Star Wars Dweebing FOUR: Film Technology/Uncle George and his disciples/da biz
Morphing show biz
George Lucas' VFX crew became a legion of Jedi masters who went forth to show other filmmakers how to unleash the force of their imaginations.
By Anne Thompson
(The following Risky Business column was originally published on May 13)
CANNES --
When Steven Spielberg was deciding whether to make "War of the Worlds," he not only lined up Tom Cruise, but he called Industrial Light + Magic to check whether Dennis Muren, who first worked for him 20 years ago on "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," was available.
He was.
George Lucas, on the other hand, doesn't ever have to check Muren's availability.
That's because Muren works for him.
Lucas will be recognized Sunday here in Cannes, where he is to be feted with the Trophy of the 58th Festival de Cannes and treated to a career tribute film assembled by festival head Gilles Jacob. The day will culminate with the world premiere of "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," which then opens next week in most territories worldwide.There is sure to be much talk of Lucas' contributions to the cinema -- both good (his reinvention of mythic archetypes under the guise of sci-fi) and bad (his success led Hollywood to its current obsession with chasing blockbusters). But arguably, Lucas' most lasting contribution is the generation of visual effects masters, who redefined special effects in the process of solving the challenges Lucas set them.Call it the ILM Revolution.
If Lucas sometimes seems a bit of a Yoda, then his VFX crew became a legion of Jedi masters who went forth to show other filmmakers how to unleash the force of their imaginations.Muren, along with the other VFX wizards from ILM, combines computer science and software creation with aesthetic grace to show us things that no one has ever seen before. With each new movie, these pioneers reinvent the cinema before our eyes. For almost 30 years, ILM's FX masters have dominated the Oscar visual effects derby, racking up 14 wins.
And when their rivals grab Oscars, chances are good that their skills also were forged in the ILM crucible.Take this year's winner, John Dykstra of "Spider-Man 2." He started out at ILM in 1976, when it was created to make "Star Wars." In fact, without Dykstra, Ken Ralston ("Forrest Gump," "The Polar Express") and Richard Edlund ("Episodes IV," "V" and "VI," "Raiders of the Lost Ark"), the original "Star Wars" might never have been made.I
t was nip and tuck back then. Lucas literally didn't know how he was going to pull off "Star Wars" on time and on budget. Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" had taken five years to make, but Lucas set out to pull off 360 ambitious effects in fewer than two years.
It was Muren, Dykstra, Ralston and Edlund who figured out how to save valuable production time with their daring computer-synchronized, motion-control, blue-screen photography. They weren't sure it would work, but they had no choice. They pulled off the movie. And changed movie history. EDITOR’S NOTE: SO MAYBE SOME SLACK SHOULD BE CUT IF UNCLE GEORGE IS A BIT TECH-OBSESSED? HE’S BEEN THRU THE MILL. HE INVENTED THE DURN THING, ACTUALLY!
Since "Star Wars," they've gone on to realize the visions of the cinema's greatest filmmakers, from Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis to James Cameron and Wolfgang Petersen. ILM took E.T. across the moon on a bicycle; created the exploding Star Destroyer in "The Empire Strikes Back"; the saucer pulling up clouds at the end of "Cocoon"; the go-motion rig for "Dragonslayer" that took the blur out of stop-motion; the first photorealistic CG character, the knight in 1985's "Young Sherlock Holmes"; the first morphing old woman in "Willow"; and the CG water alien in 1989's "The Abyss."When Muren moved ILM into digital compositing, that made possible the back-to-back, mind-boggling effects in 1991's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," 1992's "Death Becomes Her" (the first movie to achieve realistic human skin) and the CG dinosaurs in 1993's "Jurassic Park."
Their pioneering effects on "Abyss," "Jurassic Park" and "Terminator 2" represented significant steps in the digital revolution -- and convinced Lucas that he could return to the Force and finally make "Episodes I," "II" and "III."
In the decades after the first "Star Wars," the wow factor has come to dominate Hollywood movies.
The top 20 blockbusters of all time are either visual effects spectaculars or CG animation. In the past decade, studio budgets for visual effects have skyrocketed from an average of $5 million to $50 million per film, and the percentage of movies that are dominated by effects has shot up as well.
"Movies of size and scope, marquee blockbusters, are sold by their trailers," says Scott Ross, chairman of Santa Monica effects house Digital Domain ("Titanic," "I, Robot"), who launched his career at ILM.
A single shot -- whether it's the 250-foot tower of water in "The Perfect Storm" or Kate and Leo on the bow of "Titanic" -- can sell a blockbuster."A-list visual effects guys are make or break for a big effects movie," says Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, who supervised Warner Bros. Pictures' "Perfect Storm." Hiring a visual effects supervisor is like casting a star, says Hutch Parker, head of TCF at 20th Century Fox. "Your choice of who to play the role is essential."
Under mounting pressure to deliver eye-popping visuals, studios and directors chase after the top FX stars. Sony relied on Sony Pictures Imageworks' Dykstra for the first two "Spider-Man" movies. Zemeckis collaborates exclusively with SPI's Ralston, who has won four Oscars for their films together. This year, the duo's drive to use new Imagemotion technology yielded the $175 million "Polar Express," which was slammed by some critics but still delivered enough wow to gross $281 million worldwide. For "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," director Brad Silberling leaned on ILM's Stefen Fangmeier, who trained for years with Muren.
Truth is, three worlds -- live action, CG and animation -- are now collapsing into one.
In live action, the old-school photographic techniques pioneered by ILM are swiftly being replaced by computer graphics. The younger generation is more comfortable with the digital virtual world. One gets the sense that such directors as Lucas, Peter Jackson, Kerry Conran and Robert Rodriguez would like nothing better than to replace the real (including actors) with elements that they can control completely. EDITOR'S NOTE: SIGH...I HOPE THAT ISN'T LITERALLY TRUE....
Such movies as "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," "Sin City" and "Constantine" are moving toward less on-location reality and more mind-numbing hordes of "smart" cyber-extras and stunt doubles. And such FX artists as Muren, Fangmeier, Dykstra and Ralston, using similar CG animation to what Pixar Animation Studios employs, are figuring out how to replace actors with living, breathing, talking digital humans. It's their Holy Grail. "You can't find anything harder," Ralston says. "We are absolutely familiar with every frigging subtlety in the human body. Millions of things are going on when we speak that we'll never be able to do." EDITOR’S NOTE: DON’T PANIC, THESPS. A FEW MOVIES WHERE THEY DON’T HAVE CHARACTERS ANYONE CARES ABOUT OR ALL DIGITAL STERILITY, THE BOX OFFICES REFLECT THIS, AND THE CIRCLE WILL COME BACK AROUND. THERE IS TOO MUCH PRODUCT AND TOO MANY COOKS FOR THE DISHES TO ALL BE JUST ONE THING. THE OPTIONS ARE INCREASING, NOT TELESCOPING.
Even the hotshots at SPI and ILM stand in awe of New Zealand's Oscar-winning Weta Digital, which created Gollum from "The Lord of the Rings." The question is, who will meet the Weta challenge? Will it be Jackson's remake of "King Kong," coming in December? Or will it be Cameron, who is ramping up his first film in six years, the 3-D, high-def, sci-fi adventure "Battle Angel"? Odds are good that when Cameron makes the call on who will make real his celluloid fantasies, it will be one of the ILM FX masters.
Anne Thompson can be reached at athompson@hollywoodreporter.com. Published June 09, 2005
The house that George built
By MICHAEL GOLDMAN, Wed., Jun. 8, 2005
Woody Omens distinctly remembers the first time he met George Lucas, but his memory is fuzzy on when and why the neophyte filmmaker first made an impression on him. All he knows for sure is that his awareness of Lucas' formidable skills preceded their initial meeting at USC film school in 1965, when Lucas showed up in Omens' classroom to inform the young adjunct instructor that he would be enrolling in his course, Filmic Expression.
Although Lucas would first earn fame two years hence by winning a National Student Film Festival award for the student version of his film "Electronic Labyrinth: THX1138 4EB," Omens somehow knew that Lucas was already very advanced.
"When you have a strong student, news travels fast," says Omens, now a retired professor emeritus at USC. "I remember telling him he didn't need the class. He told me he wanted to take it anyway, and use it like a gym to work out. Obviously, even back then, he was no ordinary student."
Lucas was merely one of a cadre of bright hopefuls at USC; his classmates included John Milius, Walter Murch and Caleb Deschanel, among others. But it was the Modesto, Calif., transplant who would become the leader of a group of high-profile alumni who have had a profound impact upon the fortunes of the USC School of Cinema-Television in recent years, according to the school's dean, Elizabeth Daley.
During their one semester together, Omens proudly recalls Lucas creating his second student film --"Herbie," a black-and-white, 16mm, experimental short set to the sounds of jazz pianist Herbie Hancock that synchronized music with flashing light shapes, reflected off an automobile.
"The exercise was meant to explore nonverbal use of imagery, and I have never seen a film that was as successful with the idea as that one," says Omens. "I even see a thread of continuity between 'Herbie' and the 'Star Wars' films. On 'Herbie,' he was exploring a visceral ballet of light, which is the same thing you see going on with the lightsaber battles. If you lifted those portions out of the ('Star Wars') films, you would have an avant-garde light show -- pure motion of light. Forty-some years after 'Herbie,' he's still playing with those themes."
Around the same time, Lucas cast classmate Randal Kleiser, who went on to become a director ("Grease," "The Blue Lagoon"), in his third student short, "Freiheit." Kleiser and Lucas quickly became friends, and Lucas rented Kleiser a room in his house.
"Back then, I figured he'd end up being an art director, because he's so visual," says Kleiser. "He didn't seem outgoing enough to be a director. But I do remember him finding ways around rules. We were really limited with resources, for example, and each student project had a limit to the amount of film stock students could use. But George met some Air Force guys that were sent to USC to learn cinematography, and they had tons of film available. George rounded them up, and said let's take your test stock and make a film out of it. That's how he made 'THX.' He was not a normal film student by any means." EDITOR’S NOTE: THE KING OF THE ODD DUCKS!!! (THIS IS WHY WE ADORE OUR UNCLE GEORGE, EH? HE REALLY IS ONE OF US)
Nor has Lucas been a normal alumnus. His relationship to USC and his history of giving millions of dollars, equipment, time, resources, advice and jobs to students and alumni are well documented (neither LucasFilm nor the university would provide specific dollar figures).
The school's George Lucas Building was dedicated in 1984; he serves on the film school's advisory board; he jointly funded with Steven Spielberg two, $2 million-dollar endowed faculty chairs, with the announcement of a third endowed chair funded by the duo expected later this year; and he was a key financial contributor to the Robert Zemeckis Center for the Digital Arts.
USC officials also point out that Lucas conceived of and cajoled to fruition the seminal fundraising campaign in the early '80s that led to the construction of a block of buildings that now comprise the film school, including the Lucas Building.
And in recent years he has helped USC get massive infusions of filmmaking technology from various manufacturers to make life easier for today's students.
In his day, Lucas recalls, students were scrounging for equipment all the time. His subsequent commitment to changing that paradigm is why Dean Daley uses such terms as "ideal alumnus," "leader," "role model" and "passionate advocate" when praising Lucas."This school would not be the same without George," she says. "George and a few others have created respect in the community not only for our school, but for film schools generally. After his generation came through here and went on to influence the industry, people started to see that film schools have significant value.
"Our school is 75 years old, but in those early days, attending film school did not get the respect it gets today. That is largely due to George -- he has provided that leadership. Our school is very much the house that George built."
(Michael Goldman is senior editor of Millimeter magazine.)
Design for working
By DAVID S. COHEN, Wed., Jun. 8, 2005
Anyone taking a good look at "Revenge of the Sith" can sense George Lucas' interest in architecture and design.
Not only is the movie filled with images of imaginative cityscapes, but even the furniture and light fixtures have a distinct sense of style.
The same is true of Lucas' biggest real-life architectural project yet: the Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco's Presidio.
Though decorated in a different style than anything in the "Star Wars" universe (the LDAC is Arts & Crafts, not Art Deco), the campus is as stunning, in its own restrained way, as anything in the films.
On a walk-through, a visitor is struck by how carefully the design takes advantage of the gorgeous setting, drawing attention to the gorgeous vistas and not to the buildings themselves, which are quite unassuming.
That's no accident. Lucas himself asked for buildings that would fit into the Presidio in terms of scale, size and design.
Even so, the campus is unmistakably lavish. It's practical in the same way that the original Disney lot in Burbank was practical. The goal was to create comfortable, practical workspaces for artists.
But Walt Disney wasn't a billionaire when the original Disney buildings went up. The LDAC interiors are much grander than those early Disney buildings, with high ceilings, big windows and skylights coordinating with Arts & Crafts-flavored design touches. Lucas asked for attractive, inviting common spaces that would bring his employees together and encourage collaboration among the business units, some of whom are housed together for the first time.
The grounds, though, may be the LDAC's most spectacular feature.
The Presidio is a National Park, supervised by the independent Presidio Trust, which meant that Lucas couldn't make them private even if he wanted to. But Lucas asked for the greatest amount of public open space possible, so 17 of the site's 23 acres are parkland. EDITOR’S NOTE: OOOO….JOEL….LET’S GO VISIT MARGARET IN SAN DIEGO, THEN LA (ANDREA, ETC…DISNEYLAND, NATCH). THEN WE CAN VISIT MY FRIEND GREGG, AND GO TO LUCAS-LAND!!!!
Moreover, LucasFilm hired renowned landscape architect Larry Halperin to design the grounds.
Halperin's plan includes some 500 new trees and an artificial stream ending at a pond adorned with an English-style folly. With its backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Palace of Fine Arts and Alcatraz, there have already been inquiries about the site's availability for weddings.
There will be a restaurant and coffee shop, but of course the primary purpose of the LDAC is to be the new home of LucasFilm corporate, Industrial Light & Magic and LucasArts games. (Skywalker Sound will stay at Lucas' other architectural jewel, the Skywalker Ranch in Marin County.)
The campus comprises four buildings, all brand new, on the former Letterman Hospital site at the northeast corner of the Presidio. The architecture is intended to fit in with the low-rise wooden buildings and homes that pepper the former Army base, some dating back to the Civil War era.
Unlike the grounds, the interior offices and production facilities will be off limits to the general public; only LucasFilm employees will see some of the most impressive aspects of the new campus.
The entire edifice was built with sustainability and environmental friendliness in mind, so much so that the complex is in line to receive a Gold LEED certification (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) by the U.S. Green Building Council. EDITOR’S NOTE: SEE, DAD. UNCLE GEORGE LOVES EARTH, TOO. NOT JUST ALDERAAN (BOOM, BOB), AND CORUSCANT, AND CORELLIA. AND HE LOVES ALL OF EARTH…NOT JUST HIS CHOSEN DWEEBS.
Heating and cooling ducts run directly under the floor for maximum efficiency. Stairs aren't tucked away in dark corners; they're large and bright, with skylights to make them inviting. New Otis "G2" elevators save electricity. There is extensive bicycle parking and shuttle buses will run from the complex to downtown San Francisco.
Employees will enter the underground parking garage from the north edge of the Presidio, so they never actually drive into the National Park. Only guests will drive to the front entrance, where they'll pass a bronze statue of Yoda EDITOR’S NOTE: YOU CAN’T TELL FROM THE TYPE-FACE, BUT I AM JUMPING UP AND DOWN WITH PHOTO-OP GLEE!! and enter a lobby that feels more like a hotel than an office building. Besides that, only the statue of "King Kong" f/x wizard Willis O'Brien betrays the movie connection. What they won't see is signage. There's nothing to announce what company occupies the buildings. George Lucas is a shrewd and visionary businessman, but when it comes to his office, he's not inclined to advertise.
Real time
The campus' northernmost structure, Building A, includes a motion-capture stage and several common areas for employees. The building's best view, a panoramic vista of the Bay, belongs to the cafeteria. The building also includes a day-care center for 100-plus children and a fitness center.
On the technical side, the facility is also designed to move LucasFilm toward an entirely new production model. Visual effects and game artists traditionally worked in assembly-line fashion, finishing one part of the job and then handing the shot off to the next artist.
But while the LDAC was under construction, LucasFilm was building software tools to allow artists to collaborate in real time.
"Say we have artists looking at a computer-generated scene," explains Cliff Plumer, LucasFilm's chief technology officer. "We can have one artist moving lights around and another artist moving camera around, and everyone viewing that in real time. And those artists can be in different locations."
There are theaters scattered throughout the facility. The largest is the 300-seat Premiere theater near the front entrance, and there are smaller 75-seat theaters for viewing dailies and numerous 10- to 25-seat "viewing stations" around the campus.
Ripple effect
Though the larger theaters have both film and digital projectors, all the theaters are fed from a central data center that ensures that the images look identical, no matter where they're viewed around the campus.
The LDAC's lavish campus is a marked contrast to ILM's current home, a ramshackle collection of industrial buildings and trailers in an out-of-the-way area of suburban San Rafael near, well, nothing much.
LucasFilm's move to the heart of San Francisco is likely to have ripples across the entire Bay Area film scene. With Francis Ford Coppola and Saul Zaentz less active in recent years, filmmaking in the region has shifted toward digital, with LucasFilm, Pixar, PDI and a mid-sized special effects companies the Orphanage, Tippett Studios and Giant Killer Robots leading the way.
Until now, artists who preferred the urban lifestyle and a bicycle commute to work tended to gravitate to the Orphanage and GKR. Now ILM can offer the same lifestyle.
On the other hand, longtime ILM hands who've put down roots in the suburbs face a more daunting commute. Some may find it tempting to look for work at Tippett or Pixar, especially if Pixar ramps up production to two films a year, as some analysts expect. So over a few years, there's likely to be a significant reshuffling of talent among the area's companies.
ILM's prestige is its best insurance against a brain drain; artists still flock there, knowing they'll get to work on many of the industry's best projects.
But for those who are still wavering about their future as the company moves to the heart of San Francisco, Lucas has made his new digs an enticement all by itself.
Origin of species
Should George Lucas be blamed for Hollywood's shift toward 'bigger is better,' or did he pave the way for indie film as we know it?
By Stephen Galloway
It was a phenomenon unlike any other in recent film history, a global blockbuster whose success transcended Hollywood's wildest dreams: When "Star Wars" opened in U.S. theaters on May 25, 1977, its impact was unquestionable.
The movie's long-term effects, though, remain debatable."It was both good and bad," says Peter Biskind, author of "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood," a 1999 book about the cohort of filmmakers who took the industry by storm during the '70s. Biskind praises the artistry of "Star Wars" but is more critical of its economic consequences."It was bad in the sense that it drove a nail into the coffin of the 'new' Hollywood -- the last nail because there were already a lot of nails with (1975's) 'Jaws' and (1973's) 'The Exorcist' -- and cemented the coming hegemony of the blockbuster," he says. "After that, the studios lost interest in the films of the (Robert) Altmans and (Martin) Scorseses and just wanted to make blockbusters."
Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers agrees but qualifies his belief by noting that "Star Wars" writer-director George Lucas should bear no blame for the ensuing industry changes."The bad impact had nothing to do with Lucas," Travers says. "It is not like he decided he would change the way we looked at movies and that they would become events and tentpoles for the studios -- he only tried to do what he wanted to do. What was in his heart shows up in the first three 'Star Wars' movies very clearly, and his position in the art of motion pictures is as secure as Walt Disney's."
Biskind's and Travers' arguments have become conventional wisdom among Hollywood cognoscenti, but are they correct? Are they justified in laying responsibility for filmdom's economic shift toward the blockbuster at the feet of "Star Wars"?
Lucas says no, arguing that the corporate takeover of studios -- which preceded his film -- laid the groundwork for a revolution that would have come about regardless of "Star Wars." EDITOR’S NOTE: LOOK AT PRACTICALLY EVERY INDUSTRY IN THE COUNTRY TODAY. IT’S ALL BEEN CORPORATE’ICIZED AND CONSOLIDATED AND HOMOGENIZED. IT’S LUDICROUS TO IMPLY THAT UNCLE G MADE THIS HAPPEN. (IS CLEAR CHANNEL HIS FAULT TOO?)
"By the time I got to do my first movie, a lot of the studios had been sold to corporations, and that corporate mentality took over," Lucas says. "There was tons of middle management, people who had never made movies before, and all they knew was (that) they wanted to get the stock price up. It completely changed the way the business was run, and it was completely run as a corporation, obviously with only one intent: to make money."
Alan Ladd Jr., who greenlighted "Star Wars" as head of production at 20th Century Fox, backs Lucas, noting that every studio always has attempted to emulate blockbusters -- be they "Star Wars" or 1965's "The Sound of Music" -- and agreeing that Hollywood's mentality changed before Lucas, when corporations took over the studios."Everybody chased a certain model (under corporations) instead of going on their own instincts," Ladd says. "Prior to 'Star Wars,' there was 'Jaws' -- that might have become the model if 'Star Wars' hadn't come out."He acknowledges, though, that "Star Wars" became a model and that studios began to back much more expensive movies in the wake of its success, believing that such films stood a better chance of becoming "Star Wars"-like blockbusters, "even though 'Star Wars' didn't cost that much." EDITOR’S NOTE: AND LETS NOT FORGET THAT UNCLE GEORGE USED HIS BONANZA TO RE-INVEST IN TECHNOLOGY AND THE SCIENCE OF FILMMAKING. THE BIG CORPORATIONS THAT HE IS (UNFAIRLY)BEING ACCUSED OF SPAWNING ARE JUST GLUTTONS. AND LUCASFILM….WHICH IS BIG BUT INDEPENDENT….FUNNELS MASSIVE MONIES INTO R & D.
Critic and film historian Leonard Maltin recalls a sea change after "Star Wars.""'Star Wars' was one of the first films to make an enormous amount of money from repeat business," he says. "At the time, that concept was still fairly new because through the 1960s, theaters didn't charge (for repeat viewings). It made the studios think about what kind of films would inspire repeat admissions: I remember trade stories and headlines at the time about the quest for repeat-business movies. It was the success of 'Star Wars' and the lure of money that effected the change; it started studios thinking more about blockbusters and event movies."
Studio thinking is one thing, but what exhibitors think is quite another -- and here, the impact of "Star Wars" is even more debatable.
Lucas argues that the success of the initial "Star Wars" trilogy led to the expansion of movie theaters and screens that ultimately provided venues for the burgeoning independent-film movement of the late 1980s and early '90s.
"Before 'Star Wars,' you will find very, very few art films or independent films," he says. "After 'Star Wars,' they started building all these theaters, and you will find that now, 25% of films released are independent films or art films. Before 'Star Wars,' there was no American independent cinema; after 'Star Wars,' you now have this very big and healthy cinema, and the reason is because there were screens that could be booked."
But Biskind questions that notion, citing the decade-plus gap between "Star Wars" and the modern indie movement."The independent films started against Hollywood, not hand in hand with Hollywood," he says. "You often had an eight-plex showing eight Hollywood movies or the same blockbusters on four or five screens -- they weren't going begging or asking for product. The pipeline that was dying for product was video, and that's what helped launch independent movies: the hunger of the video companies." EDITOR’S NOTE: AND THE DELAYED RESPONSE OF THE OVER-BUILDING OF THE SCREENS. INITIALLY, THOSE SCREEN BUILDERS GOT INTO THE BIZ TO BE MASS MARKETERS. AND WHEN THE GLUT HIT, THEY DIVERSIFIED. SO IT DIDN’T HAPPEN IMMEDIATELY.
Published June 09, 2005
Unsung knights of galaxy
By THOMAS MCLEAN, Wed., Jun. 8, 2005
Just as Jedi masters have their padawan disciples, George Lucas recruited a small army of filmmaking rebels to help bring his space fantasy to the screen.
From the shaky early days of the franchise, when disaster seemed imminent through the astronomical expectations laid at the prequels' doorstep, Lucas has shown a knack for finding talented people he could rely upon to achieve the seemingly impossible.
John Barry: As the series' original production designer, Barry had the unenviable task of bringing Lucas' idea of a "used universe" to life without benefit of the digital manipulation available to the prequels. The solidity of the "Star Wars" universe is directly attributable to Barry's industrial-looking, comicbook-inspired work.
Leigh Brackett: Prolific sci-fi writer was tapped by Lucas to script his story for "The Empire Strikes Back." Shortly after completing a first draft, Brackett died of cancer and Lucas reportedly revised her screenplay significantly before bringing in Lawrence Kasdan to finish the project.
Ben Burtt: One of the few people to work on all chapters of the saga, Burtt created the distinct sounds of laser blasts, space battles and lightsabers. The innovative work helped sell moviegoers and exhibs on the value of upgrading the way movies sound.
Doug Chiang: When Lucas began planning the prequels, Chiang headed up the art department that not only extrapolated the look of "Star Wars' " past but was instrumental in helping Lucas write the script. The relative freedom of digital technology spurred intense design work and conceptualization of everything from belt buckles to entire species and planets.
Ryan Church, Eric Tiemens: After Chiang's marathon efforts on "Episode I," Church and Tiemens joined the team for "Episode II" under Chiang's direction and then led the conceptual art efforts for "Episode III." Church and Tiemens' work influenced the writing of the script and bridged the design gap from the classic look of "Episode I" to the grittier of the original trilogy.
Rob Coleman: The original trilogy had no animator, but the prequels were full of digital characters that had to be convincingly animated and interact with actors and visual effects. Coleman led the team that gave (regrettable)EDITORS’ NOTE: OH HUSH….. life to Jar Jar and took Yoda from Muppet to digital action hero.
John Dykstra: By creating the computer-controlled camera system that made the complex compositing that "Star Wars' " visual effects require, Dykstra was at the very center of the original film's f/x revolution. Though he helped found Industrial Light & Magic and won an Oscar, Dykstra left after the first film to form his own company and now heads up Sony Imageworks.
Nick Gillard: Though exciting, the lightsaber duels of the original trilogy were between untested apprentices, an old man and an evil cyborg. For the full-bloom Jedi of the prequels, the bar had to be raised and it was Gillard who invented the intense dueling style used by Darth Maul, Anakin Skywalker and Yoda.
Paul Hirsch, Richard Chew: The storytelling in "Star Wars" is very fast and a lot of it came out in the editing of the film. Lucas, an editor himself, brought in Hirsch and Chew to help the director's then-wife, Marcia, salvage a disastrous first cut of the pic. By the time they were done, the editing set the movie's thrilling pace and won an Oscar. Hirsch extended the style to "Empire."
Joe Johnston: Johnston began working on the trilogy as a storyboard artist and model builder on "Star Wars" before moving on to art directing the visual effects work on "Empire" and "Jedi." EDITOR’S NOTE: BUT STILL OWES US MONEY FOR JURASSIC PARK 3.
Lawrence Kasdan: Kasdan's work on "Raiders of the Lost Ark" won him the job of replacing Brackett as scribe on "Empire." Kasdan gave the original trilogy characters their focus and wrote many of the classic lines fans quote repeatedly. For "Jedi," Kasdan was one of many who felt killing Han Solo would give the film needed dramatic weight, but Lucas disagreed.
Irvin Kershner: Lucas' former mentor at USC slipped into the director's chair for "The Empire Strikes Back," steering the saga in a darker direction that resulted in the best-reviewed installment in the trilogy. Kershner kept California-based Lucas up to date on the shooting in Norway and London through tight storyboards.
John Knoll: By the time the prequels rolled around, the job of a visual f/x supervisor had changed radically. Knoll had to oversee thousands of effects shots for each of the prequel pics. Pulling off such massive sequences as the pod race, the Clone Wars and Anakin's final showdown with Obi-Wan while maintaining believability and quality in every shot is Knoll's big accomplishment.
Gary Kurtz: Kurtz started as Lucas' co-producer on "American Graffiti," placing him front and center during the years in which the "Star Wars" saga was being conceived. After producing the original film and "Empire" -- during which he temporarily took over second unit duties after the death of John Barry -- he split from Lucas, going on to produce "The Dark Crystal" and "Return to Oz." EDITOR’S NOTE: AND 20 YEARS LATER, HE STILL SOUNDS PISSY ABOUT THE BREAK-UP.
Alan Ladd Jr.: Fox exec was one of the first besides Lucas to see the potential in "Star Wars," and took considerable heat for placing so much faith in the director and his space fantasy. That gamble paid off huge for Fox, but even as studio profits soared -- in large part thanks to the saga -- the deal that gave sequel and merchandising rights to Lucas eventually cost Ladd his post. EDITOR’S NOTE: NO GOOD DEED……
Rick McCallum: McCallum joined Lucasfilm in the early 1990s for the "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" TV series. He went on to produce the 1997 special editions of the "Star Wars" trilogy before stepping up to produce the prequels. In addition to being Lucas' right-hand man, McCallum has been the public face of the prequel trilogy -- a post that's earned him plenty of heat. EDITOR’S NOTE: THAT, AND BEING A FOUL-MOUTHED CRETIN MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE FLACK.
Ralph McQuarrie: A former illustrator for large corporations such as Boeing, McQuarrie was brought on as a conceptual artist to give visual form to Lucas' ideas. His sketches and paintings helped Lucas sell Fox on making the space saga and many of his images and designs made it to the screen virtually unchanged.
John Mollo: Having written multiple illustrated books on military dress, Mollo was the perfect man to bring authenticity to the costumes for Lucas' imaginary war. Having advised on "Nicholas & Alexander" and "Barry Lyndon," "Star Wars" was Mollo's first costume design job. Returning for "Empire," he then bowed out and has since alternated between sci-fi films such as "Alien" and "Outland" and historical pics including "Gandhi" and A&E's "Horatio Hornblower" series.
Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston and Richard Edlund: This trio started on the original "Star Wars" and took over the effects work for the original trilogy after Dykstra's departure, pulling off an ever-growing number of complex effects shots for each film. Each has become a giant in the f/x biz: Muren helped bring ILM into the world of digital compositing and worked as a visual effects supervisor on "Episode I" and "Episode I" as well as this summer's Spielberg-directed "War of the Worlds"; Ralston has moved into the realm of CGI effects, supervising work on such innovative pics as "Forrest Gump," "The Mask" and "The Polar Express." Edlund has led the f/x work on everything from "Ghostbusters" to HBO's "Angels in America."
Artistic vision
Lucas moves his production, effects and game companies to the Presidio complex in San Francisco.
When George Lucas caught wind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move his enterprise to a unique location, he seized the moment. And next month, after years in the making, Lucas will move his formidable fleet of artists and technicians from their remote posts throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to a brave new world in cosmopolitan San Francisco.
Three Lucas units will be united in the move: the Industrial Light & Magic visual effects teams, LucasArts game designers and Lucasfilm's licensing, online and marketing groups.After years spent in the tattered and pseudonymous "Kerner Co." -- located in a down-heel corporate park in nearby San Rafael -- Industrial Light + Magic crews will find themselves overlooking the San Francisco Bay and the Palace of Fine Arts from their perch in a new corporate dining room.
The newly minted $350 million Letterman Digital Arts Center, named after a hospital once based there, is built on a 23-acre site that is home to the former Presidio army base.The location is subject to strict governmental oversight by the Presidio Land Trust, which falls under the purview of Secretary of Interior Gale Norton. So in addition to building a state-of-the-art, 850,000-square-foot center to house 2,500 workers, studio site planners also were tasked with minimizing car traffic, outfitting buildings with open windows to cut energy costs and planting about 500 new trees.
Lawrence Halprin, the landscape architect behind the FDR memorial in Washington, was tapped for the Letterman Center's landscaping.
The Letterman grounds and buildings are true to the history of the site, hearkening back to the base's utilitarian roots, though still offset by scenic views of the bay.Execs involved with the massive build of four state-of-the-art buildings liken the challenge of the experience to trying to run one of the world's most digitally sophisticated film studios in a national park.
The studio's codified exterior hardly alludes to the 21st century digital dazzle that pulses on the inside.An X-ray scan of the new Presidio site would reveal a kind of digital Hearst Castle, built from scratch on a blazing digital filmmaking backbone. Lucasfilm's own digital secretary of interior, the man tasked with envisioning the studio's digital infrastructure, is Cliff Plumer, chief technology officer of Lucasfilm Ltd.Devising a studio of the future, in the simplest terms, Plumer said, comes down to the network and the amount of available bandwidth. While most studios are struggling today to upgrade and refine their backbones to accommodate high-definition video (1.8K), the Lucasfilm crew has embraced a future that deals easily in 4K resolution data.
"It really comes down to our technological efficiency -- the network and storage systems we've designed," Plumer said. "Moving up to 4K for most studios compromises their production efficiency. We gave ourselves, in terms of our design, the flexibility to grow, taking into account where we think we're going to go." EDITOR’S NOTE: GET OUT THOSE OUIJA BOARDS, HUH?That future-proofing involves running a 10-gigabit backbone, with 1-gigabit pipes to 340 desktops, 24/7 throughout the studio and to Marin County-based ILM and Lucas Ranch.
To put that in perspective, Cisco shipped 1,700 10-gigabit routers worldwide last year, making Lucas' 340 the largest 10-gig network in the world.
Lucasfilm has bumped up its production capacity by a factor of 10, Plumer said. In the new facility, it’s running 10 gig with 1 gig to the desktop, for a total capacity of 100 terabytes of data across the network. Plumer said the studio will be at 60% capacity by move-in, which is scheduled from July-September.
Getting the network up and running has been a careful and steady process. Plumer has been running 10 gigs of material on more than 3 million feet of cable at high-data-rate capacity among Lucas, ILM and Presidio since February.
In fact, 20% of ILM's visual effects frames have been rendered at Presidio since the beginning of the year.When they move in, digital artists can expect to find 1080i data and displays on the desktop. The rooms and outlets are all hot-swappable to easily accommodate changes in productions.
"When we need to put together a certain editor, digital artist or (technical director), we can," Plumer said. "Staffing depends on the type of project, and it can be reconfigured to maximize the needs of the production."
Lucasfilm will situate its ILM artists in close proximity to the LucasArts gaming crews, which Plumer noted is a recognition of the confluence of digital media production now and even more in the future."It used to be really a second thought -- how we could provide some of the images or assets from a movie in production for reference on a game, or add content for a DVD," Plumer said. "More and more, especially in the case of Lucasfilm, those productions are happening in parallel -- even to the point where a director may shoot something on set for the game."Further blurring those lines and shrinking the gap in terms of quality are next-generation gaming consoles, he said."It's more of a workflow than a bandwidth issue," he said. "I think the blurring of gaming and visual effects production will lead to new ways of working and create new opportunities to rethink how we create assets and images which will have a multipurpose."Plumer laughed at the thought of upgrading the new facility to 6K resolution, then paused and said: "In this business you can never say never, but we feel comfortable that our new infrastructure will last a good decade." EDITOR’S NOTE: FAMOUS LAST WORDS?
Published June 09, 2005
Sky's limit in tech advances
By AUSTIN MODINE, Wed., Jun. 8, 2005
George Lucas' technological innovations go far beyond lightsaber-wielding cyborgs and star ships that can make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.
Michael Rubin, author of "Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution," explains how Lucas has pushed the entertainment biz toward new technology to enhance the movie experience.
Movie sound: After the original "Star Wars," Lucas expressed his dissatisfaction with the available technology.
"He had already pushed the limits of an archaic system in the first 'Star Wars,' " Rubin says. "When it came time to make 'Return of the Jedi,' you can almost feel the loathing of reopening that can of worms." In 1982, Lucas used money from the success of "Star Wars" to create what would become the THX sound system, a format that raised the bar for movie theater sound and is still used today.
Video editing: Limitations in editing prompted Lucas to establish a computer division in 1979 to explore new uses of the computer for digital imaging, electronic editing and interactivity. Industrial Light & Magic's EditDroid was one of the first few nonlinear systems, stemming from research that started in '79. This technology allowed editors to cut and recut a movie without the original film.
Rubin believes that while the EditDroid was not a financial success, it had an enormous influence on modern equipment. "The system was still analog, but it clearly demonstrated what it would look like editing on digital equipment," he says.
Image capture: Lucas has lead the industry's transition from celluloid to the digital format. "Attack of the Clones" became the first movie ever to be shot completely in digital, using Sony's HDW-F900 camcorder 4:2:2 technology. In "Revenge of the Sith," Lucas refined the process by using the more powerful HDC-F950 CineAlta camera and 4:4:4 RGB compression technology for a higher-definition picture.
"Each film pushed the envelope," Rubin says. "Lucas went from having a vision in 'Episode I' to finally being able to live out the vision in 'Episode III.' "
Special Effects: From innovative use of models to cutting-edge CGI, Lucas changed the way the industry creates effects. ILM, started in 1975 to do the special effects for "Star Wars," has developed industry standards ranging from motion-capture technology to animation software to texturing 3-D models.
Lucas also founded animation company Pixar, before selling it to Steve Jobs in 1986.
"Seminal isn't enough of a word to describe what was going on in that group," Rubin says. "'Star Wars' overshadows what Lucas has done for the industry. If it weren't for those movies, Lucas instead would be known as being one of the greatest innovators in film technology."
George Lucas' VFX crew became a legion of Jedi masters who went forth to show other filmmakers how to unleash the force of their imaginations.
By Anne Thompson
(The following Risky Business column was originally published on May 13)
CANNES --
When Steven Spielberg was deciding whether to make "War of the Worlds," he not only lined up Tom Cruise, but he called Industrial Light + Magic to check whether Dennis Muren, who first worked for him 20 years ago on "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," was available.
He was.
George Lucas, on the other hand, doesn't ever have to check Muren's availability.
That's because Muren works for him.
Lucas will be recognized Sunday here in Cannes, where he is to be feted with the Trophy of the 58th Festival de Cannes and treated to a career tribute film assembled by festival head Gilles Jacob. The day will culminate with the world premiere of "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," which then opens next week in most territories worldwide.There is sure to be much talk of Lucas' contributions to the cinema -- both good (his reinvention of mythic archetypes under the guise of sci-fi) and bad (his success led Hollywood to its current obsession with chasing blockbusters). But arguably, Lucas' most lasting contribution is the generation of visual effects masters, who redefined special effects in the process of solving the challenges Lucas set them.Call it the ILM Revolution.
If Lucas sometimes seems a bit of a Yoda, then his VFX crew became a legion of Jedi masters who went forth to show other filmmakers how to unleash the force of their imaginations.Muren, along with the other VFX wizards from ILM, combines computer science and software creation with aesthetic grace to show us things that no one has ever seen before. With each new movie, these pioneers reinvent the cinema before our eyes. For almost 30 years, ILM's FX masters have dominated the Oscar visual effects derby, racking up 14 wins.
And when their rivals grab Oscars, chances are good that their skills also were forged in the ILM crucible.Take this year's winner, John Dykstra of "Spider-Man 2." He started out at ILM in 1976, when it was created to make "Star Wars." In fact, without Dykstra, Ken Ralston ("Forrest Gump," "The Polar Express") and Richard Edlund ("Episodes IV," "V" and "VI," "Raiders of the Lost Ark"), the original "Star Wars" might never have been made.I
t was nip and tuck back then. Lucas literally didn't know how he was going to pull off "Star Wars" on time and on budget. Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" had taken five years to make, but Lucas set out to pull off 360 ambitious effects in fewer than two years.
It was Muren, Dykstra, Ralston and Edlund who figured out how to save valuable production time with their daring computer-synchronized, motion-control, blue-screen photography. They weren't sure it would work, but they had no choice. They pulled off the movie. And changed movie history. EDITOR’S NOTE: SO MAYBE SOME SLACK SHOULD BE CUT IF UNCLE GEORGE IS A BIT TECH-OBSESSED? HE’S BEEN THRU THE MILL. HE INVENTED THE DURN THING, ACTUALLY!
Since "Star Wars," they've gone on to realize the visions of the cinema's greatest filmmakers, from Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis to James Cameron and Wolfgang Petersen. ILM took E.T. across the moon on a bicycle; created the exploding Star Destroyer in "The Empire Strikes Back"; the saucer pulling up clouds at the end of "Cocoon"; the go-motion rig for "Dragonslayer" that took the blur out of stop-motion; the first photorealistic CG character, the knight in 1985's "Young Sherlock Holmes"; the first morphing old woman in "Willow"; and the CG water alien in 1989's "The Abyss."When Muren moved ILM into digital compositing, that made possible the back-to-back, mind-boggling effects in 1991's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," 1992's "Death Becomes Her" (the first movie to achieve realistic human skin) and the CG dinosaurs in 1993's "Jurassic Park."
Their pioneering effects on "Abyss," "Jurassic Park" and "Terminator 2" represented significant steps in the digital revolution -- and convinced Lucas that he could return to the Force and finally make "Episodes I," "II" and "III."
In the decades after the first "Star Wars," the wow factor has come to dominate Hollywood movies.
The top 20 blockbusters of all time are either visual effects spectaculars or CG animation. In the past decade, studio budgets for visual effects have skyrocketed from an average of $5 million to $50 million per film, and the percentage of movies that are dominated by effects has shot up as well.
"Movies of size and scope, marquee blockbusters, are sold by their trailers," says Scott Ross, chairman of Santa Monica effects house Digital Domain ("Titanic," "I, Robot"), who launched his career at ILM.
A single shot -- whether it's the 250-foot tower of water in "The Perfect Storm" or Kate and Leo on the bow of "Titanic" -- can sell a blockbuster."A-list visual effects guys are make or break for a big effects movie," says Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, who supervised Warner Bros. Pictures' "Perfect Storm." Hiring a visual effects supervisor is like casting a star, says Hutch Parker, head of TCF at 20th Century Fox. "Your choice of who to play the role is essential."
Under mounting pressure to deliver eye-popping visuals, studios and directors chase after the top FX stars. Sony relied on Sony Pictures Imageworks' Dykstra for the first two "Spider-Man" movies. Zemeckis collaborates exclusively with SPI's Ralston, who has won four Oscars for their films together. This year, the duo's drive to use new Imagemotion technology yielded the $175 million "Polar Express," which was slammed by some critics but still delivered enough wow to gross $281 million worldwide. For "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," director Brad Silberling leaned on ILM's Stefen Fangmeier, who trained for years with Muren.
Truth is, three worlds -- live action, CG and animation -- are now collapsing into one.
In live action, the old-school photographic techniques pioneered by ILM are swiftly being replaced by computer graphics. The younger generation is more comfortable with the digital virtual world. One gets the sense that such directors as Lucas, Peter Jackson, Kerry Conran and Robert Rodriguez would like nothing better than to replace the real (including actors) with elements that they can control completely. EDITOR'S NOTE: SIGH...I HOPE THAT ISN'T LITERALLY TRUE....
Such movies as "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," "Sin City" and "Constantine" are moving toward less on-location reality and more mind-numbing hordes of "smart" cyber-extras and stunt doubles. And such FX artists as Muren, Fangmeier, Dykstra and Ralston, using similar CG animation to what Pixar Animation Studios employs, are figuring out how to replace actors with living, breathing, talking digital humans. It's their Holy Grail. "You can't find anything harder," Ralston says. "We are absolutely familiar with every frigging subtlety in the human body. Millions of things are going on when we speak that we'll never be able to do." EDITOR’S NOTE: DON’T PANIC, THESPS. A FEW MOVIES WHERE THEY DON’T HAVE CHARACTERS ANYONE CARES ABOUT OR ALL DIGITAL STERILITY, THE BOX OFFICES REFLECT THIS, AND THE CIRCLE WILL COME BACK AROUND. THERE IS TOO MUCH PRODUCT AND TOO MANY COOKS FOR THE DISHES TO ALL BE JUST ONE THING. THE OPTIONS ARE INCREASING, NOT TELESCOPING.
Even the hotshots at SPI and ILM stand in awe of New Zealand's Oscar-winning Weta Digital, which created Gollum from "The Lord of the Rings." The question is, who will meet the Weta challenge? Will it be Jackson's remake of "King Kong," coming in December? Or will it be Cameron, who is ramping up his first film in six years, the 3-D, high-def, sci-fi adventure "Battle Angel"? Odds are good that when Cameron makes the call on who will make real his celluloid fantasies, it will be one of the ILM FX masters.
Anne Thompson can be reached at athompson@hollywoodreporter.com. Published June 09, 2005
The house that George built
By MICHAEL GOLDMAN, Wed., Jun. 8, 2005
Woody Omens distinctly remembers the first time he met George Lucas, but his memory is fuzzy on when and why the neophyte filmmaker first made an impression on him. All he knows for sure is that his awareness of Lucas' formidable skills preceded their initial meeting at USC film school in 1965, when Lucas showed up in Omens' classroom to inform the young adjunct instructor that he would be enrolling in his course, Filmic Expression.
Although Lucas would first earn fame two years hence by winning a National Student Film Festival award for the student version of his film "Electronic Labyrinth: THX1138 4EB," Omens somehow knew that Lucas was already very advanced.
"When you have a strong student, news travels fast," says Omens, now a retired professor emeritus at USC. "I remember telling him he didn't need the class. He told me he wanted to take it anyway, and use it like a gym to work out. Obviously, even back then, he was no ordinary student."
Lucas was merely one of a cadre of bright hopefuls at USC; his classmates included John Milius, Walter Murch and Caleb Deschanel, among others. But it was the Modesto, Calif., transplant who would become the leader of a group of high-profile alumni who have had a profound impact upon the fortunes of the USC School of Cinema-Television in recent years, according to the school's dean, Elizabeth Daley.
During their one semester together, Omens proudly recalls Lucas creating his second student film --"Herbie," a black-and-white, 16mm, experimental short set to the sounds of jazz pianist Herbie Hancock that synchronized music with flashing light shapes, reflected off an automobile.
"The exercise was meant to explore nonverbal use of imagery, and I have never seen a film that was as successful with the idea as that one," says Omens. "I even see a thread of continuity between 'Herbie' and the 'Star Wars' films. On 'Herbie,' he was exploring a visceral ballet of light, which is the same thing you see going on with the lightsaber battles. If you lifted those portions out of the ('Star Wars') films, you would have an avant-garde light show -- pure motion of light. Forty-some years after 'Herbie,' he's still playing with those themes."
Around the same time, Lucas cast classmate Randal Kleiser, who went on to become a director ("Grease," "The Blue Lagoon"), in his third student short, "Freiheit." Kleiser and Lucas quickly became friends, and Lucas rented Kleiser a room in his house.
"Back then, I figured he'd end up being an art director, because he's so visual," says Kleiser. "He didn't seem outgoing enough to be a director. But I do remember him finding ways around rules. We were really limited with resources, for example, and each student project had a limit to the amount of film stock students could use. But George met some Air Force guys that were sent to USC to learn cinematography, and they had tons of film available. George rounded them up, and said let's take your test stock and make a film out of it. That's how he made 'THX.' He was not a normal film student by any means." EDITOR’S NOTE: THE KING OF THE ODD DUCKS!!! (THIS IS WHY WE ADORE OUR UNCLE GEORGE, EH? HE REALLY IS ONE OF US)
Nor has Lucas been a normal alumnus. His relationship to USC and his history of giving millions of dollars, equipment, time, resources, advice and jobs to students and alumni are well documented (neither LucasFilm nor the university would provide specific dollar figures).
The school's George Lucas Building was dedicated in 1984; he serves on the film school's advisory board; he jointly funded with Steven Spielberg two, $2 million-dollar endowed faculty chairs, with the announcement of a third endowed chair funded by the duo expected later this year; and he was a key financial contributor to the Robert Zemeckis Center for the Digital Arts.
USC officials also point out that Lucas conceived of and cajoled to fruition the seminal fundraising campaign in the early '80s that led to the construction of a block of buildings that now comprise the film school, including the Lucas Building.
And in recent years he has helped USC get massive infusions of filmmaking technology from various manufacturers to make life easier for today's students.
In his day, Lucas recalls, students were scrounging for equipment all the time. His subsequent commitment to changing that paradigm is why Dean Daley uses such terms as "ideal alumnus," "leader," "role model" and "passionate advocate" when praising Lucas."This school would not be the same without George," she says. "George and a few others have created respect in the community not only for our school, but for film schools generally. After his generation came through here and went on to influence the industry, people started to see that film schools have significant value.
"Our school is 75 years old, but in those early days, attending film school did not get the respect it gets today. That is largely due to George -- he has provided that leadership. Our school is very much the house that George built."
(Michael Goldman is senior editor of Millimeter magazine.)
Design for working
By DAVID S. COHEN, Wed., Jun. 8, 2005
Anyone taking a good look at "Revenge of the Sith" can sense George Lucas' interest in architecture and design.
Not only is the movie filled with images of imaginative cityscapes, but even the furniture and light fixtures have a distinct sense of style.
The same is true of Lucas' biggest real-life architectural project yet: the Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco's Presidio.
Though decorated in a different style than anything in the "Star Wars" universe (the LDAC is Arts & Crafts, not Art Deco), the campus is as stunning, in its own restrained way, as anything in the films.
On a walk-through, a visitor is struck by how carefully the design takes advantage of the gorgeous setting, drawing attention to the gorgeous vistas and not to the buildings themselves, which are quite unassuming.
That's no accident. Lucas himself asked for buildings that would fit into the Presidio in terms of scale, size and design.
Even so, the campus is unmistakably lavish. It's practical in the same way that the original Disney lot in Burbank was practical. The goal was to create comfortable, practical workspaces for artists.
But Walt Disney wasn't a billionaire when the original Disney buildings went up. The LDAC interiors are much grander than those early Disney buildings, with high ceilings, big windows and skylights coordinating with Arts & Crafts-flavored design touches. Lucas asked for attractive, inviting common spaces that would bring his employees together and encourage collaboration among the business units, some of whom are housed together for the first time.
The grounds, though, may be the LDAC's most spectacular feature.
The Presidio is a National Park, supervised by the independent Presidio Trust, which meant that Lucas couldn't make them private even if he wanted to. But Lucas asked for the greatest amount of public open space possible, so 17 of the site's 23 acres are parkland. EDITOR’S NOTE: OOOO….JOEL….LET’S GO VISIT MARGARET IN SAN DIEGO, THEN LA (ANDREA, ETC…DISNEYLAND, NATCH). THEN WE CAN VISIT MY FRIEND GREGG, AND GO TO LUCAS-LAND!!!!
Moreover, LucasFilm hired renowned landscape architect Larry Halperin to design the grounds.
Halperin's plan includes some 500 new trees and an artificial stream ending at a pond adorned with an English-style folly. With its backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Palace of Fine Arts and Alcatraz, there have already been inquiries about the site's availability for weddings.
There will be a restaurant and coffee shop, but of course the primary purpose of the LDAC is to be the new home of LucasFilm corporate, Industrial Light & Magic and LucasArts games. (Skywalker Sound will stay at Lucas' other architectural jewel, the Skywalker Ranch in Marin County.)
The campus comprises four buildings, all brand new, on the former Letterman Hospital site at the northeast corner of the Presidio. The architecture is intended to fit in with the low-rise wooden buildings and homes that pepper the former Army base, some dating back to the Civil War era.
Unlike the grounds, the interior offices and production facilities will be off limits to the general public; only LucasFilm employees will see some of the most impressive aspects of the new campus.
The entire edifice was built with sustainability and environmental friendliness in mind, so much so that the complex is in line to receive a Gold LEED certification (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) by the U.S. Green Building Council. EDITOR’S NOTE: SEE, DAD. UNCLE GEORGE LOVES EARTH, TOO. NOT JUST ALDERAAN (BOOM, BOB), AND CORUSCANT, AND CORELLIA. AND HE LOVES ALL OF EARTH…NOT JUST HIS CHOSEN DWEEBS.
Heating and cooling ducts run directly under the floor for maximum efficiency. Stairs aren't tucked away in dark corners; they're large and bright, with skylights to make them inviting. New Otis "G2" elevators save electricity. There is extensive bicycle parking and shuttle buses will run from the complex to downtown San Francisco.
Employees will enter the underground parking garage from the north edge of the Presidio, so they never actually drive into the National Park. Only guests will drive to the front entrance, where they'll pass a bronze statue of Yoda EDITOR’S NOTE: YOU CAN’T TELL FROM THE TYPE-FACE, BUT I AM JUMPING UP AND DOWN WITH PHOTO-OP GLEE!! and enter a lobby that feels more like a hotel than an office building. Besides that, only the statue of "King Kong" f/x wizard Willis O'Brien betrays the movie connection. What they won't see is signage. There's nothing to announce what company occupies the buildings. George Lucas is a shrewd and visionary businessman, but when it comes to his office, he's not inclined to advertise.
Real time
The campus' northernmost structure, Building A, includes a motion-capture stage and several common areas for employees. The building's best view, a panoramic vista of the Bay, belongs to the cafeteria. The building also includes a day-care center for 100-plus children and a fitness center.
On the technical side, the facility is also designed to move LucasFilm toward an entirely new production model. Visual effects and game artists traditionally worked in assembly-line fashion, finishing one part of the job and then handing the shot off to the next artist.
But while the LDAC was under construction, LucasFilm was building software tools to allow artists to collaborate in real time.
"Say we have artists looking at a computer-generated scene," explains Cliff Plumer, LucasFilm's chief technology officer. "We can have one artist moving lights around and another artist moving camera around, and everyone viewing that in real time. And those artists can be in different locations."
There are theaters scattered throughout the facility. The largest is the 300-seat Premiere theater near the front entrance, and there are smaller 75-seat theaters for viewing dailies and numerous 10- to 25-seat "viewing stations" around the campus.
Ripple effect
Though the larger theaters have both film and digital projectors, all the theaters are fed from a central data center that ensures that the images look identical, no matter where they're viewed around the campus.
The LDAC's lavish campus is a marked contrast to ILM's current home, a ramshackle collection of industrial buildings and trailers in an out-of-the-way area of suburban San Rafael near, well, nothing much.
LucasFilm's move to the heart of San Francisco is likely to have ripples across the entire Bay Area film scene. With Francis Ford Coppola and Saul Zaentz less active in recent years, filmmaking in the region has shifted toward digital, with LucasFilm, Pixar, PDI and a mid-sized special effects companies the Orphanage, Tippett Studios and Giant Killer Robots leading the way.
Until now, artists who preferred the urban lifestyle and a bicycle commute to work tended to gravitate to the Orphanage and GKR. Now ILM can offer the same lifestyle.
On the other hand, longtime ILM hands who've put down roots in the suburbs face a more daunting commute. Some may find it tempting to look for work at Tippett or Pixar, especially if Pixar ramps up production to two films a year, as some analysts expect. So over a few years, there's likely to be a significant reshuffling of talent among the area's companies.
ILM's prestige is its best insurance against a brain drain; artists still flock there, knowing they'll get to work on many of the industry's best projects.
But for those who are still wavering about their future as the company moves to the heart of San Francisco, Lucas has made his new digs an enticement all by itself.
Origin of species
Should George Lucas be blamed for Hollywood's shift toward 'bigger is better,' or did he pave the way for indie film as we know it?
By Stephen Galloway
It was a phenomenon unlike any other in recent film history, a global blockbuster whose success transcended Hollywood's wildest dreams: When "Star Wars" opened in U.S. theaters on May 25, 1977, its impact was unquestionable.
The movie's long-term effects, though, remain debatable."It was both good and bad," says Peter Biskind, author of "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood," a 1999 book about the cohort of filmmakers who took the industry by storm during the '70s. Biskind praises the artistry of "Star Wars" but is more critical of its economic consequences."It was bad in the sense that it drove a nail into the coffin of the 'new' Hollywood -- the last nail because there were already a lot of nails with (1975's) 'Jaws' and (1973's) 'The Exorcist' -- and cemented the coming hegemony of the blockbuster," he says. "After that, the studios lost interest in the films of the (Robert) Altmans and (Martin) Scorseses and just wanted to make blockbusters."
Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers agrees but qualifies his belief by noting that "Star Wars" writer-director George Lucas should bear no blame for the ensuing industry changes."The bad impact had nothing to do with Lucas," Travers says. "It is not like he decided he would change the way we looked at movies and that they would become events and tentpoles for the studios -- he only tried to do what he wanted to do. What was in his heart shows up in the first three 'Star Wars' movies very clearly, and his position in the art of motion pictures is as secure as Walt Disney's."
Biskind's and Travers' arguments have become conventional wisdom among Hollywood cognoscenti, but are they correct? Are they justified in laying responsibility for filmdom's economic shift toward the blockbuster at the feet of "Star Wars"?
Lucas says no, arguing that the corporate takeover of studios -- which preceded his film -- laid the groundwork for a revolution that would have come about regardless of "Star Wars." EDITOR’S NOTE: LOOK AT PRACTICALLY EVERY INDUSTRY IN THE COUNTRY TODAY. IT’S ALL BEEN CORPORATE’ICIZED AND CONSOLIDATED AND HOMOGENIZED. IT’S LUDICROUS TO IMPLY THAT UNCLE G MADE THIS HAPPEN. (IS CLEAR CHANNEL HIS FAULT TOO?)
"By the time I got to do my first movie, a lot of the studios had been sold to corporations, and that corporate mentality took over," Lucas says. "There was tons of middle management, people who had never made movies before, and all they knew was (that) they wanted to get the stock price up. It completely changed the way the business was run, and it was completely run as a corporation, obviously with only one intent: to make money."
Alan Ladd Jr., who greenlighted "Star Wars" as head of production at 20th Century Fox, backs Lucas, noting that every studio always has attempted to emulate blockbusters -- be they "Star Wars" or 1965's "The Sound of Music" -- and agreeing that Hollywood's mentality changed before Lucas, when corporations took over the studios."Everybody chased a certain model (under corporations) instead of going on their own instincts," Ladd says. "Prior to 'Star Wars,' there was 'Jaws' -- that might have become the model if 'Star Wars' hadn't come out."He acknowledges, though, that "Star Wars" became a model and that studios began to back much more expensive movies in the wake of its success, believing that such films stood a better chance of becoming "Star Wars"-like blockbusters, "even though 'Star Wars' didn't cost that much." EDITOR’S NOTE: AND LETS NOT FORGET THAT UNCLE GEORGE USED HIS BONANZA TO RE-INVEST IN TECHNOLOGY AND THE SCIENCE OF FILMMAKING. THE BIG CORPORATIONS THAT HE IS (UNFAIRLY)BEING ACCUSED OF SPAWNING ARE JUST GLUTTONS. AND LUCASFILM….WHICH IS BIG BUT INDEPENDENT….FUNNELS MASSIVE MONIES INTO R & D.
Critic and film historian Leonard Maltin recalls a sea change after "Star Wars.""'Star Wars' was one of the first films to make an enormous amount of money from repeat business," he says. "At the time, that concept was still fairly new because through the 1960s, theaters didn't charge (for repeat viewings). It made the studios think about what kind of films would inspire repeat admissions: I remember trade stories and headlines at the time about the quest for repeat-business movies. It was the success of 'Star Wars' and the lure of money that effected the change; it started studios thinking more about blockbusters and event movies."
Studio thinking is one thing, but what exhibitors think is quite another -- and here, the impact of "Star Wars" is even more debatable.
Lucas argues that the success of the initial "Star Wars" trilogy led to the expansion of movie theaters and screens that ultimately provided venues for the burgeoning independent-film movement of the late 1980s and early '90s.
"Before 'Star Wars,' you will find very, very few art films or independent films," he says. "After 'Star Wars,' they started building all these theaters, and you will find that now, 25% of films released are independent films or art films. Before 'Star Wars,' there was no American independent cinema; after 'Star Wars,' you now have this very big and healthy cinema, and the reason is because there were screens that could be booked."
But Biskind questions that notion, citing the decade-plus gap between "Star Wars" and the modern indie movement."The independent films started against Hollywood, not hand in hand with Hollywood," he says. "You often had an eight-plex showing eight Hollywood movies or the same blockbusters on four or five screens -- they weren't going begging or asking for product. The pipeline that was dying for product was video, and that's what helped launch independent movies: the hunger of the video companies." EDITOR’S NOTE: AND THE DELAYED RESPONSE OF THE OVER-BUILDING OF THE SCREENS. INITIALLY, THOSE SCREEN BUILDERS GOT INTO THE BIZ TO BE MASS MARKETERS. AND WHEN THE GLUT HIT, THEY DIVERSIFIED. SO IT DIDN’T HAPPEN IMMEDIATELY.
Published June 09, 2005
Unsung knights of galaxy
By THOMAS MCLEAN, Wed., Jun. 8, 2005
Just as Jedi masters have their padawan disciples, George Lucas recruited a small army of filmmaking rebels to help bring his space fantasy to the screen.
From the shaky early days of the franchise, when disaster seemed imminent through the astronomical expectations laid at the prequels' doorstep, Lucas has shown a knack for finding talented people he could rely upon to achieve the seemingly impossible.
John Barry: As the series' original production designer, Barry had the unenviable task of bringing Lucas' idea of a "used universe" to life without benefit of the digital manipulation available to the prequels. The solidity of the "Star Wars" universe is directly attributable to Barry's industrial-looking, comicbook-inspired work.
Leigh Brackett: Prolific sci-fi writer was tapped by Lucas to script his story for "The Empire Strikes Back." Shortly after completing a first draft, Brackett died of cancer and Lucas reportedly revised her screenplay significantly before bringing in Lawrence Kasdan to finish the project.
Ben Burtt: One of the few people to work on all chapters of the saga, Burtt created the distinct sounds of laser blasts, space battles and lightsabers. The innovative work helped sell moviegoers and exhibs on the value of upgrading the way movies sound.
Doug Chiang: When Lucas began planning the prequels, Chiang headed up the art department that not only extrapolated the look of "Star Wars' " past but was instrumental in helping Lucas write the script. The relative freedom of digital technology spurred intense design work and conceptualization of everything from belt buckles to entire species and planets.
Ryan Church, Eric Tiemens: After Chiang's marathon efforts on "Episode I," Church and Tiemens joined the team for "Episode II" under Chiang's direction and then led the conceptual art efforts for "Episode III." Church and Tiemens' work influenced the writing of the script and bridged the design gap from the classic look of "Episode I" to the grittier of the original trilogy.
Rob Coleman: The original trilogy had no animator, but the prequels were full of digital characters that had to be convincingly animated and interact with actors and visual effects. Coleman led the team that gave (regrettable)EDITORS’ NOTE: OH HUSH….. life to Jar Jar and took Yoda from Muppet to digital action hero.
John Dykstra: By creating the computer-controlled camera system that made the complex compositing that "Star Wars' " visual effects require, Dykstra was at the very center of the original film's f/x revolution. Though he helped found Industrial Light & Magic and won an Oscar, Dykstra left after the first film to form his own company and now heads up Sony Imageworks.
Nick Gillard: Though exciting, the lightsaber duels of the original trilogy were between untested apprentices, an old man and an evil cyborg. For the full-bloom Jedi of the prequels, the bar had to be raised and it was Gillard who invented the intense dueling style used by Darth Maul, Anakin Skywalker and Yoda.
Paul Hirsch, Richard Chew: The storytelling in "Star Wars" is very fast and a lot of it came out in the editing of the film. Lucas, an editor himself, brought in Hirsch and Chew to help the director's then-wife, Marcia, salvage a disastrous first cut of the pic. By the time they were done, the editing set the movie's thrilling pace and won an Oscar. Hirsch extended the style to "Empire."
Joe Johnston: Johnston began working on the trilogy as a storyboard artist and model builder on "Star Wars" before moving on to art directing the visual effects work on "Empire" and "Jedi." EDITOR’S NOTE: BUT STILL OWES US MONEY FOR JURASSIC PARK 3.
Lawrence Kasdan: Kasdan's work on "Raiders of the Lost Ark" won him the job of replacing Brackett as scribe on "Empire." Kasdan gave the original trilogy characters their focus and wrote many of the classic lines fans quote repeatedly. For "Jedi," Kasdan was one of many who felt killing Han Solo would give the film needed dramatic weight, but Lucas disagreed.
Irvin Kershner: Lucas' former mentor at USC slipped into the director's chair for "The Empire Strikes Back," steering the saga in a darker direction that resulted in the best-reviewed installment in the trilogy. Kershner kept California-based Lucas up to date on the shooting in Norway and London through tight storyboards.
John Knoll: By the time the prequels rolled around, the job of a visual f/x supervisor had changed radically. Knoll had to oversee thousands of effects shots for each of the prequel pics. Pulling off such massive sequences as the pod race, the Clone Wars and Anakin's final showdown with Obi-Wan while maintaining believability and quality in every shot is Knoll's big accomplishment.
Gary Kurtz: Kurtz started as Lucas' co-producer on "American Graffiti," placing him front and center during the years in which the "Star Wars" saga was being conceived. After producing the original film and "Empire" -- during which he temporarily took over second unit duties after the death of John Barry -- he split from Lucas, going on to produce "The Dark Crystal" and "Return to Oz." EDITOR’S NOTE: AND 20 YEARS LATER, HE STILL SOUNDS PISSY ABOUT THE BREAK-UP.
Alan Ladd Jr.: Fox exec was one of the first besides Lucas to see the potential in "Star Wars," and took considerable heat for placing so much faith in the director and his space fantasy. That gamble paid off huge for Fox, but even as studio profits soared -- in large part thanks to the saga -- the deal that gave sequel and merchandising rights to Lucas eventually cost Ladd his post. EDITOR’S NOTE: NO GOOD DEED……
Rick McCallum: McCallum joined Lucasfilm in the early 1990s for the "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" TV series. He went on to produce the 1997 special editions of the "Star Wars" trilogy before stepping up to produce the prequels. In addition to being Lucas' right-hand man, McCallum has been the public face of the prequel trilogy -- a post that's earned him plenty of heat. EDITOR’S NOTE: THAT, AND BEING A FOUL-MOUTHED CRETIN MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE FLACK.
Ralph McQuarrie: A former illustrator for large corporations such as Boeing, McQuarrie was brought on as a conceptual artist to give visual form to Lucas' ideas. His sketches and paintings helped Lucas sell Fox on making the space saga and many of his images and designs made it to the screen virtually unchanged.
John Mollo: Having written multiple illustrated books on military dress, Mollo was the perfect man to bring authenticity to the costumes for Lucas' imaginary war. Having advised on "Nicholas & Alexander" and "Barry Lyndon," "Star Wars" was Mollo's first costume design job. Returning for "Empire," he then bowed out and has since alternated between sci-fi films such as "Alien" and "Outland" and historical pics including "Gandhi" and A&E's "Horatio Hornblower" series.
Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston and Richard Edlund: This trio started on the original "Star Wars" and took over the effects work for the original trilogy after Dykstra's departure, pulling off an ever-growing number of complex effects shots for each film. Each has become a giant in the f/x biz: Muren helped bring ILM into the world of digital compositing and worked as a visual effects supervisor on "Episode I" and "Episode I" as well as this summer's Spielberg-directed "War of the Worlds"; Ralston has moved into the realm of CGI effects, supervising work on such innovative pics as "Forrest Gump," "The Mask" and "The Polar Express." Edlund has led the f/x work on everything from "Ghostbusters" to HBO's "Angels in America."
Artistic vision
Lucas moves his production, effects and game companies to the Presidio complex in San Francisco.
When George Lucas caught wind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move his enterprise to a unique location, he seized the moment. And next month, after years in the making, Lucas will move his formidable fleet of artists and technicians from their remote posts throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to a brave new world in cosmopolitan San Francisco.
Three Lucas units will be united in the move: the Industrial Light & Magic visual effects teams, LucasArts game designers and Lucasfilm's licensing, online and marketing groups.After years spent in the tattered and pseudonymous "Kerner Co." -- located in a down-heel corporate park in nearby San Rafael -- Industrial Light + Magic crews will find themselves overlooking the San Francisco Bay and the Palace of Fine Arts from their perch in a new corporate dining room.
The newly minted $350 million Letterman Digital Arts Center, named after a hospital once based there, is built on a 23-acre site that is home to the former Presidio army base.The location is subject to strict governmental oversight by the Presidio Land Trust, which falls under the purview of Secretary of Interior Gale Norton. So in addition to building a state-of-the-art, 850,000-square-foot center to house 2,500 workers, studio site planners also were tasked with minimizing car traffic, outfitting buildings with open windows to cut energy costs and planting about 500 new trees.
Lawrence Halprin, the landscape architect behind the FDR memorial in Washington, was tapped for the Letterman Center's landscaping.
The Letterman grounds and buildings are true to the history of the site, hearkening back to the base's utilitarian roots, though still offset by scenic views of the bay.Execs involved with the massive build of four state-of-the-art buildings liken the challenge of the experience to trying to run one of the world's most digitally sophisticated film studios in a national park.
The studio's codified exterior hardly alludes to the 21st century digital dazzle that pulses on the inside.An X-ray scan of the new Presidio site would reveal a kind of digital Hearst Castle, built from scratch on a blazing digital filmmaking backbone. Lucasfilm's own digital secretary of interior, the man tasked with envisioning the studio's digital infrastructure, is Cliff Plumer, chief technology officer of Lucasfilm Ltd.Devising a studio of the future, in the simplest terms, Plumer said, comes down to the network and the amount of available bandwidth. While most studios are struggling today to upgrade and refine their backbones to accommodate high-definition video (1.8K), the Lucasfilm crew has embraced a future that deals easily in 4K resolution data.
"It really comes down to our technological efficiency -- the network and storage systems we've designed," Plumer said. "Moving up to 4K for most studios compromises their production efficiency. We gave ourselves, in terms of our design, the flexibility to grow, taking into account where we think we're going to go." EDITOR’S NOTE: GET OUT THOSE OUIJA BOARDS, HUH?That future-proofing involves running a 10-gigabit backbone, with 1-gigabit pipes to 340 desktops, 24/7 throughout the studio and to Marin County-based ILM and Lucas Ranch.
To put that in perspective, Cisco shipped 1,700 10-gigabit routers worldwide last year, making Lucas' 340 the largest 10-gig network in the world.
Lucasfilm has bumped up its production capacity by a factor of 10, Plumer said. In the new facility, it’s running 10 gig with 1 gig to the desktop, for a total capacity of 100 terabytes of data across the network. Plumer said the studio will be at 60% capacity by move-in, which is scheduled from July-September.
Getting the network up and running has been a careful and steady process. Plumer has been running 10 gigs of material on more than 3 million feet of cable at high-data-rate capacity among Lucas, ILM and Presidio since February.
In fact, 20% of ILM's visual effects frames have been rendered at Presidio since the beginning of the year.When they move in, digital artists can expect to find 1080i data and displays on the desktop. The rooms and outlets are all hot-swappable to easily accommodate changes in productions.
"When we need to put together a certain editor, digital artist or (technical director), we can," Plumer said. "Staffing depends on the type of project, and it can be reconfigured to maximize the needs of the production."
Lucasfilm will situate its ILM artists in close proximity to the LucasArts gaming crews, which Plumer noted is a recognition of the confluence of digital media production now and even more in the future."It used to be really a second thought -- how we could provide some of the images or assets from a movie in production for reference on a game, or add content for a DVD," Plumer said. "More and more, especially in the case of Lucasfilm, those productions are happening in parallel -- even to the point where a director may shoot something on set for the game."Further blurring those lines and shrinking the gap in terms of quality are next-generation gaming consoles, he said."It's more of a workflow than a bandwidth issue," he said. "I think the blurring of gaming and visual effects production will lead to new ways of working and create new opportunities to rethink how we create assets and images which will have a multipurpose."Plumer laughed at the thought of upgrading the new facility to 6K resolution, then paused and said: "In this business you can never say never, but we feel comfortable that our new infrastructure will last a good decade." EDITOR’S NOTE: FAMOUS LAST WORDS?
Published June 09, 2005
Sky's limit in tech advances
By AUSTIN MODINE, Wed., Jun. 8, 2005
George Lucas' technological innovations go far beyond lightsaber-wielding cyborgs and star ships that can make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.
Michael Rubin, author of "Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution," explains how Lucas has pushed the entertainment biz toward new technology to enhance the movie experience.
Movie sound: After the original "Star Wars," Lucas expressed his dissatisfaction with the available technology.
"He had already pushed the limits of an archaic system in the first 'Star Wars,' " Rubin says. "When it came time to make 'Return of the Jedi,' you can almost feel the loathing of reopening that can of worms." In 1982, Lucas used money from the success of "Star Wars" to create what would become the THX sound system, a format that raised the bar for movie theater sound and is still used today.
Video editing: Limitations in editing prompted Lucas to establish a computer division in 1979 to explore new uses of the computer for digital imaging, electronic editing and interactivity. Industrial Light & Magic's EditDroid was one of the first few nonlinear systems, stemming from research that started in '79. This technology allowed editors to cut and recut a movie without the original film.
Rubin believes that while the EditDroid was not a financial success, it had an enormous influence on modern equipment. "The system was still analog, but it clearly demonstrated what it would look like editing on digital equipment," he says.
Image capture: Lucas has lead the industry's transition from celluloid to the digital format. "Attack of the Clones" became the first movie ever to be shot completely in digital, using Sony's HDW-F900 camcorder 4:2:2 technology. In "Revenge of the Sith," Lucas refined the process by using the more powerful HDC-F950 CineAlta camera and 4:4:4 RGB compression technology for a higher-definition picture.
"Each film pushed the envelope," Rubin says. "Lucas went from having a vision in 'Episode I' to finally being able to live out the vision in 'Episode III.' "
Special Effects: From innovative use of models to cutting-edge CGI, Lucas changed the way the industry creates effects. ILM, started in 1975 to do the special effects for "Star Wars," has developed industry standards ranging from motion-capture technology to animation software to texturing 3-D models.
Lucas also founded animation company Pixar, before selling it to Steve Jobs in 1986.
"Seminal isn't enough of a word to describe what was going on in that group," Rubin says. "'Star Wars' overshadows what Lucas has done for the industry. If it weren't for those movies, Lucas instead would be known as being one of the greatest innovators in film technology."
posted by QOTD (the Queen of the Dweebs) at 9:30 AM
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