02x01 - Are We Ready for This?

[bunniefuu]

RON HOWARD: Industrial Light & Magic
is such a remarkable name for a company

and a place that's going to make these
visual effects, because it says it all.

I never wanted to
leave that place,

because they understood how to make magic
and how to have fun at the same time.

[LAUGHTER]

What is possible
now in film and TV

is in large part because
of risks George Lucas took

and ideas he had that may have
existed elsewhere in other times,

but he was the one who
actually put them into effect.

[WHOOSHING]

The company was founded on
this idea of using technology

to let us do things that had
never been done before...

to create striking
and memorable imagery.

We were the only visual effects house
in the world for six or seven years.

J.J. ABRAMS: There really weren't
visual effects until then.

There were optical effects, and
there were sort of practical effects.

When I saw Star Wars...

- [LASERFIRE]
- [expl*si*n]

Yee-hoo!

...it took everything to another
level on such a massive scale.

GEORGE LUCAS: They said, "Oh,
well, it's just for space movies."

I said, "No, it's not.
It's for any movie."

[INDISTINCT CHANTING]

HOWARD: The vibe at ILM,

it's this sort of intersection of
loosey-goosey intellectualism...

[SHOUTS]

Mind the step, sir.

...and a kind of
enough angsty need

that created a certain kind
of energy of innovation.

ILM was the place.

I mean, there was just
no discussion about it.

They were kind of rebels.

They were outliers.

[SHOUTS]

They were geniuses.

I was so in awe of them, I
thought I could never afford them

and they wouldn't work with a
little pissant filmmaker like me.

I had a kind of religious
experience with ILM.

I suddenly saw that everything
was going to change.

[ROARING]

It was going to change
everything for all of us...

[ENGINES BUZZING]

...and for audiences everywhere.

And we were never
going to go back.

[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

KNOLL: For years, there were
a number of company meetings

where George would
address the whole company.

Actually, in this very room.

And inevitably,
somebody would ask,

"Hey, are you going to do
more Star Wars movies?"

And his answer was always,
"Oh, I'm thinking about it,

"but, you know, I don't have
anything to announce yet."

A lot of the people who
had been here a long time

were very desirous of working
on more Star Wars movies.

And frankly, most of the people
that had come through the door since

had grown up on those movies.

And the idea of getting to work
with George on a Star Wars movie

was kind of what they lived for.

I remember very well the day we
were called into C Screening Room.

And we were given the impression

that this was a meeting that
we did not want to miss.

And George was there.

- On or off?
- It's on.

All of us were in the same
space at the same time

and heard him say that he wanted
to make more Star Wars movies.

And to hear him say that
was incredibly exciting.

And almost a little frightening.

[CHILDREN LAUGHING]

Come on.

GEORGE: The prequels, I
hadn't written them yet.

But I couldn't write them
unless I knew what I could do.

That's the one thing
about Star Wars,

is I always wrote for the
technology I had available to me.

Episodes IV, V, and VI
were using old technology.

And the analog technology wouldn't
allow us to do so many things.

We pushed that as far as we
possibly could here at ILM.

But I knew the other stuff I wanted
to do was much more complicated.

George Lucas was always
forward-thinking.

He was always mentioning
how he wasn't satisfied

with one bit of technology or another
and how he wanted to see it change.

[CLANGING]

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

And if I were to go on
and do the next three,

that I needed digital
technology for.

[BEEPING]

GEORGE: I knew the
digital technology

was going to be ultimately the
most important thing in movies.

And we spent over ten years

and lots of money to
develop digital technology,

'cause it didn't exist.

He'd look at things and go,

"There must be a way we can use
computers to do editorial better,

"there must be a way we can use
computers to do audio better,

"and we must be able to use
them to do visual effects

"in a way that's
cleaner and better

"and more versatile than we
can, you know, do on the stage

"and with traditional
techniques."

You start drawing dotted lines

back to everything that came
out of innovations that he made.

You know, everybody
knows about Pixar,

but there's, like,
EditDroid and Pro Tools.

We had somebody who was in charge
of creating digital sounds.

We started building these
digital editing systems.

I remember the EditDroid
that George created.

It's the first computer
editing system.

PAUL: It was like a séance.

You had this table with a
screen and no film or anything,

and all of a sudden, the
image would appear, you know?

It was sort of magical.

Change is always very difficult.

So we started the
Computer Division.

ED: Initially, we did not have
nearly enough compute power

to make images that
were good enough.

But as we got closer...

[GLASS SHATTERING]

...we began to produce something
that did have an impact.

[ROARING]

When I saw that, I felt
like I had seen the future.

It was a great time being here

as the digital side of
the world was growing up.

The digital work was coming
in and allowing us to do stuff

that was impossible before, or
very difficult to do before.

Everybody at the company knew George was
moving towards making these prequels.

He talked about it so much,

and he was exploring digital
technology while he was doing that

and trying new things out.

I was ready for CG as
soon as we could do it.

When George put the department in here,
I thought this has got to be the future.

And the momentum in that
direction became very strong.

[BELLOWING]

JAMES: You think about the impact
Jurassic Park had on people.

They couldn't fathom how what
they were seeing was done.

[GASPS]

It's... It's a dinosaur.

Especially in the
wake of Jurassic Park.

Um, all of the other approaches
started to be looked upon

with more of a jaundiced eye.

Like, well, yeah,
optical is okay,

but wouldn't the shots look
better if we did them in digital?

At that point I'd say to clients, "Well,
yeah, but it's going to cost more."

"Yeah, it'll be better, right?"

And you'd go,
"Well, I don't know.

"I think we can do a pretty
good job with these techniques."

But digital effects took on a momentum
that you really just couldn't stop.

DENNIS: I was surprised that the
digital revolution hit so quickly.

And this is like three or six
months after Jurassic came out.

I had many colleagues,

people who had been great contributors
to the company for a long time,

that were, you know, on the
cusp of being out of work.

LORNE: That just traveled
like a ripple through ILM.

You know, I just wasn't
cut out for CG at all.

There was so much difference between
me manipulating things with my hands.

I was always kind
of a materials guy.

JIM: I wouldn't say that the model
shop and the stage folks and so forth

had animosity or anything
towards the digital people.

They kind of saw what
it was and respected it.

I think, though, they couldn't
help but see their world shrinking

as that was happening.

So, you know, it was a
wistful time at best, I'd say.

KIM BROMLEY: But then all
of a sudden, it was upon us.

And you could feel it coming

because of the hiring wave that
was happening in computer graphics.

The Jurassic Park crew, who had
pulled off this amazing feat

and changed the
history of filmmaking,

were then almost lock, stock
and barrel the entire crew,

plus new people,
went on to Casper.

[DOOR CREAKING]

- Morning.
- [GASPS]

Oh, no, no. Please don't scream.
I promise I won't hurt you.

To my knowledge, I don't think
there'd been a key character

that was fully animated that ran
throughout a film until that time.

And it was bedeviling.

How would you do that? I mean,
how would you film it on the set?

How would you coordinate
it in the editing process

so you could ultimately
put an animated character

where a surrogate was
acting the part out?

Let's start with real for her.

I was the lead
supervisor to begin with.

And after a while, Dennis
came on board, too, to help,

because it was a monster of
a show to try and deal with.

DENNIS: There were like
two or three hundred shots,

and they were all
performance-based, you know?

And you had to be able
to read his expressions,

and then the other characters
would go around him.

So it was more like making an
animated film, a Disney film.

And that's something
that ILM hadn't done.

And we had a number of animators in there
that really couldn't quite pull it off.

George could certainly see that
the technology was pretty close

to being able to do the types of
things he was imagining for Episode I.

And we had a number
of people that came in

to the computer graphics
department and so forth

that were able to
help move that along

and kind of help
realize George's dream

of wanting to be able
to do digital effects.

- JOE: Welcome.
- Hi, Joe.

The computer graphics
department at ILM...

I started in October of '93,

was about 45 people.

And I think I was animator
number nine they hired.

There were six
animators on Jurassic.

So it was still early days.

Um, but... it was
beyond intimidating.

The legends were there.

Ken Ralston was there,
and Dennis was there.

There were people that I knew their names
and they were in the hallway, and I...

I had the worst case of impostor
syndrome for about six months.

How had I fluked
myself into this place?

JIM: Rob Coleman, in particular,
is a real interesting guy,

because he came in as a
very talented animator,

but his leadership
skills just stood out

and he could run a crew
with great efficiency,

and with great empathy and
get great work out of people.

And it really was
important on Casper.

We had to hire a bunch
of traditional animators

because there weren't enough CG
animators in the world at that point.

And Rob really trained them up to be
able to do the work in those shows.

ROB: If it's a
digital character,

I'm putting all the
effort into making sure

it's a living, breathing,
emoting character.

So the first huge breakthrough
for me was Dragonheart.

Dragonheart was a very challenging
show for ILM to do at the time.

The technological advance on that film
which was also groundbreaking for us

was a piece of software called
Caricature, which we shortened to Cari.

And what that allowed us to do
was to have a high-resolution face

that was really interactive.

We could dial in facial shapes.

Sliders that allowed us to put in,
you know, a smile, or a grimace,

or a blink, or a cheek
puff or whatever.

So I could see it, and then
look, "I'm going to tweak that."

See it again, tweak that,
tweak that, tweak that,

make it better,
better, better, better.

So that was a huge leap for us.

Even then, I knew his
bloodthirsty nature.

But I thought my heart
could change him.

You want to lean into the
voice actor's performance,

because that will help
the audience believe that

that voice is coming out
of that animated character.

So for example, on Dragonheart,
I had Sean Connery.

And with a character
like Sean Connery,

you've also got the legacy of all
the films that they've done before.

[SCREAMING]

[g*n FIRING]

So in Dr. No, there's a
famous sequence in there...

You coming out?

ROB: He's been told that
there's this dragon.

I tell you, Mr. Bond, let's
get the hell out of here.

Listen, both of you.

And he says, "There's no
such thing as dragons."

There are no such
things as dragons.

So we just took that line

and we animated that as our
proof of concept for Draco,

because I've got Connery
talking about dragons.

But what's fabulous
about his face,

and I can't do it,

he will talk out of one side of his mouth
and he'll move it to the other side.

So it'll be like,
"Oh, yes, Moneypenny."

It goes kind of across.

So we put that into Draco.

And the director was
like, "Fantastic!"

We dragons love to
sing when we're happy.

Well, you're not
like a dragon at all.

Well, how many dragons
do you know? Hmm?

I found out later on...

that George was watching from
his house in San Anselmo.

They were showing him, of
course, what ILM was doing.

And when he saw Dragonheart,
he then said to Jim Morris,

"ILM is ready to do
The Phantom Menace.

"They've now shown me they
can do digital characters.

"We're ready to go."

This is about 5.8
million of CG resources.

JIM: He could see that
the technology was there

to do a lot of what
he wanted to do.

So my conversations with
George were more about

how inexpensively can you do all
the things they want to do now.

And, you know, George has always
been very mindful of the budget.

Obviously, he's paying
for these films himself,

so there was a big financial
issue to solve there.

The reason that we
made so much money

was because the films were so
cheap, so inexpensive. [CHUCKLES]

And that was the secret
to the whole thing.

JOE: Well, plus you
had Rick McCallum.

- Yeah.
- [JOE CHUCKLES]

Well, he was the enforcer.

My name is Rick McCallum. I'm
the producer of Star Wars.

We can talk about this
new little project.

Rick McCallum was George
Lucas' right hand.

And he had a
reputation for being

the almost literal


That takes about a third
or half of the doors out.

Half.

Rick is a fascinating character.

- You're talking about till next Thursday?
- Yep.

At the moment, that's what
the forecast is saying.

[BLEEP] sh*t.

I've had Rick do some very,
very generous things to me.

And then there's also been
budget meetings and stuff.

When I left his office, I thought I
might bleed out on the way to my car.

RICK: If we pay somebody $1,000
a week, that's our total cost.

If we do it through
you, it costs $2,000.

That's just what it is.

CHRISSIE: He didn't want
to follow ILM's structure

of budgeting and billing
and that sort of thing.

JIM: I remember vividly a meeting where
we bid the work on Phantom Menace,

and the best we could do, we
came up, and we thought, like,

it's going to be $102 million
to do the effects on this movie.

And Rick slides a card
across the table from me,

turns the card over,
and on the right back,

as everybody is talking, and
writes "62 million all in,"

and then draws a line with my
name for me to sign. [CHUCKLES]

That was kind of
typical of Rick.

He had an aura around him
of being like a mob boss.

[LAUGHS] That was
his reputation.

And then you'd just have
this finger outline.

WOMAN: Rick...

- Sorry. Yeah, but we own this footage.
- [WOMAN LAUGHS]

Whenever he was around,

for me, I would just, I don't
know, stand behind something

or avoid eye contact.

This is the place we should
have been six months ago.

Do we have it louder
outside? Okay.

Wasn't enough noise.

A movie runs like most
things that are run well,

on a combination of
fear and loyalty.

You're loyal to somebody
'cause you like them,

you're afraid what will happen if you
don't do what you're supposed to do.

- JOE: Welcome, Rick.
- Thank you, Joe. Nice to see you.

- That's the way you get things done.
- JOE: Yeah.

Unfortunate, but true.

There was some serious sh*t going down
at the company at that particular moment.

ILM had grown a little bloated.

We had lawyers and accountants
telling you how to do your shots.

RICK: We believed
that there was an art

in doing the very minimal
necessary effort to do a shot

instead of the maximum effort.

We needed a refresh.

And we actually called
it the Rebel Unit.

And John Knoll was really
an architect of that.

GEORGE: It's much more flexible.
It's like a commando unit.

Rebel Unit is what we call it,

but what it really is is
ILM has become the army,

and what we're building is
this little commando unit.

The idea for the Rebel
Unit, um, really came...

It was actually the film
Star Trek: Generations.

I'd been going to
SIGGRAPH for years,

learning about
computer graphics...

walking the trade show floor,

seeing what kinds of tools
were being developed.

And I got excited

by some of the desktop CG
tools that I was seeing.

Things that couldn't do Jurassic
Park, but what they could do,

they could do more efficiently
than what we could do.

The thought was use simple
tools for simple jobs.

DENNIS: They were using SGIs, maybe,
at the time. Silicon Graphics machine.

We decide, "Well, okay, let's
just try doing stuff on Mac."

I really thought, and I still
think, it was a great idea.

This is a 200 and...



And when I got this
only nine months ago,

it was the fastest notebook
computer in the world.

And we didn't ask permission,
either. That was...

We're just going to do it.

We're just going to get some
Macs, we're going to do this work.

And it's powerful
enough to do real work.

I got 80 megs of RAM in there.

I have a Zip drive in here now.

KNOLL: And so, I built the
Enterprise in a program called formZ,

which is mostly an
architectural modeling program.

And then I textured
it in Photoshop.

And animated it in a program
called Electric Image.

And I started getting pretty
enamored at this workflow

that, hey, you know, these
inexpensive, simple desktop tools

are a valid way of doing work.

And I used it on two of
the Star Trek movies.

And that sort of led into my work
on the Star Wars Special Edition.

[ENGINE WHIRRING]

[STAR DESTROYER CANNONS FIRING]

George wanted to do this rerelease
of the original Star Wars.

And then, as part of
that restoration project,

George wanted to redo some
visual effects shots in it.

There was a landspeeder crossing
the main plaza in Mos Eisley,

where, originally, there was
this sort of heat shimmer effect

that was added to try
and hide the wheels.

And apparently, George always
really was bothered by that shot

and figured we should redo that.

[ENGINE HUMMING]

[CHUCKLING] And there's this
problem of where do you stop?

- [ENGINE REVVING]
- [ROARS]

[ENGINE HUMMING]

KNOLL: You know, once you decide

you want to fix this and
you want to fix that,

then other shots stand out.

And pretty soon, it turned into
a special edition of the film.

[IN HUTTESE]

We did the work quite a bit cheaper
than we could have done any other way.

The shots looked beautiful.

I was very happy with
how they turned out.

[expl*si*n]

And then that kind of ramped
up into a much bigger group

doing the same
work on Episode I.

JOE: John Knoll.

John Knoll's a
genius. [LAUGHING]

With a film like Star Wars, every
single object has to be designed.

It's something that most
people can't grab a hold of.

Most filmmakers don't
have to cope with that.

And a lot of the film depends on
how well-ex*cuted the designs are.

- JOE: Welcome.
- Thank you. Hi, Joe. [CHUCKLES]

I had always known that I wanted to
come out to work for George Lucas

ever since I saw Star Wars
when I was 15 years old.

Because I grew up
studying your work, Joe.

And that was my schooling.

Because I didn't really
take formal art classes.

So when George made that announcement,
it was just mind-blowing,

because like, "Okay, maybe
I could have a chance

"to actually work on Star Wars."

And the irony was
that, at that time,

I was the creative director
for Industrial Light & Magic.

I was head of this
art department.

It's a little more extreme, because
we need more stuff up in here.

And all these little highlighted
areas are still real soft.

And I thought, "Okay, well, George is
going to staff up this art department.

"I'll be first in line."

And the funny thing was
that George actually said,

"No, I don't want anybody
from my companies.

"I want to look worldwide."

So I realized I had to just get
in line like everybody else.

And so, I submitted
my portfolio.

And I didn't hear
anything for a long time.

And it was kind of like, "Okay,
well, maybe if I'm lucky,

"I'll get to be a PA
in the art department."

And then I got a call
from Rick McCallum.

He said that George really
responds to your portfolio.

And so we went up
to George's office.

And I remember that day vividly,

because it was like my first opportunity
to really actually just meet George

- and speak with him.
- JOE: Yeah.

And I was terrified.

The first thing that
he said was that,

"Forget everything you
thought that Star Wars was.

"We're starting fresh.
We're creating a new style."

LUCAS: We have to
reinvent the wheel here.

CHIANG: And then right away,

George started to describe all the
things that he wanted in the film.

A gyroscope thing that's sort of
moving around on it down here.

Suddenly he pushes forward, and
there's three buttons right there.

- Yeah.
- Where those three buttons give a thing,

- and then you cut.
- Yeah.

It turned into a production meeting.
And I was completely unprepared.

Same thing for the starfighter. It
can't be a knob or it can't be a...

- Okay.
- It can't be fuzzy.

And I didn't have
any paper or pencil.

And so, right away, on the coffee
table, there's a big stack of napkins,

so I just grabbed and I started
to write down everything.

I remember at the end of that day,
my mind was just completely spinning.

All right. See ya.

[DOOR CLOSES]

My first day on the job
was January 15th in 1995.

And first thing in the morning, I
started to draw a robotic stormtrooper.

And I went into work and I finished it,
and it was one of my first drawings.

And it was a complete failure.

And I knew that nine times out of
ten, my drawings would be garbage.

My art skills
aren't that strong.

Art is really hard for me.
I have to really struggle.

Maybe that's because I
didn't get proper training,

so I always had to
stumble my way through it.

I've always felt very insecure
in terms of my position

that, you know, I'm faking
it, that it's not real.

The first year was absolutely
horrifying for me...

because I just... I put so
much pressure on myself.

I didn't want to let him down.

At first, it was just
myself and Terryl Whitlatch.

And then once he had an
outline of the script,

I started to hire
more people in there,

like Jay Shuster, Ed
Natividad, Iain McCaig.

We were just doing world-building
in its purest form,

without knowing what
the context was.

We were designing not only
spaceships and creatures and worlds,

but we were also doing costumes.

WOMAN: Yeah, that's beautiful.

DOUG: We were doing
the whole thing.

And so, trying to do all of
that while trying to figure out,

well, how do you create this
tapestry of animated characters

that make it all believable?

We had no idea who
these characters were.

I have never before or since
been involved in a project

that had that much secrecy.

I hadn't read the script. None
of us had read the script.

There was no script around.

We knew from day one

that George wanted to create sort
of a new synthetic character,

and he went all in on it.

He wanted to create a
new comedic character

that was modeled
after Buster Keaton.

There we go.

- A first draft.
- [CHEERING AND APPLAUDING]

Official first draft.

DOUG: And that was Jar Jar.

This was the first time
we were going to create

a completely synthetic CG character
that could live in a live-action film.

- [FOOTSTEPS THUDDING]
- [SCREECHING]

I mean, obviously, we
had done the dinosaurs,

and those were solid, but
they didn't have to emote.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

DENNIS: When we first started
hearing about Jar Jar,

we thought, "Are
we ready for this?"

You know, we had done Casper,
we had done Dragonheart,

we had done a number of films
that have full CG characters,

but this was someone
who's human-sized,

pretty close to it,

has to act with actors and be
composited in all the shots

but look like he's right
there, and have a personality.

And it seemed like an
extremely hard thing to do

for the hundreds of
shots that was necessary

for him to be a minor-major
character in the show.

Jar Jar is one of those interesting things
where when we started to design him,

we weren't quite sure
where George was going.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

- Hello.
- WOMAN: Hello.

DOUG: And I remember we
chased it for a while,

and he kept encouraging us to
go cartoonier, more graphic.

And there was this one drawing
that Terryl did way back.

He said, "That's the
closest thing that I want."

And it's funny because how
Jar Jar evolved, so to speak,

was from a little drawing,
just a little sketch I had done

for no reason at all but
for my own entertainment.

And I had brought that with me.

George saw it and said,
"Yeah, this is kind of like...

"This is kind of like
Jar Jar in the eyes."

And so I just kind of
call these proto-Gungas.

And that's kind
of how he started.

The next day he came in and says,
"Make that into an alligator now."

[LAUGHS] And at first I was like, "Wow,
an alligator, and mixed with this?"

TERRYL: He kind of went through stages
where he looked sort of like a frog,

and then like a salamander,
vaguely like an elephant,

vaguely like a pig, which
happily didn't last too long,

a little bit of
dachshund. [LAUGHING]

Jar Jar has been many animals,

and actually is composed
of quite a few animals.

He really wanted to lean into
sort of this comedic aspect,

where his face was really malleable,
where his eyes could pop out,

and we'd give it long ears
to kind of flop around.

We were always thinking
in the back of our mind,

well, are we pushing
the envelope too far?

It almost felt that we were
taking too much of a risk.

Because if Jar Jar didn't work, it
was going to ruin the whole thing,

because he was a key
character in this whole story.

What the heck. All right.

- Okay.
- Bye, good night.

DOUG: We were creating all
these wonderful designs,

but we knew we had to pass
it on to the next department

and they had to
actually execute it.

That's where it
was really great,

because then I could actually
see the terror in their eyes.

Because, you know, George had given
us the terror to design these things,

and now we actually had to
implement them and make them real.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

KNOLL: There was a
meeting out at the Ranch

where George had had Doug
Chiang and his group...

storyboard all of Episode I.

JEAN: The storyboards were on
kind of moving whiteboards.

And they just kept
wheeling in more and more.

And they were completely
covered with beautiful artwork.

And each one of these represented
incredible amounts of work and new worlds.

And, you know, it was
an astonishing amount.

And George talked us through
the whole story of the film,

you know, one board at a time.

LUCAS: This is real. This
is not. This is real.

KNOLL: And it was dizzying
to keep up with it.

LUCAS: This is gonna be tricky.

KNOLL: Because every
client comes to us

wanting to do something
a little bit different

that we hadn't seen before,

but almost on the
very first storyboard,

there were things that, "Oh, yeah, no,
we don't have a good way of doing that."

JOHN: We've got a lot
to think about here.

[LAUGHTER]

He was regularly including things
that were way beyond our capabilities.

I know this is going to work.

I know it's going to work
because it's impossible.

But we're the only ones in the
world that can pull this off.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

One of the big challenges we
had was making a CG character

one of the main cast throughout.

Like, he's on every other
page of all three films.

Jar Jar was the only character that
really wasn't defined as far as a visual,

obviously, he had, because he was
created by the art department.

But more of an
essence of character.

It was the one role

where the actor was going to
exclusively make that character.

JOE: Welcome.

- Thanks for having me.
- JOE: Oh, yeah.

In 1996, I was doing
STOMP in San Francisco.

[RHYTHMIC TAPPING AND CLACKING]

And Robin Gurland, who
cast Phantom Menace...

she was in the audience.

I'm sitting there watching, and
he was at the kitchen sink scene

where he was moving his arms, and
his arms were absolutely boneless.

And I'm looking going,
"That's Jar Jar."

And they were like, "Can you come
to Skywalker Ranch and audition?"

And I was just... What
do you say to that?

You know, "No"? I mean...

So I drive to Skywalker
Ranch for my first audition.

And, you know,
when you get there,

the first thing you see is they
have, like, a fire brigade...

and all have the firemen have
patches, like fire patches,

and they're all X-wing fighters.

So I was like, "Whatever this is, I'm
getting to the next level of this."

So Robin just set up the camera
and just asked me to do things.

He immediately went
into the scene,

the mannerisms, the...

Even the way he kind
of babbled a bit.

It was as if he read the
script and he was Jar Jar.

And he knew nothing about
the character at all.

JOE: So, you got the role.

Yeah. Yeah.

Shockingly.

[CHUCKLES] Yeah, I mean, I
really wasn't expecting it.

When he came on board,
it was terrific,

because Ahmed just had this sort
of physical presence about him

where he could move, you know,
in really incredible ways.

And so we realized, okay, well,
then this started to make sense.

If we applied his performance
to this character,

maybe there could be magic.

AHMED: George and I worked really
closely together for about two years.

George is incredibly
astute as a film historian.

And so, he would really dive
into these Buster Keaton movies

and talk about why he's
moving the way he's moving.

And that it just wasn't a comedy bit,
but it was a real motivation behind it.

And that helped me a lot.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

In Phantom Menace,

it was really me and Liam Neeson
kind of together most of the time.

I always imagined us being
like a buddy cop flick.

You know, it was like
Qui-Gon and Jar Jar.

ROB: I remember
standing with George.

They were sh**ting the
scene when Qui-Gon's running

and he runs right into Jar Jar.

[JAR JAR WHIMPERING]

[QUI-GON GRUNTING]

And George introduced me to
Ahmed, and we had a chat there.

And so, we have a full CG version
that we did using you as inspiration,

- all your loose movement.
- Oh, cool.

So I can show you both of those.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.

I love Rob Coleman.

Just a brilliant human being.

So generous and so incredibly
open and collaborative.

Rob was the guy who was going
to make this thing work.

The combination of
animation and live-action

was always the
thing that got me.

It even goes back to, like,

I remember being a little kid
and watching Mary Poppins.

d*ck Van d*ke dancing
with those penguins,

even as a child, I knew
the penguins were animated.

But the magic was,

here's a man interacting
with the animation.

[THUNDER CRASHING]

And I was a kid who was reading
Cinefantastique and Starlog

and was really interested
in behind-the-scenes,

and I was a massive
fan of Ray Harryhausen.

I remember running
home from school.

I lived in Toronto, and there's a
channel out of Buffalo, New York,

that played monster
movies in the afternoons.

And they would have, like, a
double feature of Ray's films.

[GROWLING]

My generation... We were


and I can't even tell you how
many times I saw it that summer.

[LASER TURRETS BLASTING]

And I think it was probably
at Empire or at Raiders

where I started to notice that

there's this company called
Industrial Light & Magic.

All these things were just
leading me towards this path

that I never thought I
would actually achieve.

And I can draw a line directly
from those experiences

as a kid watching those movies

to what I got to do on
the Star Wars films,

is the combining of
animation and live-action.

Must remove the watch.

Gungans don't know
what time it is.

ROB: Having that
character sharing a screen

with Ewan and Liam
and Natalie...

MAN: Stand by.

... who are alive and breathing and
naturally engaging for the audience...

and having to have that digital
character holding his own,

that was a very tall
order for us at that time.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

George then said,
"Just watch Ahmed."

AHMED: Which way?

Great.

Ahmed was super energetic,
really positive,

big smile on his
face all the time.

I think he just couldn't believe
he was in a Star Wars movie.

JAR JAR: "Ah, dissen cozy."

And he just had this glow,
this energy and this happiness.

[BELCHES]

Excuse me.

George wanted Jar Jar driven
absolutely physically by Ahmed.

- [BELL RINGING]
- MAN: One more time.

ROB: So the initial plan is that
Ahmed's wearing a full costume

and he's wearing a
little Jar Jar hat.

But along the neck, you can
see some little green LEDs,

because he was only going
to be computer graphics

from the neck up.

He was only going to have
a CG neck, head, and ears.

The rest of it was
going to be Ahmed.

DENNIS: George was saying,
"Well, the whole body is the guy.

"We've got a great actor.

"I just want him to have
this interesting head."

Maybe the hands can be augmented with
fake hands he's wearing or something.

Great. Sounds great.
Why can't we do that?

I was sort of opposed to that
idea for a couple of reasons.

If you were going to
do just a head replace,

you had to match the camera,
you had to match the figure,

you had to do an
exact lighting match.

So it looked to me like it
was just going to be more work

to do the partial than it
was to do the complete.

RICK: The thing that we freaked out about
when John suggested doing it full CG is,

you know, we could see, "Oh,
my god, this is going to cost

"two, three, four
million dollars more."

GEORGE: Jar Jar is
constantly being debated.

ILM, who said we could save a ton
of money by using a guy in a suit

and just putting the head on
it, has now come back and said,

"We don't know how much
money we're gonna..."

So they still have to
get their act together.

They haven't figured out exactly what
the most economical way to do this is.

So I challenged ILM and
I challenged John to say,

"Okay, can you prove that,
that it'll be the same cost?"

And John quickly did a test.

KNOLL: The purpose of
this test is to see

what the head attachment
is really going to be like.

And it's been brought
up as a concern

that we may need to have some
additional tracking marks further up

because we have to match
the shoulders as well

to actually do that blend.

And they sent it back to ILM.

It was ingested, and we then went
about trying to match move...

A character moving through
three dimensions with this neck,

and it was incredibly difficult.

Really, really hard.

Even when we got the neck in,

even if it was a pixel off,
our eye sees it as a misalign.

It didn't believe in it.

KNOLL: And we had an animator
animate a full CG version of it

with no compromises,

designed with all those proportioned
limb-length things in there.

ROB: And the side-by-side
is what we showed to George

and made our case about

why this is going to be
really hard to pull off

just to do the neck and head.

And we shot Ahmed doing
a little action here

so we could test to how well the
head replacement thing would work.

Here are two
different approaches.

Bottom, of course, is
the head replacement.

The top is the fully
animated figure.

As it turns out,

the fully animated one was
actually about half the man hours

of the head replacement.

So we spent $100,000 on that suit
that we didn't need to spend.

The test somehow came
out to be more expensive

if you replaced the head and neck
than if you did an all-CG one.

I was always very
skeptical of that.

The difference of the approach
we would take without a suit

is about $1,300,000.

I think, at some point,
there's sort of a threshold

where, jeez, it's going to
be easier to handle that.

DENNIS: The rumor I heard later
was that that was not true.

They actually gave the
match move of the head

to an animator who
was not very fast...

and they gave the full animation version
to an animator that was super-fast.

So...

[CHUCKLES] Was the test
cooked? Not in my mind.

And it just was like, has
the company come to this,

or have the artists
come to this? [LAUGHS]

If there was something going on

where Rob had better
talent on the all-CG test

than the just the head version,
he didn't tell me that.

JOE: What a great rumor.

- Is it true?
- It's true.

- George told me about it.
- JOE: Ah!

And I said, "That makes sense."

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

So George agreed in that
he liked the animation,

but he was really concerned

because he said, "I don't want
to lose the essence of Ahmed.

"That's why I cast him.

"And your animators, I'm
sure, are great, Rob,

"but I doubt that
they can do this."

And I remember Jeff
Light at ILM...

Give that a try.

... was the person who introduced
me to the idea of motion capture.

MAN: I hope that's not going
to be too small for you.

It's supposed to
be a little tight.

You wear a very tight,
very revealing catsuit.

Okay, everyone, let's
start with a brief warmup.

We're going to start
with a stretch.

And in this bodysuit, you
have all of these targets.

Those targets are
tracked by cameras.

And action.

AHMED: The targets are
captured into the drives,

and what the animators
use as a skeletal system

are these points that
they call a point cloud.

George, take a look at this.

And they use that to literally
draw your character over.

You now have captured that motion,
which you can use in any way you want.

You can manipulate
it. You can scale it.

If we can just use your performance,
there's no need to keyframe animate it.

You do these great things where you're
moving, your hands are like that.

If we can capture that, then
we don't have to animate it.

We can take those and stick
those into different scenes.

It was so experimental
at the time.

None of us knew what would
work and what wouldn't work.

But because we were all together

and because George had
so much faith in it...

we really made
something special.

Back in film school, you could
release that as a final project.

[LAUGHTER]

Get the right music.

There were times where I thought that,
personally, my own personal take,

I thought maybe we were making the
character too slapstick or too goofy.

- [ELECTRICAL BUZZING]
- [GIBBERING]

My tongue!

[BABBLING]

But at every turn, George
said, "No, no, no, no.

"This is his role
within the movie.

"This is his position
within the story."

He told me once, he said...

I said, "I don't want to
be goofy with this thing."

He goes, "Dare to be dopey."

He says, "Dare to be dopey,
Rob. Make this dopey."

And I'm like, "Okay. Okay."

- Hmm?
- Don't touch anything.

ROB: And so we did.

[BLOWS RASPBERRY]

JOE: George once said to Rob
Coleman, "Dare to be dopey."

Yeah.

- JOE: Did he say the same thing to you?
- No. He never said that to me.

I was probably dopey
anyway. [LAUGHING]

Um, so I didn't need
that note. [CHUCKLES]

[JAR JAR SCREAMING, YELLING]

This was an enormous
undertaking.

We had gone from I'm guessing
around 200 shots on Men in Black

to 2,000 shots on
Phantom Menace.

And the scale and scope
of it was overwhelming.

I mean, I was really
anxious about the project.

It was kind of all on his shoulders,
and he was under a lot of pressure.

ROB: We had a weekly
production meeting.

And there was only ever one
agenda item on the thing.

It said, "Can we
get the movie done?"

And the answer, month
after month, was,

"No, we cannot get the movie done."
Even though we were in production.

Just a continual
tsunami of work.

Just fix that hand.

And then behind the people.

ROB: I was suffering
from insomnia,

and I was worrying about

the millions of people who
had waited for this film.

I remember what it was like

to come out of Return of
the Jedi at 19 years old.

And back then, George had
said, "There's more films."

I think he had said there
was six or nine films.

And I remember
thinking at the time,

I wonder how long I have to have
to wait to see those next movies.

Not knowing that I was going
to be one of the people

to help bring it to
the screen, of course.

So I was worrying about all
these millions of people.

It got so bad that I drove
up to Skywalker Ranch

and went into his office,
and he was like, "What's up?"

And I said, "The pressure of the millions
of people waiting for this movie.

"I don't know if I can do this."

And he laughed at me and he said,
"What are you talking about?

"You need to worry about
one person, and that's me.

"And I'm happy with the work."

And I was like, "You're
happy with the work?"

And he's like, "Yes, I'm
very happy with the work."

And I went home and
I slept like a baby.

I just kept saying,
you know, keep trying.

And eventually, they got it.

We're supposed to be the experts
who can break down these ideas

and figure out how to turn
them into an image on screen.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

MAN: Yeah, not bad.

- Right.
- Yeah.

There were plenty of scenes that were
beyond the capability of the tech

that was available
to us at the time.

You know, a big one
for me was the podrace.

[ENGINES REVVING]

GEORGE: Yeah, there you go.

Let's bring the map in here.

Podracing made easy.

[LAUGHTER]

My first real exposure to the podrace
was Doug Chiang's paintings of it.

He'd done some beautiful
concept paintings.

I knew that was going to be an
important set piece in the movie.

So what is this
between the pods here?

- It's sort of lightning-like...
- GEORGE: Yeah. It's energy.

It's a super-energetic magnetic
field that holds them together.

George had described it as
like the Ben-Hur chariot race.

- [CROWD CHEERING]
- [MAN SCREAMING]

I thought, "Boy, this is going
to be a really cool sequence."

BEN: The podrace at first
started out as its own movie.

I was usually brought in a few
months before principal photography.

Okay, here we go.

Storyboards in a traditional
sense, which are static drawings,

you start with those, because
you have to start somewhere.

But you really need
something in motion.

We never started anything without Ben
starting the same day that we did.

And Ben would put together
a chase of old footage,

and we would follow
it frame by frame.

BURTT: Let's explore all the
different chases we've ever seen.

Let's start by looking and analyzing
every car chase, every helicopter chase,

whatever it might be.
Every chariot race.

So let's have a lot
of life in this, okay?

And let's run the wind machine.

[MACHINE WHIRRING]

And action!

So I got my son,
put some goggles on.

My son was sort
of playing Anakin.

And I used a weed blower
so his hair is flapping.

The art department out on
the third floor at the Ranch,

the videomatic team,
built two podracers,

an Anakin full-sized
one, and a Sebulba.

They were just built
out of foam board.

And we took them down to the basement
where we had a green screen cyclorama,

and I just used this... I
had like a Steadicam JR.

I mean, you could float,
and he pretended to fly.

And then we comped that
together with backgrounds.

No children were harmed in
the making of this animatic.

Ready? Jump. [GRUNTS]

And that worked out well. It
gave me something to cut with.

[LAUGHTER]

- I mean, that new Sebulba's great.
- Yeah, he was fun.

It's funny. We're going to
have to think about his acting.

And then ILM could
take it from there.

It's hard to judge now,
because they are grey.

HABIB: Both John and I are
very nerdy, geeky guys.

And he said, "You know, these pods go at
very high speeds and they have to crash."

We have to simulate
something breaking apart.

- Like, exploding.
- Yeah, exactly.

"But I'd really like
to simulate them,

"as opposed to hand keyframe all
the motion, because of realism."

I'll show you the
geometry in Maya.

KNOLL: I come from a family
of scientists and engineers,

so I'm trying to inject some
scientific accuracy into things

even when they're, you
know, sort of silly fantasy.

And the design of the pods was, you
have these two jet engines, basically,

that are held together
with this force field.

And then there's these ropes
attached, one to each engine,

and then you're
riding in the back.

And I kind of wanted them to have
this sort of floaty bounce to them...

that felt like they were
suspended on springs.

I had done a 2D proof
of concept before that,

and I showed that
to Habib and said,

"All right, let's see if we
can do a 3D version of this."

There's another one
where we did that trick

where we turned it into a
spring and then pushed it apart.

So the idea that Habib
and I came up with was

we're going to make
an invisible framework

that suspends the engines
and the c*ck from springs,

and we're going to
animate that framework,

and then the engines are going
to bounce around and shake

and have that sort of simulated
complexity to the motion.

And then all the pod pieces
would react with physics.

If it couldn't, that means you must be
doing something wrong with your animation,

because physics is
never wrong, right?

And I still remember
the moment...

I hit play and we
watched these two engines

just floating like this,
affecting each other...

very subtly.

And John and I look at each other
and we're like, "This is it."

[BOTH CHUCKLE]

I'm like, "Yeah, this is great,
this is exactly what we want."

[ENGINES BUZZING]

But then we had to
do the crash shots.

That was the...

That was the really
big challenge.

George didn't want things to
just blow up into nothing.

[expl*si*n]

He'd pointed us to
Formula 1 races.

[ENGINES REVVING]

The aesthetic that George wanted to
pursue for the crashing podracers

was one of just kinetic energy.

That he referred to these
Formula 1 car crashes

where one of these
racing cars hits a wall

or collides with another
vehicle at 180 miles an hour.

That there's a massive amount
of kinetic energy in them

that takes a really
long time to dissipate.

The aesthetic of that was
something that George really loved.

You know, when they
hit, they tumble

and they just keep going and
pieces shred off of them.

Now you're trying to crash
something at 800 miles an hour,

and you want it to start
rolling at the right time.

And we're having a lot of trouble
coming up with it doing that...

so we put these enormous...

I call them blocks of
foam, but they were...

We put these enormous
invisible heavy blocks of foam

that these things would slam into at


And we could adjust
their timing and position

and how much they weighed.

But we never actually
rendered them.

First, you take
the biggest pieces

and you say, "Okay, I want
this pod to hit the ground

"and then break into two
pieces and they tumble."

So you run a simulation
on that till you're happy.

And then you kind of
lock that in and go,

"Okay, let's put the next
level of detail onto that."

So what are all the small pieces
that are breaking off of that

and start tumbling around?

And when you're happy
with that, you go like,

"Okay, let's put in the
smoke, let's put in the fire,

"let's put in the sparks, and the
dust, and all of those things."

And ultimately, most of these
shots will end up having,

like, 20 to 30 different
simulation elements in them

to give them the complexity
that a real event like that has.

- [ENGINE REVVING]
- [THUDDING]

[ENGINE BUZZING]

[SCREAMING]

[SPEAKING HUTTESE]

You know, the interesting
thing about George is

he is not very demonstrative.

And sometimes the
way you find out

that he's happy with your
work is very indirectly.

Um, when we were working on
the podrace, as an example,

I elected to build the
stadium as a miniature.

And it was pretty big.

- Keep that dolly.
- Yeah.

DOUG: There's this misconception
when people look at the prequels

that they think
it's all digital.

Episode I had more miniatures
than any of the Star Wars films...

In fact, all the Star
Wars films combined.

MAN: Nothing like a good
walk in the morning.

If it doesn't move, push harder.

That's my philosophy of life.

DOUG: And they were huge.

Looking at the rocks,
they look great outside.

- Yeah, they do.
- Really good.

KNOLL: One day, George
was here for a VFX review,

and at the end of the
review, I asked George,

"Hey, I've got the podrace stadium models
set up over on the stage next door.

"Do you want to see it?"
He said, "Yeah, all right."

- Good morning.
- Good morning.

Fine day for a Boonta race.

KNOLL: So I took him over
there and I showed him.

"Okay, so this is...
There's Jabba's box here."

We thought that one, okay,
should be about a third

with a bunch of
people walking out.

Touring him around
through the whole thing.

Are you going to put maybe some
canisters, rocks and things?

- Baggage and, you know, props.
- Yeah.

KNOLL: And he just went,
"Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.

"Okay, great."

Great.

KNOLL: And he left.

Okay.

KNOLL: And about an hour later,
I got a call from Martin Smith,

who was one of George's
editors on the picture

and said, "Is that model still
set up? I want to come see it.

"George was raving
about it." [CHUCKLES]

And, you know, I got no
indication of that from George.

George came to me
one day and said,

"All the work here surpassed
my wildest expectations."

And I said, "Did you tell the
crew that?" And he goes, "No."

I said, "Let's go
tell the crew that."

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

- DENNIS: This may be it. This is it.
- This may be it.

- This is it.
- This is it. [CHUCKLING]

- GEORGE: I don't have any choice.
- DENNIS: Okay.

Just a formality.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

Finished on time, on schedule.

Everything was done.
And we watched the film.

You know, we were amazed.

And the credits roll, you
know, for like ten minutes.

The lights came on,

and George just turned to us
and said, you know, "Thank you."

He was just so
genuinely proud of ILM,

um, that they had
been able to do

what he thought was
impossible to even ask for.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER, LAUGHTER]

From Close Encounters
to Phantom Menace.

Great working with you.

The most fun I've ever had on a
film, really, since I started.

Well, I enjoyed it.
You guys pulled it off.

WOMAN: It is.

KNOLL: It's hard for
me to be objective,

somebody who was like right
in the middle of this chaos.

Hey, Steve, go
ahead and move it.

I was very pleased that we
had survived the process.

MAN: Keep the pod shaking,
Jeff. Just shudder it around.

KNOLL: As massive a project
and as intimidating at it was

when we embarked on it, I felt
a real sense of accomplishment.

We were all just so excited about
what we were able to accomplish

that we were just
excited to share that.

[CROWD CHEERING, SHOUTING]

I spent two years helping the
Jedi Master himself, George Lucas,

create the movie that he wanted,

and I was incredibly proud of the
collective work that ILM had done.

Such a rush. I didn't even
get a chance to highlight.

- WOMAN: You don't have to highlight.
- [LAUGHS]

New York Times
review. This is it?

We put so much time and so much energy
and so much care into this thing.

And you know, of course,
people were telling me that,

you know, prepare for your life to change,
and this is going to be transformational.

But none of us knew what
really was going to happen.