02x02 - There Must Be a Better Way

[bunniefuu]

[GROWLING]

STEFEN FANGMEIR: You
know, after Jurassic Park,

that decade really changed what
filmmakers and producers thought,

"Okay, now this is
possible, this is possible."

And those were
the exciting days.

Those were the days where
people would come to ILM

and ask for things that
had never been done before.

We didn't know what
the next thing was.

We had to rack our brains and
look around for ideas anywhere.

STEFEN: I think a lot of people
pulled scripts out of their drawers

that had stuff in them that
couldn't previously be done.

But now we're saying, "Okay, let's
check with ILM whether it can be done."

This is so huge. How
are we going to do this?

How do you make water
look like water?

How are we going
to simulate that?

How can we make this real enough
so that it can actually work?

- [BLASTERS FIRING]
- [LIGHTSABERS HUMMING]

How do we not, you know,
freak out about this?

And how do you move ahead
and keep it fresh and new?

And that's hard.

[MACHINE g*ns FIRING]

[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]

[SHOUTING AND CHEERING]

I was asked by George to come to
New York for the press screening...

The first press screening
of The Phantom Menace.

And then there was all the
interviews that happened after those.

Hi, I'm Doug Kriegel

- from KNBC in Los Angeles.
- Nice to meet you.

- I'm Kirsty with The Movie Show.
- Oh, great.

What's the hardest part of bringing
something like this to the screen?

When you get the script and you read
it and there's an innocent line like,

"7,000 Gungans march out
into the ground battle."

And though, there I was, incredibly proud
of the collective work that ILM had done.

And as the line of questioning
continued through that afternoon,

my heart started to sink, because
I was picking up on a theme,

which was these reviewers weren't
necessarily enormous fans of Jar Jar.

CREEDLE: Thank you, everyone.

COLEMAN: George invited me to fly
back with him on his private jet,

and Lynne Hale printed
out all of these reviews,

gave him a stack of print.

Over the hours, he just worked
his way through the pile.

He looked up at one moment
and he just caught my eye,

and he just waved me down.

He said, "You don't look
very happy. What's up?"

I said, "Well..." I
pointed at the pages.

"They don't like Jar Jar."

And he said, "I've been
through this before.

"I didn't make the
movie for them."

Yeah. No, I think they couldn't
imagine a goofy character like that.

Of course, you've
got to remember,

in the original Star
Wars, everybody hated 3PO.

- Sir, might I...
- Shut him up or shut him down.

- [expl*si*n]
- [GRUNTING]

GEORGE: They thought he
was annoying and stupid,

and it was a terrible character.

JOE: I don't remember
people disliking 3PO.

Oh, well, how about this one?

You came to me and you gave
me your design for the Ewok.

And I said, "No, no, no,
no. Dare to be cute."

- [GASPS]
- [EWOK EXCLAIMS]

Cut it out.

GEORGE: "Make them cuter.
Make them little teddy bears."

And you went, "Uh..."

You rolled your eyes and you sort
of slumped out of the office.

You know, I'm trying to
appeal to a very large group,

and the group really consists
primarily of 12-year-olds.

- WOMAN: What's your favorite character?
- Jar Jar Binks.

I liked Jar Jar Binks
because he was funny.

COLEMAN: He goes,
"Jar Jar is amazing."

I said, "Yeah, but we did all
this... We tried so hard."

And he went, "Hey,
hey, hey, hey.

"Did any one of these articles
say he didn't look real...

"that Jar Jar
wasn't believable?"

I said, "Well, no."

He said, "Well, then you
did your job, didn't you?

"You and the team made
this character alive.

"They just don't like him."

One of the stars is a
pure animated creature

- named Jar Jar, is that right?
- Right.

I had a hard time
understanding him, by the way.

[IMITATES JAR JAR]
Meesa Jar Jar Binks.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHING, APPLAUDING]

I will never let Jar
Jar live on this stage.

REPORTER: The ease
of web page creation

has led to a number of
sites dedicated to bashing

the childlike bipedal frog
from The Phantom Menace.

AHMED: With all the
websites that popped up,

it kind of drove the narrative
to traditional media.

If you made a website
back in those days,

you were considered some
sort of computer genius.

REPORTER: One website is even calling
for George Lucas to recut the film,

citing the ease he should have
at deleting a digital character.

- [CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING]
- [CROWD CLAMORING]

Was that a mixed
review? Fantastic.

You know, I went to the premiere
and it was weird. [LAUGHING]

There was this weird kind of thought
of it's just going to be Jar Jar

and I'm not going to be there.

But in the film, it
was very obviously me.

Then, boom.

Getting very scared and
grabbing that Jedi, and, pow...

And then, when I saw
my name in the credits,

I was like, "Oh, okay. I'm
there, I'm in it. I did it."

Can you talk a little bit
about Jar Jar's backstory?

I know he explains a bit in the
movie, but I couldn't understand him.

AHMED: At a press junket,

I was asked this very ridiculously obscure
question about Jar Jar's sexuality.

I was taken aback because Jar
Jar's a seven-foot amphibian.

So, um, I didn't quite know
how to answer that question.

Um, but that's when I
kind of realized that

people were seeing something
that we weren't prepared for.

After that, it was just
like this flood of backlash.

What is that accent based on? I
mean, it sounds vaguely French.

No accent. No Jamaican.

No Patois. No Creole. No French.

No German. No nothing.

JOE: So Rob Coleman
and Ahmed Best

were pretty much
devastated by the response.

What did you tell them?

I told them "You're
in the movie business.

"80% of the people in the
movie business get trashed.

"Personally.

"In very, very
destructive ways."

McCALLUM: That's when I heard
that we were trying to exploit

this poor amphibian creature
with Rastafarian hair.

We were r*cist.

Jar Jar's a r*cist character.

MICHAEL DYSON: He has a
stereotypical Black walk.

He has a pep role.

I'm not suggesting that
George Lucas is a r*cist.

What I am suggesting

is that George Lucas has
tapped into unconsciously

some r*cist and stereotypical
conceptions of Blackness.

It really was just draining,

you know, to constantly
have to defend the work.

Because that point cloud is so
representative of my performance

and it almost is a
physical signature,

even if you talk about the
character, you're talking about me.

But it wasn't just
me as Jar Jar.

We were Jar Jar.

ILM was Jar Jar.
George was Jar Jar.

I'm the face of it,
but it was all of us.

We all hurt because of it.

And I felt as if I
let everybody down.

I felt it was my fault.

I was 26.

What should have felt like the
beginning of something quite wonderful

felt like the end.

I remember it was really,
really early in the morning,

and it was one of those nights when
New York City was asleep, you know?

And if you're from New York, you
know New York never sleeps, right?

But there was no one
on the Brooklyn Bridge.

No one. It was just me.

I don't even remember
walking across it.

I just remember myself on
the outside of the bridge

kind of leaning up against
one of the big pillars,

and I see the Statue of Liberty.

And, um, what I
think to myself is...

"I'll show every single one
of them what y'all did to me.

"I'm going to make every one of
you feel what you did to me."

So I'm leaning on the bridge and
I'm getting closer and closer to...

Just going, you know.

Just being free of all the
talking and people and the...

And then this really...

unexpected, out-of-nowhere...

whoosh, gust of wind
blows just at me.

You know, out of
nowhere, and I...

I lose my balance

and I just grab on to
the side of the bridge.

And then I laughed to myself.

I'm like, "What are
you doing?" [CHUCKLES]

You know?

"What are you doing?"

And then, reality.

It was like New York just
popped back up. Right?

I saw everything. I saw the
lights, I saw the Towers.

Everything just
came back to life.

And I was like, "Holy sh*t."

I'm...

You know what I'm saying?
What am I doing out here?

And then, um, I got scared.

I got really, really scared.

And I was very happy that
I was afraid, you know?

Because that meant
I wanted to live.

[SIGHS]

I think the lesson that was learned from
everyone who does CGI characters now

is to talk about the actor...

and not just the character
as if the actors don't exist.

The hardest part about it is, I
was the first person to do this,

and I was the first
Black man to do this.

The erasure of artists,

especially
African-American artists...

as pioneers in the industry is
something that has been pervasive

since the industry's inception.

And it's something that
needs to be talked about,

and it's something that
needs to be rectified.

There were a lot of things that
critics poked at with Episode I.

Choices George made
or didn't make.

And certainly, Jar
Jar was on that list.

Because Star Wars
isn't just a movie.

It taps into the collective zeitgeist
of just millions and millions of people

who found it to be the
greatest cinematic experience

they'd ever had as
they were growing up.

I understand the
dislike from older fans.

KNOLL: The people that
were fans of the originals

forget that they were
kids when they saw them,

are kind of evaluating them
with adult sensibilities

and not really understanding
what the intent was.

You love what you grew up with.

And George had said, "I
guarantee that later in life...

"10, 20 years down the road...

"kids who are 10 now are
going to come up to you

"and tell you that Jar Jar
is their favorite character."

[AUDIENCE CHEERING
AND APPLAUDING]

AHMED: It's just great
to be in this room.

The energy is palpable and exciting
and so very positive, you know?

[AUDIENCE CHEERING]

Love it. Love it.

He would say things like,

"Twenty years from now, it's
going to be completely different."

And he's right. It's happened.

I think everybody here, you know,
was proud that they pulled it off.

The scope of the effects,

that level had never
really been done before.

Also, there was so
much work to be done,

that it was just a lot of good work
for people to sink their teeth into it.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

GEORGE: In the beginning of ILM,
when we first moved into Kerner,

we had about a third
of the main building.

Tiny, little thing.

Compare that today

where it's six blocks long
and three blocks wide.

- [CHUCKLES]
- KNOLL: It's like a studio now.

ILM was scaling at the same time

as filmmakers were getting more
comfortable using visual effects

and pushing the envelope

and resurrecting ideas that
now seemed within their reach.

These heavy effects-driven
projects can be really challenging.

A number of them
were real nailbiters.

JEAN: I am constantly in awe
of how a crew of people at ILM

can solve pretty
much any problem,

any filmmaking problem
that's presented to them.

Back in those days,

when you were meant to do something
that hadn't been done before,

the studio or the producer or
the director was always saying,

"Well, let's do a test and see if
you guys can actually pull it off."

DENNIS: There was a
project came through

that Spielberg wanted to
do involving a tornado.

He said, "Can you do a
test shot for Twister?"

And this was a chance
to do particle systems,

which really had not
been done before.

There's no way to have done it with
any technology that we know of.

It could be really horrific.
But let's do it as a shot.

It was the digital version
of gum and bailing wire.

You couldn't just go
to your software store

and buy a tornado off the shelf.

Compute power was also
still limited at that time,

so we had to be very efficient with
creating these particle systems.

BROMLEY: It was Habib Zargarpour who
developed these particle systems.

All right.

They said, "You're
the particle guy.

"You have eight weeks. Go."

DENNIS: Habib was the
perfect person to come in

and make the software system

that you could animate
like you could a character.

But you can move it in
any shape, do it any way,

have speed controls, thickness controls,
wind controls, all sorts of things.

I knew I wanted to be a
designer since I was 13.

I grew up internationally...

in Iran, then Belgium
for a couple of years,

south of France in high school.

The original Blade Runner was one
of my favorite films of all time.

Still is. Through that film,
I found out about Syd Mead.

SYD MEAD: Ridley Scott, the
director of Blade Runner,

asked me to design the
vehicle ideas for the film.

ZARGARPOUR: Then I
found out that Syd Mead

went to Pasadena ArtCenter
College of Design.

And I was like, "I
have to go here."

I thought, you know, I could be an
industrial designer, but for movies,

because then I don't risk
frying someone with my toaster.

Like, it doesn't
have to function.

It has to look good, you know?

[SCREECHING]

When I saw Jurassic Park,

I got tears from emotion from seeing
those visual effects, you know,

and wanting to have
been part of it.

I didn't know about ILM
until I was at ArtCenter

and my computer graphic
instructor said,

"You know, ILM's coming to see
if people can intern there."

So then they made the job offer.

When I started, I
ended up on The Mask.

They said, you know, "When
the mask comes off Jim Carrey,

"we want to make
this green gas."

And I said, "Well, I can use my particle
knowledge and create this green gas."

Particles have a
mind of their own.

When you simulate them,
you have millions of them,

and you have to just give
them general guidelines.

You can have forces of
attraction, forces that repel,

they can collide with things,

but you can't say this particle's
going to do this thing.

Because there's
too many of them.

[SQUEAKING, POPPING]

[SCREAMING]

And I got to use the
particles on Jumanji...

to get the kid and all the animals
to suck them into the board.

After that, the challenge
came from Spielberg.

"Can you make digital tornadoes?

"If so, we'll make the movie.

"If not, we're not
going to make the movie.

"No pressure."

DENNIS: Habib did all the really
groundbreaking stuff on this

to be able to control
the velocities,

and the currents and the density
and everything of the tornadoes,

and making all out of
CG little particles,

little points that you could,
like, swirl, have swirl,

they could get hit by a current,

they could go up like this, they
could move across the ground.

MOHEN: Habib was sort
of a mad scientist.

It does really...

fun working with him as well,

because you could tell
he would get so excited.

And I found this really infectious
because, you know, he'd just go like,

"Come over to my desk...
Let me show you something."

And then he'd basically
pull up some physics setup

that he'd figured
out how to simulate.

ZARGARPOUR: The concept
we came up with is...

it's an F5 tornado,
it's the biggest one.

We have to prove we can do it.

And it's surrounded
by tons of debris.

And this is based
on footage we saw.

It's so enormous,

that what looks like a speck is
actually a car, or a truck, or a bus.

We filmed this plate
from inside a car.

When you're driving along
and you make a turn like this

and then, boom, you
see this building

and there's the tornado right
behind it and it's huge.

Rips the roof off, tears pieces up,
they go flying all over the place.

ZARGARPOUR: The idea was one of
the debris pieces comes towards you

and gets bigger, bigger, bigger,
bigger... becomes a tractor.

This tractor crashes into the ground
and the tire goes into the window.

We sent the shot to Steven
Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy.

Dennis was on the
phone with them

while they're going to
watch it for the first time.

I was under double pressure, because
my daughter was due the same day.

I was on time. She was late.

They said, "Okay, we're
gonna roll the film."

And just silence.

And, you know,
they're watching it.

And then we hear,
like, loud screams

and all these sounds, like,
"Oh, my God..." [LAUGHS]

That was like, "Okay,
yes, they like it."

And apparently, they didn't
even have a script yet.

But they knew that
they could make it.

If they could do a tornado,
they could get a good script.

And so this particle rendering
unlocked several things,

including water
for Perfect Storm.

JEAN: Water was something that
was, like, "How are we going to...

"How are we going to do it?"

That was one of the things that
had never been done successfully.

STEFEN: Well, if they can do tornadoes,
maybe they can do massive storms at seas.

I was actually working at
that time on Galaxy Quest,

but I'd heard that Wolfgang
Petersen was coming up to ILM.

And being a huge fan
of Das Boot, of course,

and him being a fellow German, I
thought, "Oh, God, I want to meet him."

So I showed up in that meeting,
and I said a few things.

And I still remember very vividly
walking out of that room and saying,

"Oh, my God, I'm so glad I'm on a project,
because this is going to be really hard."

[GALAXY QUEST THEME
MUSIC PLAYING]

I really enjoyed working on Galaxy Quest
because it was just such a good script,

and the comedy was great.

That was a hell of a thing.

Then Wolfgang called up to
ILM a couple of weeks later

and said, you know,
"I want Stefen."

I think people were
probably still at that point

talking about miniatures and
water tanks and this and that.

DENNIS: It was just,
like, mind-boggling.

How the heck are
we going to be able

to make an ocean be
directable by the director?

He wants to come in and say,
"I want this wave to come in.

"I want it bigger. I want it
to hold there for a moment."

How do you do that?

It had to be CG.

They say water and human skin is
the hardest thing to do in CG.

How do you model water,

something that's constantly
viscous, it's changing?

You know, everything's
so natural.

You have the air and resistance.

You have temperature.

Everything affects water.

So we have to kind of find a way to
translate that in a digital world.

This was my first big job.

They said, "You know, there's a smart
guy that wants to work on the show,

"a new person in render support.

"His name is Masi Oka."

Hello, Mr. Lee.
Nice to meet you.

- Is that Chinese?
- And you?

- My name is Masi. Masi Oka.
- Oh, Masi, yeah.

And he went on to become
an actor on Heroes.

He says, "I'd like to look at
the ocean simulation code."

And I'm thinking, like, he's not
going to really understand it,

so, sure, go ahead.

And he came back the next day
with a printout this thick,

and he goes, "I think we can
make the Fourier transforms

"ten times faster."

We were creating
revolutionary new technology,

just so we could digitally
drown George Clooney.

MAN: And action!

ZARGARPOUR: The really tough
thing with water is that

the droplets stick together
and they affect each other.

When you're doing a tornado, the
dust is mostly just this turbulence,

and they could just
follow the turbulence.

But now water,
especially up close,

you have these foamy
pieces of water

that they stretch and they stick
and they... It's like glue.

So we had these things,
we called them blobbies.

And we rendered out hundreds
of these blobby animations

of these pieces of really tiny
pieces of water coming apart.

And then, when we're
rendering a water splash,

we'd actually put these tiny
movies of these blobbies.

So on a big scale when you
watch the whole splash,

you have this sensation of
this sticky water inside it.

The project in general
was a very tough one.

I think the giant waves
were definitely the hardest.

If it's small, you can kind of,
like, simulate a million particles.

When you have this, you're talking about
trillions of gazillions of particles

have to, you know, simulate.

We were under a
crazy time crunch

because the level of
complexity of that show

was unlike anything ILM
had ever undertaken.

ZARGARPOUR: We needed
to hit the deadline.

And we're dealing with
not just one simulation.

ING: They would have different elements,
different kinds of mists and foams

that you would actually
additionally have to simulate

and then render to
composite together.

ZARGARPOUR: We had the wave simulations.
Then we had the ship simulations.

Then the splashes.
Then the foam.

Everything depended
on everything else.

Sometimes it takes three
days to render one frame.

So we would need 90 days
to do one second of waves.

And you can't get it wrong.

ZARGARPOUR: If Wolfgang would say,
"Can you make that wave go back a bit?"

That was not a simple thing.

ING: And so the level of complexity
of getting the look of stuff right

as well as the computation time

just necessary to
render all of the shots

made it so that

we were really in danger of, for
the first time, not delivering.

And that was just
something that's a no-no.

ILM always delivers
on time and on budget.

And so, it was
all hands on deck.

And even though I
wasn't an effects TD,

they said, "We're bringing you
on. You're going to do effects."

I grew up in upstate New York when
Home Box Office came into being

and you could start seeing
things over and over.

Indiana Jones landed on HBO.

I would watch it over and
over and over again. [LAUGHS]

I wound up majoring
in cognitive science,

a cross-disciplinary
study of linguistics,

philosophy, psychology,
and computer science.

I knew I just wanted to
get a foot in the door

at Industrial Light & Magic.

And so, right after I
graduated, I headed out west.

And I got an interview at ILM.

They said, "Well, you're overqualified
for this production assistant job we have,

"so we're going to make you

"a resource assistant in
computer graphics for Jumanji."

And I was amazed. I
landed in the right place.

The computer graphics department.
This is what I want to do.

[LAUGHS]

There were only probably about 300
or so people at ILM at that time.

And everyone just really
worked together really well,

especially all the TAs.

We were all coming up together.

We were all in our 20s.

And so, we worked really hard,

but we also all played
together really hard.

Perfect Storm was a really
interesting adventure for me.

I jumped in and started learning
how to run particle simulations

and render and
light particle sims.

Up till then, I had never
done any kind of effects work.

I really got so stressed out.

But it was also, you
know, very exciting

when you're doing something
that is so pioneering.

Can we do it? Should we do it?

ING: In the end, it...

I don't know how.

I guess that's
part of the magic.

Somehow, the team always pulls
through and we all come together.

And even if it takes working
seven days a week, um...

we deliver that thing.

[THUNDERCLAP]

STEFEN: I enjoyed
going to the premiere

and just looking at the
other people watching it.

You know, I didn't really
watch the film that much.

I just watched the reaction of
everybody around it at certain moments,

because that's the
most satisfying thing.

The other thing that you
notice, these shots go by...

Three, four-second,
five-second shots.

And just thinking, "God, we worked
on that for three and a half months,

"that one shot, and
now it just goes by."

And that's the most
important thing as well,

that nothing pops
out as being odd.

[WIND GUSHING]

So there is not a moment where
you're breaking the illusion.

Come on!

ING: It was really
effects in service

of telling the story of
these main characters.

And it was natural phenomenon as
opposed to, you know, Galaxy Quest,

crazy critters, and
ridiculous fantastical stuff.

I think it really opened the
door to people realizing that

with enough brainpower,

we would eventually
be able to recreate

anything you can
see in the world.

[AIRCRAFT ENGINES RUMBLING]

[MACHINE g*ns FIRING]

I'm sticking air in your mouth.

Thank you, guys. Really
appreciate it. Thanks.

Thank you so much.

KNOLL: At the end of
Episode I, I had no idea

whether George is happy,
unhappy, dissatisfied, okay.

But then I got a call
asking about my schedule

and when I would want to come over
to Australia for pre-production.

"Oh, okay, well then, I guess
they do want me on Episode II."

George often likes to look at some
established production methodology

and ask why, and is
there a better way,

some new way of working that
nobody else really wanted to try?

Pretty much right at
the beginning, it was,

"One day I'm hoping that we'll be
able to sh**t a film digitally.

"One day, we'll be able to do

"nothing but computer
graphics and effects shots."

KNOLL: One of the big
adjustments on Episode II

was switching to
digital cameras.

That George was looking at

so much of the image
pipeline being digital now,

that even if we shot something on
film, we'd scan it into the computer.

It's a digital image now.

We were doing digital
compositing on it.

We were adding digital
characters to it.

Why do we need to
have film at all?

Could we not capture
the imagery digitally?

Because then it's going to be
in the computer more quickly.

Skip that stage of
going onto film.

And then skip the stage of
going back out onto film.

Let's exhibit this digitally,
let's project it digitally.

Let it be digital imagery
all the way, start to finish.

MAN: George, would
you like these lower?

LUCAS: I think the
high wide is better.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

GEORGE: We were working
under the deadline

of trying to get all the digital
equipment done for Phantom Menace.

Yep, that's good.

We didn't make it.

It took us about six years
altogether to get the digital camera.

There weren't any.
They didn't exist.

Okay...

what I got to do is get a camera company
to build a 24-frame high-def camera.

We had a meeting with Sony

about what did we need
in a digital camera

that we could use to sh**t
a motion picture with,

using the same equipment that was used
to record HD TV at 30 frames a second.

Films are shot at


because that was the speed they
found out that when you project it...


don't see much of a flicker.

You know, it sort
of is smooth action.

And I said, "Look, we really
want to sh**t digitally...

"but we need to
make some changes.

"We don't want to change the
internal dynamics of the camera,

"but it has to be
shot at 24 frames."

You know, the film industry
is a 24-frame format.

They couldn't understand how one
of the most successful franchises

would use a TV broadcast
camera to sh**t a film.

It was just unthinkable to them.

But getting the cameras done...

getting a lens manufacturer
to build them...

[SHARP EXHALE] Wow! That just
was years and years and years.

You saw more detail in the
imagery that you were getting

from the digital camera
than we were seeing on film.

There were all kinds of
disciplines that needed to be...

LUCAS: And is that the program?

...retooled a bit to work
for the kind of scrutiny

that we were now seeing.

I remember the first day of
sh**ting with a digital camera.

We had to bring the makeup department
over to look at the monitor

and show them that doing
makeup for a shot like that,

on a digital camera,

was more like you were
doing a shot like that.

All right, this is a color study
for the grand staircase outside...

Similarly, the art department
went through a learning curve.

Even though the overall feeling was,
yes, everything's going to be CG,

yes, there were almost


but the model shop still
had 80, 100 people in it.

We were still working away.

We're going to go ahead and
grab as many parts as we can

and assemble as much
as we have together.

The first miniature that was
going to be shot digitally,

was Padmé's apartment, and I
was the lead on that model.

We were really bracing ourselves for
the fact that you might see things

that would normally be
hidden by film grain.

There was a lot of
tension in the model shop

before we took that
first model out.

Very, very stressed about it.

This goes down here.

LORNE: Doing a big film
is like going into battle.

You have your sword in your hand
and you're rushing to the forefront.

But if you fall to one knee,

Fon Davis will come along and
lift you up on the other arm,

and you're back on
the b*ttlefield.

But if you fall to both
knees and drop your sword,

Fon Davis is going to run by,

pick up the sword, and
rush to the forefront.

Grab all these interiors.

My dad was Air Force
during the Vietnam w*r.

He met my mom in Saigon.

And I was born...
[LAUGHS] ...in 1970.

And then in 1975,

we moved to the United States
at the end of the Vietnam w*r.

It was a mixed bag.

We weren't accepted in the
United States being Vietnamese,

which is a different type of Asian
than anyone had ever seen before.

And so it was always
a little rough.

I was really into making models

and fabricating things
and building things,

and that was where I could thrive
and where I felt comfortable.

[WHOOSHING]

FON: I thought
Star Wars was neat,

so I went and looked up Star
Wars books in the library.

Ha-ha!

This page here changed my
entire path of my whole future.

This is the first time I had ever
seen professional model makers.

And this is, like, Steve
Gawley and Paul Huston

and Lorne Peterson,
all those guys.

And I thought,
"Wow, that's a job?

[LAUGHS] "I want to
do that for a job."

Started checking out books and
magazines with behind-the-scenes at ILM.

I used to see Larry Tan, Ease Owyeung,
and Greg Jein in these magazines.

And I thought, "Oh,
they let us do that."

Meaning, they let
Asians do this job.

That made it somehow more
viable as a career path for me.

This will actually break into several
sections so cameras can get in.

This has to match the actual
set that they shot in Australia.

This is our palette, the
colors we got from the set.

There's a lot of metallics.

FON: All these rooms
are going to be lit.

You're going to be able to
see the interiors inside,

and of course,
all the exteriors.

Um...

Perfect.

FON: When we took Padmé's
apartment out to the stage

and we started sh**ting it...

the weirdest thing happened.

The miniature looked better in
camera than it did in person again.

And we had no idea
why this was the case.

We talked to the guys from Sony that
were there to help with the cameras,

and they were talking about the
CCD and how it collects light

and how it collects imagery.

Anything between two pixels, it's
going to approximate what that is

and shove it over to
one of the other pixels.

So what you see is
not what you get.

It's going to look really sharp

because everything
is being pixelated

in a way that is very sharp
and defined and clear,

but you're still going to lose
information in between each of the pixels.

It was an amazing thing.

Now we had these really, really beautiful,
crisp, sharp-looking miniatures.

But that's not what they
looked like in person.

It was a huge relief.

DAVID: There's all those
great shots following the ship

as you fly over the terrain and
clone warriors are going by.

I wanted to see what the whole scope
of the work was before we commence.

It's either we're going to do this all
as a giant CD podrace terrain approach

or it makes sense to
build a 20-foot spire

and a section of that landscape
around it and do it as a model sh**t.

KNOLL: I was really happy with
the miniature work that we did.

It was probably my comfort zone.

I was a model maker
when I first started.

And I was a camera operator
sh**ting miniatures.

So this was something I
have a great passion for.

It was a tool that I felt
like I knew how to wield well

and get good results.

And as we got into
Episode II and III,

I got told pretty directly...

"You need to get better at
doing computer graphics,

"because computer
graphics is the future.

"Right now, you are leaning
on these older techniques.

"It's a crutch."

Yeah, we do need
a new background.

"And I'm kicking this crutch out
from under you for your own good,

"because it's going to make you better
at what the future is going to be."

The good thing about the clone
battle is it's only about 90 shots.

I mean, it could
have been much worse.


characters per shot.

I remember all of us... [CHUCKLING]
...pretty much except for George Lucas

thought that we should do the clone
troopers as actors in costumes.

Because we knew it would look good
and be fairly inexpensive, actually,

because we would
just crank them out.

Everyone fought for it,

and George was very dead set on
doing that with performance capture.

[GROANING]

FON: And it was really funny

because John Knoll was
one of the few people

who could have
George Lucas' ear,

and actually pushed him so hard to
do the clone troopers in practical

that one day George just stopped
and he looked at him and he said,

"We're going to do the clones with
mocap, and that's the end of it.

"I don't want to hear another
word." And that was the end of it.

- KNOLL: I'm with you there.
- Okay. All right.

DOUG: His goal was really
always to push the technology

to inform his storytelling.

No one has ever done this.

Let's try it. Let's see
if we can make it work.

COLEMAN: Now, I didn't know if
we were getting too crowded here.

It's when he turns to the
dark side, and we figured...

Yeah, well...

[BLASTERS FIRING]

And the scope and spectacle,
of course, always grew.

A lot of the charm in Star
Wars for me is the visuals.

You know, creating
that spectacle.

Very good.

Very good.

GEORGE: You're about to die.

Extreme terror.
Droids everywhere.

You're going to go to
depressed hopelessness.

To acceptance of death.

- To acceptance of death.
- Yeah.

Oh, nice...

KNOLL: George was very interested
in getting maximum production value

on the budget that
he had available.

And that meant don't build a giant set if
we're going to see it for five seconds.

Let's just build the part
that we really need to build,

and you guys can just
do the rest in post.

Don't worry.

It's being taken care of.

KNOLL: There's a lot of little set
fragments and a lot of blue screen.

Certainly, my sympathies
were to the actors.

That'll do nicely.

[SIGHS] Agree with
you, the council does.

Your apprentice, young
Skywalker will be.

Humina-humina-humina.

Sorry.

When it came time between Phantom
Menace and Attack of the Clones...

I set about creating a digital
Yoda to present to George

that we should be given an
opportunity to animate Yoda.

When we were in
preproduction on Episode I,

George had said that he wanted to
do Yoda on Episode I as a puppet.

My first thought was, "Great."

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

KNOLL: Frank Oz is going to
come in and perform the puppet.

That's a no-brainer. Yes.
Absolutely. We should do that.

The reality of that was,
um, not as pleasing.

The sculpt did not have the same
charm that the original did.

CHIANG: His whole jaw
structure is very different.

GEORGE: Well, he looks flatter.

Like, squished.

- He was sick during the sh**ting of this.
- [LAUGHTER]

It didn't look like Yoda.

His eyes are seriously...

It was really, really bad.

GEORGE: And action.

Always two, there are.

No more. No less.

MAN: Which one was destroyed?

I have one more
damn line, Chris.

[LAUGHTER]

Will you give me a break?

Frank was hilarious.

He liked to stay in character
when we were sh**ting.

But no one could see him.

So the way he interacted
with people on the set

was just to be the
puppet and talk to them.

Okay, here we go.

GEORGE: And action.

Um... I forgot my
line. [CHUCKLES]

- WOMAN: Master.
- Master.

- That's a good take. Can I cut, George?
- GEORGE: Okay, cut.

Oh, my arm is hurting.

KNOLL: Instead of being foam rubber
as it was on Empire and Jedi...

Hey, Maria? I'll take him now.

KNOLL: ...the puppet was made out of
this silicone, so it weighed a lot more.

- OZ: Ready.
- MAN: Okay...

Imagine holding this heavy
puppet up above your head

for two or three minutes...

MAN: Cameras call mark.

KNOLL: ...setting up
and sh**ting a take.

- George would say cut...
- GEORGE: Cut.

Yoda just died. What happened?

MAN: Okay. sh**ting
there, please.

Your... I'm sorry, guys.

KNOLL: On Episode II,
what Yoda needed to do

was really going to be
challenging for a puppet.

You know, he needed to walk
around in a lot of scenes.

And then he has this big
fight scene at the end.

The plan, pre-production
on Attack of the Clones,

was that all acting scenes were
going to continue to be the puppet,

and only the action and
the fight would be digital.

And I thought, "No, we've learned
so much from Watto and Jar Jar,

"I think we can
handle Yoda now."

We were talking
about the eyelids.

I pulled some shots out of
Empire and we studied those.

You must unlearn what
you have learned.

Also, the way that the
lips push together...

Together and in a little bit.

KNOLL: We copied that
performance exactly.

Including things like, you know, the
little bit of wobble in the ears.

Frank would hold the puppet,

but he's holding it for a long time,
and his hand would start to shake.

The ears would start
to wiggle on the ends.

Even between land.

COLEMAN: He told me, "Now,
don't put any wiggle in."

It had to have the wiggle, because
that's where we're used to.

Rob has a test to show you.

COLEMAN: We went
up to Skywalker.

CG Yoda.

I was so nervous
to show this stuff.

These are animated renders.

They don't have any of
the texture or pulp,

but it shows some performance.

Its energy surrounds us...

binds us.

Luminous beings are we,
not this crude matter.

And well you should not.

For my ally is the Force,
and a powerful ally it is.

- Fantastic.
- COLEMAN: Thank you. [CHUCKLES]

And at that point, he made the call,
no puppet in Attack of the Clones.

You study what Frank is
doing inside that head,

you can almost feel the hand
kind of moving like that.

But I didn't want to
go down in history

as the guy who helped create Jar
Jar and the guy who wrecked Yoda.

Junior animators are going
to have a tendency...

Yoda was alive and this
amazing Jedi Master

and had all kinds of
subtlety in his performance.

And I was so inspired
by what Frank did.

It was one of the reasons
I ended up doing what I do.

But if you go back with an
analytical animator mind

and you watch it frame by frame,

we as the audience had projected
so much onto that character.

Its energy surrounds...

In Empire, his mouth is basically
just opening and closing.

It's not forming any
real phoneme shapes.

When we did that
with the CG model,

it kind of looked like we
weren't trying very hard.

COLEMAN: What I wanted to do was animate
what I remembered Yoda looking like,

not what he actually
looked like.

Frank had cautioned me.

"Hey, Rob, you got too
much potential here.

"You can put too
much into the face."

And I went, "I know.

"My intention is to honor
what you did with the puppet

"and just give it a little
bit more in the eyes

"and a little bit in the mouth,

"just to give us a little bit
more range of motion there

"so that we can
get into his head."

...grave danger, you are.

We didn't do full-on
mouth shapes,

but we did just enough to have
him form some of the vowels.

COLEMAN: Some of the actions
that we're doing with the head

in terms of turning
were a little too young.

And I would put a little
bit of bobble in them.

LINDA BEL: We're watching
our actions in the mirror,

and we're putting that
in frame by frame.

Certain shots, and I can tell
who's done which shots...

I can see the
characteristics in there.

It's really subtle, the differences
between what's overacted

and what's not enough
to get the point across.

In grave danger, you are.

It got to a place where it felt like it
lived in part of the puppet aesthetic

and part of the
live-action aesthetic.

The shroud of the
dark side has fallen.

Begun, this Clone Wars has.

- Look how sad...
- Yeah. Poor little Yoda.

Oh, come on, guys.

[LAUGHING]

- Now, that's pathetic.
- I know.

I keep getting these notes saying,
"Has to be a little sadder."

So I said, "Go sad.
Really make..."

All right, sad is
not the right word.

All right, so I got
the right reaction.

- He's reflective, he's concerned.
- Right.

- He's upset.
- Okay.

KEVIN: On a shot like this, they're
probably going through 27, 28 takes

trying to get a certain
moment just right.

I just wonder about his ears.

COLEMAN: The droop at the end?

LUCAS: Maybe let them
stay up a little bit more.

- Keep them up?
- YODA: This Clone w*r has...

- KEVIN: It's nerve-wracking.
- Yeah.

- No, I think it'll work.
- Okay.

Kind of like you're getting taken
to the principal. [CHUCKLES]

Delete a couple keys.

Hopefully he likes it.

COLEMAN: In the early days
of computer animation,

if we had the crutch of talking,

we could keep the
characters "animated" alive.

Their aliveness would fall off many
times when they stopped talking.

We weren't thinking
about the internal voice.

I understand.

COLEMAN: Directors and editors
cut to reactions all the time

so that audience members
can read the scene

from another
character's perspective.

Someone's listening to someone.

Do they trust them? Do
they not trust them?

So for me, the high bar was to
earn a nonverbal reaction shot.

I wanted to earn
that from George.

That nonverbal close-up
didn't come until later.

It's Yoda turning back
to look at Palpatine.

And we see in his face that
he doesn't trust Palpatine.

And the audience gets to see that
through Yoda's facial performance.

And that was...

We made it over the high bar.

And in fact, a frame of
that ended up on the poster.

GEORGE: Hello, Frank.

There's Rob. Do you see him?

- OZ: Hi, Rob. How are you doing?
- Yeah.

- How is the animation going, guys?
- COLEMAN: I think it's going well.

I must say, these guys
have done a great job.

- I think you'll be proud.
- Yeah, they don't whine like I do.

- They do. They follow your every footstep.
- [LAUGHS]

Frank wrote me a letter at
the end of the production

and he was incredibly kind.

Exceptional skills, he has.

He said, "You found
the sweet spot."

"Now I don't have to be underneath
the stage perspiring for hours."

"All I have to do is the voice,
and you guys do all the work.

"I like this.

"Congratulations, and thanks for
staying true to Yoda's character."

I'm surprised. Didn't
think he'd like it.

COLEMAN: So everybody
saw the letter

that Frank Oz sent myself
and all of you this week?

Yes.

COLEMAN: It's a
triumph on our behalf.

So hopefully the fans will like
him as much as Frank and George do.

Hats off to you guys.

I'm very proud of what the
team was able to do there.

Thanks.

I think it's going
to be more like...

- More like that height.
- Okay.

Is he going to turn around
and get off, or hop off?

How does Yoda get in and out of
a chair that's too tall for him?

Levitate.

JOE: Here's this
two-foot tall Jedi Master

- who sort of hobbles along with a stick.
- Yeah.

Then he's fighting Count
Dooku with a laser sword.

That's a huge jump.

Enormous. Enormous.

The sentence that stopped

most of our hearts at
ILM in the script was,

"In a fight that defies description,
Yoda and Count Dooku battle."

That was it.

So I'm immediately over
there to talk to George.

I said, "So, George,
there's this sentence."

And he just starts chuckling.

He goes, "Yeah. You've
got to figure that out."

I'm like, "Excuse me?"
"Yeah, yeah. Off you go."

So I said, "Well, what's
the style of fighting?"

And he said, "Think of him
as the Tasmanian Devil."

And I thought of spinning.

I'm like, "No, don't tell me that.
I don't want that image in my head."

We started to work
on Yoda fighting.

Look at this. You get this?

GEORGE: I would think of him more
like a frog. He would spring around.

- He has big thighs.
- I see.

Illegitimate child of Kermit
the Frog and Miss Piggy.

Oh, man. Very disturbed
picture in my head right now.

[LAUGHTER]

Rob has this look when
he's worried about things.

I saw Rob walking
across the set,

and I was like, "Hey, man, what are
you going to do for this Yoda fight?"

And he goes, "I have no idea."

"No one has ever seen Yoda move.

"This will be the biggest
moment of Attack of the Clones.

"Let me just help you
craft this fight."

[CLACKING AND TAPPING]

COLEMAN: Ahmed had
studied martial arts.

He's also a huge anime fan.

So I said, "Come to the crib.
We'll watch some videos."

COLEMAN: He was showing
me some samurai animes,

and we were talking about
different fighting styles.

Like Bruce Lee and
Jackie Chan and stuff.

[GRUNTING AND GROANING]

It's just all starting
to go into the head.

Then I saw Swordsman
II, the Jet Li film...

and these ninjas, and
they start flying.

The panic just went... boop.

Now I could see Yoda.

MAN: Okay, do a lens
change on the Technocrane.

- Now you're up against it.
- A vampire.

I didn't think you'd
do that to me, George.

[LAUGHING]

'Cause he's so small and Dooku's so
tall, I had to get them moving around.

When would Yoda
be on the ground?

When would he go up onto Dooku's
ship? When would he flip over here?

GEORGE: Should he be
using two hands here?

COLEMAN: His arms are so small.

We could cheat it and
still get it with one hand,

lift it up, and have
the other hand...

But, yeah, it would be in
a more samurai-ish pose.

That process was six months.

Yoda pushes it away
low and then jumps.

Once those pieces came together,

we animated that fight
in about three weeks.

This is your first time
actually seeing that.

Yeah. That looks good.

- Looks great.
- Okay.

There was one missing part.

The entrance.

So originally, as scripted
and the way they shot it,

the audience see the 800, 900-year-old
Yoda come in that we knew,

and they immediately
went into the fight.

It's just too much of a
jump for the audience.

GEORGE: Here it looks like the
whole thing is being held...

- Yeah.
- It should look like it drops,

and then it sort of
propels it in a direction.

- Then it's gravity that's taking it down.
- Okay.

They then came up with a
series of events that happen.

So Dooku is throwing
debris at Yoda

and he's pulling the
roof down on him,

and at each time, Yoda is
able to just deal with it.

- I would suspend this moment.
- Okay.

So that you have a
chance to do something

- a bit more... Yeah.
- Something extra with his hand.

GEORGE: And he can sort of do
a little crinkle on his eyes.

- COLEMAN: Okay.
- And then he can open his eyes.

- Okay.
- So maybe 12 frames or so.

COLEMAN: Yep.

Then this next one is him
pushing back the lightning.

We need to make it a little bit
more deliberate than the videomatic

so that we can see the
power of what's going on.

Slow the whole thing
down maybe 20%.

And I loved that he
added the lightning in,

because we had just seen
Anakin get dispatched.

And here was Yoda taking the
lightning and crushing it

and dealing with it immediately.

So it just told the audience that
Yoda was at a whole other level

beyond where Anakin or Obi-Wan,
who had been wiped out by Dooku.

[BUZZING]

Much to learn, you still have.

We've just gone a notch up here.

George said, "You
know what we need?"

He can sort of pull it open.

Yeah, like Clint would do.

The cowboy pushing back his
duster, revealing the lightsaber.

My biggest thing...

I was like, "Rob, if you
don't put anything else,

"he has to hit a stance."

"Has to be like, boom...
Like that Bruce Lee stance."

COLEMAN: Tim Harrington
came up with the idea,

and he uses the Force to pull
the lightsaber into his hand...

and lights it up.

The second we saw that
animated, everybody knew.

It was like, "This is
something special."

[INDISTINCT CHATTER, SHOUTING]

MAN: Chewie! Chewie!

COLEMAN: I saw it in San Francisco
with a crowd on the first day.

They had no idea I was there.

I was terrified.

Very important moment.

I convinced myself we created
something really great,

but in fact, it was going to
be laughed at by the audience.

Enjoy the movie.

[EXCLAIMS]

Whoo!

DENNIS: There was such concerns.

I remember that Rob was going to
leave the theater or something

when the swordfight came up
before they k*lled him. [LAUGHS]

Star Wars!

[CHEERING]

[CHEERING AND APPLAUDING]

[YODA GRUNTING]

COLEMAN: The scene's
coming closer and closer,

and I'm, like, sliding down in my seat,
because I'm waiting for the reaction.

[LIGHTSABER BUZZING]

[GROANING]

[AUDIENCE CHEERING]

[LIGHTSABER HUMMING]

When he pulled out his
lightsaber, they went nuts.

[LIGHTSABERS BUZZING, CRACKLING]

COLEMAN: You could
barely hear anything,

because the audience
was losing their minds.

It was fantastic.

That would be, like, the
highlight of my life.

Fought well you
have, my old Padawan.

GEORGE: But are you using
the Force on the end there?

Yeah, with him? Are you making
him flop around like a dead fish?

- No.
- 'Cause I see you going like...

- No, no, no.
- GEORGE: Action!

It's all magic.

I knew I could use those films

to make people believe
that digital cinema works.

BURTT: George, for
want of a better term,

was becoming the poster
boy of digital cinema

whereas many other, you know,
directors were still skeptical,

not wanting to leave the comforts
and the wonderful nature of film.

I was obsessed.

I said, "That's what
I'm going to do."

Who cares about eye lines?

I'm going to turn the film
industry into a digital industry.

[CHUCKLING]

KNOLL: After the
release of Episode II,

I got asked to participate
in this digital summit

that George held
out at the Ranch.

There were some big names there.

I think Robert Rodriguez was
there, Oliver Stone, Michael Mann.

There were a whole
bunch of people there.

They were the people
who stood up and said,

"Okay, this is
interesting, I'll do this.

"If you build the cameras and you
build the stuff, we'll use it."

But out of, what, 20,000 people,

there was a couple of hundred
that said we'll do it.

This is like the gathering
of the first group of people

that actually as
directors use the medium.

KNOLL: I think what George
was trying to accomplish was

spreading the word that
the tools are viable

to let you sh**t a film digitally
and exhibit it digitally.

That this is nothing
to be afraid of.

The tools are
perfectly approachable.

And you can do a
big movie this way.

Twenty years and tens of
millions of dollars...

went into building
digital technology.

I don't think anybody realized how
much work went into that idea...

- MAN: Cut.
- That was beautiful.

- ...of converting the industry over.
- GEORGE: That was magnificent.

We're all individual artists. We
all work completely differently.

We all see things differently, which
is what makes it all interesting.

But this is cinema.

It has really to do with
the eye of the artist,

what technology we use.

And it's like asking what brush you
use when you're doing a painting.

Everybody else was
just very down on it.

Because it changed everything.

It means you had to relearn
what you had learned.

But I kept saying, you
know, it's so much easier.

You can do anything.

If it's quicker and faster and
better and it's more malleable

and you can do more stuff with it
and it's cheaper, you know, why not?

'Cause we all are faced
with this resource issue,

how much money they give
us to make these things.

It's so much easier to do
the things you want to do.

KNOLL: My entire
tenure at the company

has been to follow on a lot
of the things that I saw

that the original
pioneers at ILM doing,

which was to gradually remove
restrictions on how things were shot...

so that filmmakers can
create visual effects

like it's any other
part of filmmaking.

And a director can essentially ignore that
something is going to be visual effects.

Don't treat it special.

It is like any other
part of the movie,

and I'll handle any
technical issues that pop up.

I want the filmmaker to just free
the technical from their mind

and just think about story.

[YELLING]