatest collection of Star Wars figures."
- Independent