1 00:00:12,303 --> 00:00:14,222 Star Wars comes out in the summer of '77. 2 00:00:14,305 --> 00:00:17,851 I'm 13, living on a cattle ranch in Shawnee, Colorado. 3 00:00:17,934 --> 00:00:20,687 - For me, at ten years old. - I was about 18 or something. 4 00:00:20,770 --> 00:00:23,732 I must have been... I don't know, about nine. 5 00:00:23,815 --> 00:00:25,316 At the age of 15, 6 00:00:27,652 --> 00:00:33,867 I hear this film is supposed to change the way people make movies. 7 00:00:33,950 --> 00:00:37,537 I was watching Saturday Night Live, and this commercial comes up and... 8 00:00:38,913 --> 00:00:40,707 Somewhere in space... 9 00:00:41,291 --> 00:00:42,375 Coming in too fast! 10 00:00:42,500 --> 00:00:45,086 This may all be happening right now. 11 00:00:47,338 --> 00:00:48,506 Star Wars. 12 00:00:51,176 --> 00:00:52,469 I didn't go into it cold. 13 00:00:52,552 --> 00:00:54,971 We knew that it was some big kind of space opera. 14 00:00:59,559 --> 00:01:03,438 I saw Star Wars the weekend it opened at Grauman's Chinese Theater. 15 00:01:03,521 --> 00:01:05,899 I went to see it in Leicester Square with a few friends. 16 00:01:05,982 --> 00:01:07,067 I was in Hong Kong. 17 00:01:07,150 --> 00:01:10,612 In a multiplex at the Briar wood Mall in Ann Arbor. 18 00:01:10,695 --> 00:01:13,656 Bunch of my friends waited in line for, you know, like 12 hours. 19 00:01:13,740 --> 00:01:16,242 And that film had a profound effect on me. 20 00:01:16,326 --> 00:01:18,411 Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper? 21 00:01:18,495 --> 00:01:20,330 - Huh? - It was absolutely fantastic. 22 00:01:20,413 --> 00:01:21,831 It was just magical. 23 00:01:21,915 --> 00:01:23,333 It was just stunning. 24 00:01:23,416 --> 00:01:26,169 It was like discovering another floor of your house. 25 00:01:26,252 --> 00:01:29,130 It was like, "What? I can go there?" 26 00:01:29,214 --> 00:01:30,548 This is Red Five. I'm goin' in. 27 00:01:35,053 --> 00:01:38,848 My reaction was, "Wow, they could make movies like that?" 28 00:01:38,973 --> 00:01:40,391 I mean, it really opened my eyes. 29 00:01:40,475 --> 00:01:45,188 It took everything to another level on such a massive scale. 30 00:01:51,402 --> 00:01:55,365 We walked out and all I did was say to Cheryl, "Want to see it again?" 31 00:01:55,448 --> 00:01:56,908 And she said, "Yes." 32 00:01:57,242 --> 00:02:01,955 And we walked over into the next two hour line and watched it again. 33 00:02:02,080 --> 00:02:07,669 What? Like, there was nothing I couldn't even... There are no words even still 34 00:02:07,752 --> 00:02:10,338 to describe what that felt like. 35 00:02:10,421 --> 00:02:12,966 I went home and I said, "I'm quitting my job." 36 00:02:13,508 --> 00:02:16,761 "You have to pay the bills for a while. I wanna make a film." 37 00:03:05,143 --> 00:03:10,773 When Star Wars ended, I went back to doing commercials for a little bit. 38 00:03:11,733 --> 00:03:14,485 And figuring, well, that's it, you know how movies are. 39 00:03:14,569 --> 00:03:15,737 That's the end of that. 40 00:03:16,154 --> 00:03:18,531 We did our job. We worked really hard, had a great time, 41 00:03:18,656 --> 00:03:21,242 and then went on our separate ways. 42 00:03:21,326 --> 00:03:22,994 They split up because they wouldn't... 43 00:03:23,077 --> 00:03:25,705 They were down in LA for six to nine months, 44 00:03:26,206 --> 00:03:28,791 and I wasn't doing anything. ILM didn't exist. 45 00:03:30,043 --> 00:03:32,403 I worked on Close Encounters for a few months. 46 00:03:32,503 --> 00:03:35,715 Doug Trumbull was just setting up, and they needed somebody... 47 00:03:35,840 --> 00:03:38,218 We ended up shooting the mothers hip. 48 00:03:40,803 --> 00:03:46,309 Jon Erland and I, we got a call from the producer on Flesh Gordon. 49 00:03:46,517 --> 00:03:49,145 Flesh Gordon... 50 00:03:49,229 --> 00:03:50,897 Journey with Flesh Gordon... 51 00:03:50,980 --> 00:03:52,941 Not Flash Gordon, Flesh Gordon. 52 00:03:55,985 --> 00:03:58,613 And John Dykstra immediately called us into the office. 53 00:03:58,696 --> 00:04:01,532 He said, "What in the world are you guys doing?" 54 00:04:01,616 --> 00:04:03,743 And he said, "There's a project that's coming along. 55 00:04:03,826 --> 00:04:06,496 "I promise you, if you can wait another three weeks or something," 56 00:04:06,579 --> 00:04:08,248 "there is a big project that's coming." 57 00:04:08,331 --> 00:04:12,502 I didn't want Star Wars to finish. I didn't drag my feet, but I didn't... 58 00:04:12,627 --> 00:04:15,922 I-I... The experience 59 00:04:16,005 --> 00:04:21,511 was so enjoyable and so enlightening. 60 00:04:21,761 --> 00:04:26,349 Everything about it was it was brilliant and I didn't want it to end. 61 00:04:34,399 --> 00:04:37,568 I wanted to keep that place, and I wanted to keep those people. 62 00:04:37,694 --> 00:04:40,071 More than anything, I wanted to keep those people. 63 00:04:40,154 --> 00:04:41,614 Those people were my friends. 64 00:04:41,698 --> 00:04:44,701 Those are the people that I spent Thanksgiving dinner with. 65 00:04:45,076 --> 00:04:47,954 It was so exciting every day. Coming to work was fun. 66 00:04:48,496 --> 00:04:52,250 I went, "This is what I want to do." 67 00:04:53,710 --> 00:04:57,505 But at the time, even though Star Wars was a great success, 68 00:04:57,797 --> 00:04:59,799 there was no way of knowing for certain 69 00:05:00,133 --> 00:05:04,637 whether ILM would continue or dissolve or whatever. 70 00:05:08,099 --> 00:05:11,728 So I pursued doing Battlestar Galactica. 71 00:05:13,021 --> 00:05:15,565 He created a company called Apogee. 72 00:05:16,065 --> 00:05:19,569 And Apogee got the contract for doing Galactica. 73 00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:24,907 I came back and I was probably there on Galactica for maybe like eight months. 74 00:05:25,158 --> 00:05:31,831 So that crew that had finished the work on the first Star Wars was still together 75 00:05:32,206 --> 00:05:37,128 doing additional work in that environment, with that equipment. 76 00:05:37,211 --> 00:05:39,964 We got the tools, we got the people. 77 00:05:40,048 --> 00:05:42,550 I think we were still in the unknown for Galactica 78 00:05:42,675 --> 00:05:46,054 wondering, "Why is George doing this? Why is he letting us do this?" 79 00:05:46,220 --> 00:05:51,768 I lent it to John Dykstra to do Battlestar Galactica 80 00:05:51,851 --> 00:05:53,436 while I was off writing. 81 00:05:53,519 --> 00:05:55,146 So we produced the stuff 82 00:05:55,229 --> 00:05:58,524 for Battlestar Galactica, and I think that's when George decided 83 00:05:58,608 --> 00:06:01,694 he wanted to take the equipment and move it to Marin. 84 00:06:03,571 --> 00:06:06,032 I just said, "Look, I don't want to live down there." 85 00:06:06,115 --> 00:06:08,284 We said, "Well, let's just move to San Francisco." 86 00:06:08,368 --> 00:06:10,161 "We don't have to make movies in LA." 87 00:06:11,329 --> 00:06:15,750 I was working in the model shop on Galactica and Richard Edlund 88 00:06:15,833 --> 00:06:20,129 came downstairs and he said, "There's a phone call for you upstairs," 89 00:06:20,213 --> 00:06:21,506 not saying it very loud. 90 00:06:21,964 --> 00:06:24,008 I said, "Well, who wants to talk to me?" 91 00:06:24,092 --> 00:06:27,428 There's a phone right here, you know. He said, "No, no." 92 00:06:27,762 --> 00:06:33,476 "Go upstairs and take a phone that's off the hook at Joe's desk." 93 00:06:33,935 --> 00:06:35,103 "Go right now." 94 00:06:36,979 --> 00:06:40,066 And it was George and Gary, 95 00:06:40,149 --> 00:06:44,320 "and then they said, " We want to do the sequel in Northern California, 96 00:06:44,737 --> 00:06:48,074 "but don't exclaim, don't spread the word that" 97 00:06:48,199 --> 00:06:50,118 "we're talking to a very few people." 98 00:06:51,536 --> 00:06:55,081 There was all this talk about a sequel and George is working on it. 99 00:06:55,164 --> 00:07:00,002 And so, basically, I said, "Look, if I get a call from up north", 100 00:07:00,086 --> 00:07:03,339 "you know I'm going to take that phone call, and I'd be stupid not to." 101 00:07:03,423 --> 00:07:05,716 And we were all sort of saying the same thing. 102 00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:09,345 We did hear that maybe George might be doing another Star Wars movie. 103 00:07:09,595 --> 00:07:15,268 Dennis was the slam dunk to be hired, and I knew I would be hired and Ken. 104 00:07:16,352 --> 00:07:19,522 I went to them and said, "Would you like to come up to San Francisco?" 105 00:07:19,605 --> 00:07:21,357 "We'll pay for getting you up there. 106 00:07:21,441 --> 00:07:23,609 "We'll find you a house," that whole thing. 107 00:07:24,026 --> 00:07:27,321 It was performance-based. It was who had done the best jobs. 108 00:07:27,738 --> 00:07:29,699 Some people didn't want to go up there. 109 00:07:29,949 --> 00:07:32,535 Some people who we had to try to convince to come up, 110 00:07:33,119 --> 00:07:35,079 but we knew we wanted Richard and Dennis. 111 00:07:36,330 --> 00:07:38,124 Filmmaking was really important to me, 112 00:07:38,207 --> 00:07:40,251 and I certainly saw that in George and I saw it 113 00:07:40,334 --> 00:07:43,171 in the people that also got invited up north. 114 00:07:43,713 --> 00:07:47,008 It's like they went through and picked the people that they thought, 115 00:07:47,091 --> 00:07:50,178 "Well, here's someone who is a kindred soul." 116 00:07:50,386 --> 00:07:52,096 Who am I to argue? 117 00:07:52,180 --> 00:07:55,850 I mean, here we had this incredibly well-received movie 118 00:07:55,933 --> 00:08:00,396 that I knew that our reputations were on the line to best it with Empire. 119 00:08:02,023 --> 00:08:05,860 And so basically when the phone call came in, I left. 120 00:08:06,819 --> 00:08:09,489 For me, I mean, it was no question. 121 00:08:09,572 --> 00:08:14,702 I could stay and work in this sort of rundown warehouse 122 00:08:15,161 --> 00:08:17,538 in Van Nuys or I could move to Marin County 123 00:08:17,622 --> 00:08:20,291 and start a whole new visual effects facility. 124 00:08:20,791 --> 00:08:26,172 I think most of those guys were very much of that kind of person 125 00:08:26,255 --> 00:08:29,425 that would rather be in a place like Marin than Van Nuys. 126 00:08:30,635 --> 00:08:33,804 The day of awakening, that actually was the last straw, 127 00:08:34,514 --> 00:08:37,934 I was sitting outside in Van Nuys, where we were doing Galactica. 128 00:08:39,769 --> 00:08:42,772 The Van Nuys airport is a half block away. 129 00:08:43,189 --> 00:08:47,026 It's 105 degrees, we're facing due west into the sun, 130 00:08:47,318 --> 00:08:49,654 and the sky was orange and yellow. 131 00:08:50,029 --> 00:08:52,031 And it dawned on me, this is hell. 132 00:08:54,242 --> 00:08:58,287 And I have a chance to get out of hell and go to someplace else, 133 00:08:58,371 --> 00:08:59,789 and I just... And that was it. 134 00:09:01,999 --> 00:09:04,669 I don't know. I mean, it was... 135 00:09:05,545 --> 00:09:06,587 It's weird, right? 136 00:09:06,712 --> 00:09:10,967 Because the business of moving up north, I wasn't invited to go. 137 00:09:15,638 --> 00:09:18,808 I think he fully understood that that was going to be the case. 138 00:09:19,267 --> 00:09:22,812 I think he realized that there was a bridge on fire there. 139 00:09:23,646 --> 00:09:25,147 He did a great job. 140 00:09:26,732 --> 00:09:30,152 But he was in a very difficult position when he was making the movie. 141 00:09:30,361 --> 00:09:31,946 He was under a lot of pressure. 142 00:09:32,071 --> 00:09:34,156 He was, I think, over his head. 143 00:09:34,240 --> 00:09:37,326 So when changes would happen, he would get very angry. 144 00:09:37,451 --> 00:09:39,245 I was not... 145 00:09:39,870 --> 00:09:44,000 Oh, shoot. I don't know, what was I not? 146 00:09:44,625 --> 00:09:46,502 Um... 147 00:09:46,586 --> 00:09:50,256 It wasn't... I can't even say that he wanted a company man. 148 00:09:50,881 --> 00:09:52,633 I just... 149 00:09:53,342 --> 00:09:57,346 I probably was just too young and volatile. 150 00:09:59,390 --> 00:10:03,060 John Dykstra called me into the office and he was really angry. 151 00:10:03,603 --> 00:10:06,939 He actually took his desk, and he lifted it up 152 00:10:07,106 --> 00:10:09,400 about four inches and he slammed it down, 153 00:10:09,483 --> 00:10:13,571 you know, and all the stuff on the table, it was like... 154 00:10:14,614 --> 00:10:17,408 Let's face it, you win an Oscar, 155 00:10:18,075 --> 00:10:21,203 and then you get left at the station. 156 00:10:21,287 --> 00:10:23,831 How does that make sense? 157 00:10:23,914 --> 00:10:25,124 I don't know. 158 00:10:25,291 --> 00:10:31,505 The only thing I do know is that that must have hurt really badly. 159 00:10:32,465 --> 00:10:35,176 You know, it wasn't... Uh... 160 00:10:35,259 --> 00:10:39,138 Am I disappointed that I wasn't invited? Of course. 161 00:10:39,513 --> 00:10:43,434 But we got to break a lot of ground. 162 00:10:44,060 --> 00:10:46,854 And you know, there was, there were some chip... 163 00:10:46,937 --> 00:10:49,231 There was some chipped paint and there was some dents 164 00:10:49,315 --> 00:10:51,067 and a few scratches here and there. 165 00:10:51,233 --> 00:10:55,071 But it was so much fun. 166 00:10:56,447 --> 00:10:59,408 It really was a lot of fun, and I think that it was so tragic 167 00:10:59,492 --> 00:11:01,911 when we all split up. 168 00:11:03,079 --> 00:11:05,039 It was like breaking up a family. 169 00:11:17,635 --> 00:11:19,762 It was just going to be for a two-year job. 170 00:11:19,845 --> 00:11:21,305 That's all they would guarantee. 171 00:11:21,389 --> 00:11:24,934 So I said, okay, and then managed to convince my other friends 172 00:11:25,017 --> 00:11:27,978 who wanted to come up and so we all kind of moved up as a group. 173 00:11:28,104 --> 00:11:29,647 That's kind of where it started, 174 00:11:29,730 --> 00:11:31,857 and that's when we were at the Kerner facility. 175 00:11:37,196 --> 00:11:41,492 When we first moved into the building, it was a single story structure, 176 00:11:41,575 --> 00:11:43,035 with no walls at all. 177 00:11:43,202 --> 00:11:46,205 It had a front door and offices and bathrooms at the front, 178 00:11:46,288 --> 00:11:48,249 and then it was just an open warehouse. 179 00:11:51,961 --> 00:11:53,921 We didn't even have the whole building. 180 00:11:54,046 --> 00:11:57,550 There was an auto mechanic right next to us and somebody else next to that. 181 00:11:57,633 --> 00:12:00,136 There was an open vacant field outside 182 00:12:00,219 --> 00:12:02,138 where we actually blew up stuff for a while. 183 00:12:02,430 --> 00:12:04,181 No frills, believe me. 184 00:12:04,932 --> 00:12:07,393 I remember one of the producers said, 185 00:12:07,893 --> 00:12:10,062 "Well, you know, we'll never fill this up." 186 00:12:10,813 --> 00:12:14,442 And within six weeks we had already started building the second floor. 187 00:12:15,317 --> 00:12:17,695 I mean, it was a lot of just mundane stuff 188 00:12:17,778 --> 00:12:19,989 we had to take care of as it started to take form. 189 00:12:20,072 --> 00:12:23,367 I can still remember the pieces to the Dykstraflex showing up, 190 00:12:23,576 --> 00:12:28,330 and we were all sitting around going, "How did this go together?" 191 00:12:32,543 --> 00:12:36,964 We had to get going really quickly, and somebody came up with the idea, 192 00:12:37,047 --> 00:12:40,092 well, if the carpenters would give us 2x4s, 193 00:12:40,176 --> 00:12:43,763 we would just lay out the rooms, and where the doorways would be, 194 00:12:43,929 --> 00:12:45,347 without doing drawings. 195 00:12:45,765 --> 00:12:50,227 And so they just started building walls and everything where we said. 196 00:12:51,645 --> 00:12:55,316 You know, I'd arrive in the morning and the 2x4s would be moved over two feet 197 00:12:55,399 --> 00:12:59,153 into my department, you know, to make someone's hallway a little bit wider. 198 00:13:00,029 --> 00:13:05,284 The model shop was not quite big enough 199 00:13:05,701 --> 00:13:08,621 and there was a hallway where they put 200 00:13:08,704 --> 00:13:13,292 all the drill presses and bandsaws, and it was just like... 201 00:13:13,918 --> 00:13:16,504 That's a huge mistake you know, 202 00:13:16,587 --> 00:13:19,298 'cause there's just a lot of traffic going through them. 203 00:13:19,381 --> 00:13:21,967 And it was just waiting for an accident to happen. 204 00:13:22,218 --> 00:13:25,137 So I made a mold of my index finger 205 00:13:25,304 --> 00:13:29,934 and cast it and painted it up and painted the stump to look bloody 206 00:13:30,601 --> 00:13:33,604 and put it on the band saw and just left it there. 207 00:13:34,313 --> 00:13:39,151 And, you know, days later, the saw was gone. 208 00:13:44,073 --> 00:13:47,368 We've got a tour of the facility up here, 209 00:13:47,493 --> 00:13:49,620 then went back to where George was working 210 00:13:49,703 --> 00:13:52,998 and saw the artwork that had been done or was being done, 211 00:13:53,499 --> 00:13:57,503 by Joe Johnston and Ralph McQuarrie had also been working on. 212 00:14:03,759 --> 00:14:06,053 That was just stunning, the work for Empire. 213 00:14:06,136 --> 00:14:11,225 This was just really a big step beyond what Star Wars was. 214 00:14:13,185 --> 00:14:16,021 From the scale of the film to the scale of the effects, 215 00:14:17,773 --> 00:14:20,067 all these different locations that all needed 216 00:14:20,150 --> 00:14:21,610 to be problem solved. 217 00:14:23,445 --> 00:14:28,701 We knew we had to top Star Wars, and that's no mean feat. 218 00:14:29,743 --> 00:14:32,454 It was a little bit scary, 219 00:14:33,873 --> 00:14:36,584 and a thousand percent exciting. 220 00:14:41,130 --> 00:14:42,798 It was pretty overwhelming 221 00:14:42,882 --> 00:14:46,635 when I arrived to work on The Empire Strikes Back. 222 00:14:46,969 --> 00:14:51,682 I had done matte paintings on Star Wars 223 00:14:51,765 --> 00:14:56,520 and probably there's only about a dozen in the movie. 224 00:14:57,313 --> 00:14:58,981 Maybe not even that many. 225 00:14:59,857 --> 00:15:06,196 But suddenly... Oh, God, I had 150, I don't remember. 226 00:15:06,655 --> 00:15:09,283 One of the difficulties, of course, was to staff it. 227 00:15:09,575 --> 00:15:13,078 Because they had to re-staff the company, and I was a supervisor. 228 00:15:13,162 --> 00:15:16,165 You know, in Star Wars, we didn't really know what we were doing. 229 00:15:16,248 --> 00:15:17,791 Now we knew what we were doing 230 00:15:17,875 --> 00:15:19,835 and we had to do it again and do it better. 231 00:15:19,919 --> 00:15:22,963 You know, my mother was interested in what I was doing, 232 00:15:23,130 --> 00:15:27,593 and I'm working on budgets and scheduling, you know, working with a calculator 233 00:15:27,676 --> 00:15:31,847 and you know the calendars and she said, "Well, how much money?" 234 00:15:31,931 --> 00:15:33,766 "What are you talking about money?" 235 00:15:33,849 --> 00:15:36,393 And I said, "Well, I think my budget" 236 00:15:36,477 --> 00:15:39,855 "for this year is going to be about three million," and it just... 237 00:15:40,856 --> 00:15:44,693 All of a sudden, I knew that she wanted to end the conversation 238 00:15:44,777 --> 00:15:46,278 and go off to the neighbors 239 00:15:46,362 --> 00:15:48,864 and somehow blend that into the conversation 240 00:15:48,948 --> 00:15:54,036 that her son was working on the budgets for that next year at $3 million. 241 00:15:54,578 --> 00:15:58,707 I lived in San Rafael, and I actually hadn't seen Star Wars. 242 00:15:58,791 --> 00:16:00,167 I didn't get out much. 243 00:16:00,709 --> 00:16:02,002 I was looking for a job. 244 00:16:02,086 --> 00:16:06,215 I had two young kids, and I saw this ad in the paper 245 00:16:06,298 --> 00:16:08,759 for a receptionist and assistant bookkeeper. 246 00:16:09,426 --> 00:16:13,389 So I met with Jane Bay, who had just recently been hired 247 00:16:13,472 --> 00:16:15,808 as George's executive assistant. 248 00:16:16,308 --> 00:16:19,895 I was just really going in for a job, I never anticipated 249 00:16:20,813 --> 00:16:21,814 getting a career. 250 00:16:21,897 --> 00:16:25,234 Thought didn't enter my mind. 251 00:16:25,985 --> 00:16:28,404 Joe came in '78. 252 00:16:28,487 --> 00:16:33,617 He was the first ILMer I met and, you know, 253 00:16:33,701 --> 00:16:36,245 the first real artist I think I'd ever met. 254 00:16:36,328 --> 00:16:40,499 I mean, you know, there wasn't a whole lot to do at first. 255 00:16:40,582 --> 00:16:44,878 George hadn't finished the script yet. He had some sequences. 256 00:16:45,004 --> 00:16:50,175 One of them was the battle on Hoth, the ice planet. 257 00:16:51,176 --> 00:16:57,141 And George said, "Just draw some interesting shots." 258 00:16:57,683 --> 00:17:04,148 The rebels are here and the Imperial Army is coming on this ice plane 259 00:17:04,648 --> 00:17:07,985 and I remember him showing me a clip 260 00:17:08,068 --> 00:17:11,947 from the Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky, 261 00:17:12,031 --> 00:17:15,200 which is the beginning of this battle on the ice. 262 00:17:20,664 --> 00:17:25,878 And he had this shot where it's just the ice plane and you can't see anything. 263 00:17:27,629 --> 00:17:30,966 And then way off in the distance, you see those tiny little figures 264 00:17:31,508 --> 00:17:32,634 marching toward you. 265 00:17:33,135 --> 00:17:36,722 And I remember him distinctly saying, 266 00:17:38,140 --> 00:17:41,935 "I don't want it to look like this. I want it to feel like this." 267 00:17:43,103 --> 00:17:46,190 You know, they might be five miles away, but you know they're coming 268 00:17:46,273 --> 00:17:47,524 and they can't be stopped. 269 00:17:55,449 --> 00:17:57,576 George knew he wanted this big snow battle. 270 00:17:58,494 --> 00:18:01,747 And it had yet to be determined, you know, the process. 271 00:18:01,830 --> 00:18:06,752 So there were designs that Joe had done, wheeled radio controlled vehicles, 272 00:18:06,835 --> 00:18:13,801 or Gary Kurtz wanted to gussy up Norwegian tanks, you know, and... 273 00:18:14,301 --> 00:18:18,597 We had a design for the Imperial vehicle that had treads on it. 274 00:18:19,431 --> 00:18:22,726 And Gary had arranged with the Norwegian army 275 00:18:24,144 --> 00:18:28,857 to borrow, like, six tanks or something. 276 00:18:29,817 --> 00:18:33,570 He gave me a picture of the tank that they were going to borrow, 277 00:18:33,946 --> 00:18:36,698 "and he says, " Design something that we can cover this with 278 00:18:36,782 --> 00:18:38,117 "that doesn't look like a tank." 279 00:18:38,242 --> 00:18:41,161 "And I said, " Okay, well, it's going to look like a tank 280 00:18:41,245 --> 00:18:44,123 "if you see treads, it's always going to feel like a tank." 281 00:18:44,706 --> 00:18:46,291 So all this stuff was flying around, 282 00:18:46,375 --> 00:18:50,254 and I think pretty much Dennis convinced George 283 00:18:50,337 --> 00:18:54,299 to do it stop motion, in that we had total control 284 00:18:54,383 --> 00:18:56,635 over everything, and these things were machines, 285 00:18:56,718 --> 00:19:00,347 and it would lend itself to stop motion work 286 00:19:00,430 --> 00:19:03,308 in a believable, you know, kind of a way. 287 00:19:04,351 --> 00:19:08,105 I found this brochure from the U.S. Steel Corporation, 288 00:19:08,438 --> 00:19:10,357 and they had produced this thing in the '60s. 289 00:19:10,774 --> 00:19:12,860 They were illustrations by Syd Mead. 290 00:19:17,156 --> 00:19:20,492 "And it was all about, " This is what steel is going to be in the future. 291 00:19:20,784 --> 00:19:22,911 And his illustrations were really amazing. 292 00:19:24,163 --> 00:19:25,914 This portfolio was fantastic. 293 00:19:27,332 --> 00:19:30,169 U.S. Steel would give it to you if you just requested it. 294 00:19:30,669 --> 00:19:34,006 So everybody in the industrial design department had one of these 295 00:19:34,089 --> 00:19:37,885 portfolios tacked to the wall, you know, just to 296 00:19:39,303 --> 00:19:41,930 make them sad that they couldn't paint that way, but... 297 00:19:42,973 --> 00:19:47,227 And one of the illustrations was... They called it... It was a truck, 298 00:19:47,311 --> 00:19:49,438 but it was a four-legged truck. 299 00:19:53,775 --> 00:19:56,195 And it was walking through the woods in the snow, 300 00:19:56,486 --> 00:19:57,946 and I said, "That's it." 301 00:19:59,156 --> 00:20:02,743 Instead of a truck, we're going to make a military vehicle out of it. 302 00:20:02,826 --> 00:20:06,371 So, I studied military vehicles, you know, to look at detail. 303 00:20:06,455 --> 00:20:11,335 "And I said, " Okay, once we've got this thing on four legs, 304 00:20:11,960 --> 00:20:15,631 "we have to make an anthropomorphic, it has to look like it is a creature." 305 00:20:17,132 --> 00:20:21,595 And Joe, I guess, kind of imagined, like a dinosaur kind of effect. 306 00:20:22,387 --> 00:20:24,806 It was actually a huge prehistoric mammal 307 00:20:24,890 --> 00:20:27,434 called a Baluchitherium which was kind of 308 00:20:28,101 --> 00:20:30,395 the conceptual model for the thing. 309 00:20:32,022 --> 00:20:34,441 Let's put the cockpit out in front on a neck. 310 00:20:35,317 --> 00:20:38,862 And it can look around, and it's got these gun ports 311 00:20:38,946 --> 00:20:40,614 that they sort of look like eyes. 312 00:20:41,198 --> 00:20:44,826 And it's got these guns underneath it, you know, almost look like teeth. 313 00:20:45,077 --> 00:20:48,288 While he was working on that, Jon Berg was doing prototypes 314 00:20:48,372 --> 00:20:52,084 for how the walkers could function as a stop motion character. 315 00:20:52,668 --> 00:20:56,672 Because they wanted to have all these kind of self-animating gears in it. 316 00:20:56,797 --> 00:21:02,386 So when you move the leg, you see things on his, you know, knees rotating 317 00:21:02,469 --> 00:21:05,097 or pistons going up and down that we didn't have to animate 318 00:21:05,180 --> 00:21:07,432 'cause Jon had engineered all that stuff that 319 00:21:07,516 --> 00:21:10,185 when you moved the leg, all these things would happen. 320 00:21:11,728 --> 00:21:14,356 So we abandoned the whole tank idea 321 00:21:14,439 --> 00:21:17,943 because that wasn't going to work anyway, I don't think. 322 00:21:20,946 --> 00:21:22,030 On Empire, 323 00:21:22,489 --> 00:21:26,493 I did not feel that I was at the place 324 00:21:26,576 --> 00:21:28,537 I needed to be skill-wise. 325 00:21:29,079 --> 00:21:33,125 But fortunately, Dennis found the very first reel to reel, 326 00:21:33,500 --> 00:21:35,669 single frame tape recorders. 327 00:21:35,752 --> 00:21:40,382 And so I was able to, you know, do a mockup of the walkers. 328 00:21:41,008 --> 00:21:43,969 And I just practiced. It was like playing the piano. 329 00:21:44,052 --> 00:21:46,179 I just did the scales every day, 330 00:21:46,263 --> 00:21:50,892 eight to ten hours, and it was like learning 331 00:21:50,976 --> 00:21:55,522 to ride a bike over, like, six months unsuccessfully. 332 00:21:55,605 --> 00:21:59,359 And then, all of a sudden, I get it. 333 00:22:03,822 --> 00:22:05,532 All right, boys, keep tight now. 334 00:22:09,453 --> 00:22:10,954 Hobbie, you still with me? 335 00:22:51,495 --> 00:22:56,416 When I arrived at Kerner, the first thing I saw 336 00:22:56,500 --> 00:23:00,587 when I walked in there, there is Phil Tippett, 337 00:23:00,837 --> 00:23:04,883 doing stop motions on the walkers. 338 00:23:05,759 --> 00:23:09,971 And this set was amazing. 339 00:23:10,555 --> 00:23:14,476 I thought at that point, "What have I gotten myself into?" 340 00:23:15,227 --> 00:23:18,855 I just didn't want to be the weak link in the chain. 341 00:23:19,189 --> 00:23:21,400 I didn't want people to say, 342 00:23:21,483 --> 00:23:25,612 "Hmm, good movie, except for those matte paintings." 343 00:23:25,695 --> 00:23:27,614 "What happened there?" 344 00:23:28,365 --> 00:23:31,827 Over some of the big shots in Empire, there was one of them, 345 00:23:31,910 --> 00:23:36,289 it was pretty grueling because the set was maybe 40x40, 346 00:23:36,373 --> 00:23:39,042 and there was a big Pangrazio painted background, 347 00:23:39,167 --> 00:23:40,710 and there were two walkers in it. 348 00:23:40,794 --> 00:23:44,923 And the ship goes down and flies through the legs of one and comes up and strafes 349 00:23:45,006 --> 00:23:47,926 the other one and flies off. And it's a point of view. 350 00:23:48,427 --> 00:23:52,097 And it was going to require two animators 351 00:23:52,180 --> 00:23:55,851 and Jon Berg got the flu that day. 352 00:23:56,101 --> 00:23:58,311 And we had to move off the set the next day 353 00:23:58,395 --> 00:24:02,190 and make it free for something else. So I got to do both of them. 354 00:24:05,610 --> 00:24:08,905 The set was on, like, three or four foot risers. 355 00:24:09,322 --> 00:24:10,991 I would get on my hands and knees 356 00:24:11,074 --> 00:24:13,577 and go down to the first trap door, open it up. 357 00:24:13,743 --> 00:24:18,123 Animate, animate, animate, and because of the scale 358 00:24:18,206 --> 00:24:20,917 and the slowness of the speed of the walkers, 359 00:24:22,002 --> 00:24:26,548 a lot of the movements just had to be felt. 360 00:24:26,631 --> 00:24:28,717 You couldn't gauge them, you know. 361 00:24:28,842 --> 00:24:31,761 You couldn't even see them. You just had to... 362 00:24:31,845 --> 00:24:36,266 I think I moved it, yeah, a millimeter, 363 00:24:37,267 --> 00:24:41,438 and take, like, whatever it took, like 20 minutes to do all that stuff. 364 00:24:41,521 --> 00:24:42,814 I mean, click, go down, 365 00:24:42,898 --> 00:24:45,317 get on my hands and knees, go down to the next one, 366 00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:47,694 open the trap door and repeat the process. 367 00:24:49,029 --> 00:24:53,408 Over and over and over and over forever. 368 00:24:56,369 --> 00:24:59,414 Fortunately, the shot wasn't that long, so... 369 00:25:08,590 --> 00:25:10,550 Okay. Why don't we hit the blue screen? 370 00:25:12,052 --> 00:25:13,803 Okay, that's... Oh, oh, oh. 371 00:25:14,387 --> 00:25:15,430 Okay, right there. 372 00:25:16,806 --> 00:25:18,099 All right, let it go. 373 00:25:19,601 --> 00:25:21,061 Bang, bang. 374 00:25:21,144 --> 00:25:22,854 - Yeah, that's it. - All right. 375 00:25:23,897 --> 00:25:28,485 Well, Empire, that was like graduate level compositing. 376 00:25:29,110 --> 00:25:33,114 In other words, we had done undergraduate work on Star Wars. 377 00:25:35,283 --> 00:25:39,663 It's fairly easy to matte a rocket ship over star fields, 378 00:25:39,746 --> 00:25:41,581 because it's mostly black anyway. 379 00:25:41,665 --> 00:25:44,709 And, you know, you wouldn't see a matte line, frankly. 380 00:25:44,793 --> 00:25:47,963 There's certain shots that did have a few matte lines in Star Wars. 381 00:25:55,345 --> 00:25:59,140 But in Empire, there could not be any matte lines. 382 00:26:00,517 --> 00:26:03,979 You had now landspeeders, which are light gray 383 00:26:04,479 --> 00:26:07,399 and they're flying against white snow background, 384 00:26:07,816 --> 00:26:11,194 fluffy white clouds, pale blue sky, I mean, 385 00:26:11,319 --> 00:26:14,114 it was like, you couldn't have a matte line 386 00:26:14,197 --> 00:26:17,158 in the shot or the 10-year-olds say, "Hey, that looks funny." 387 00:26:17,242 --> 00:26:20,620 You know? I mean, the 10-year-old is one of our most severe critics. 388 00:26:21,329 --> 00:26:24,708 Because if it doesn't work, if it doesn't look right, 389 00:26:24,833 --> 00:26:27,919 he's not buying the shot and you're losing him for the scene. 390 00:26:28,044 --> 00:26:32,674 And so I had to build a special optical printer to deal with this problem. 391 00:26:38,054 --> 00:26:40,765 An optical printer is this giant machine. 392 00:26:41,433 --> 00:26:47,188 It's all using film, it's taking multiple pieces of film, 393 00:26:47,272 --> 00:26:50,692 and running through this process, all lined up 394 00:26:50,775 --> 00:26:52,819 and pushed together like this. 395 00:26:53,903 --> 00:26:54,988 It's not two pieces. 396 00:26:55,071 --> 00:26:58,658 It's multiple pieces of film, multiple pieces of mattes 397 00:26:58,742 --> 00:27:01,494 that have been created to combine images 398 00:27:01,578 --> 00:27:03,830 of a background plate and a foreground image. 399 00:27:04,247 --> 00:27:08,084 All kinds of things that have to all be sandwiched into this machine 400 00:27:08,585 --> 00:27:11,921 and run through one single frame at a time. 401 00:27:12,339 --> 00:27:14,007 And it's being re-photographed. 402 00:27:14,883 --> 00:27:18,928 The camera is essentially photographing what goes through these projectors. 403 00:27:19,679 --> 00:27:22,682 Normally, you would only have two projectors, 404 00:27:23,808 --> 00:27:27,896 and this one has four projectors, so we can run more images at one time. 405 00:27:28,396 --> 00:27:32,150 That just gives us more flexibility and more capability 406 00:27:32,233 --> 00:27:34,319 to composite many images at once. 407 00:27:35,570 --> 00:27:37,238 It was really a big project. 408 00:27:37,572 --> 00:27:42,661 Using telecentric optics, which created parallel rays coming out of the lens. 409 00:27:43,036 --> 00:27:45,372 So you don't have geometric distortion, 410 00:27:45,622 --> 00:27:48,291 which is the harbinger of matte lines. 411 00:27:56,091 --> 00:27:58,677 Empire was really gratifying 412 00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:02,263 because I felt that we had conquered the evil matte line. 413 00:28:04,933 --> 00:28:08,269 What you see behind me here is our production boards. 414 00:28:09,020 --> 00:28:13,400 And many times we're compositing as many as 15-20 elements together. 415 00:28:14,234 --> 00:28:18,530 So here one would mean original negative, three would mean an explosion, 416 00:28:18,613 --> 00:28:22,325 and 22 means a particular kind of speeder. 417 00:28:23,118 --> 00:28:26,037 The master board then gives us an indication 418 00:28:26,121 --> 00:28:29,374 of how many shots have not been approved finally by George. 419 00:28:31,209 --> 00:28:34,754 On this film, we're attempting things that are extremely difficult. 420 00:28:34,879 --> 00:28:38,675 I mean, much, much more difficult than anything we ever tried in the first film. 421 00:28:38,758 --> 00:28:42,679 We're doing a lot more stop-motion, which is difficult. 422 00:28:43,012 --> 00:28:45,849 And we're experimenting more and more 423 00:28:45,932 --> 00:28:50,979 with video and computer technology to try to advance the art of film, 424 00:28:51,479 --> 00:28:53,940 and to make it easier to express yourself. 425 00:28:54,023 --> 00:28:58,278 When I was working on Star Wars, we did some digital shots. 426 00:28:58,361 --> 00:29:01,406 An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Leia 427 00:29:01,656 --> 00:29:04,659 has demonstrated a weakness in the battle station. 428 00:29:04,993 --> 00:29:07,954 You know, the demonstration of the Death Star, where it has to go, 429 00:29:08,037 --> 00:29:11,166 and all that kind of stuff, I said, "This is the way of the future." 430 00:29:12,917 --> 00:29:14,794 But it was a little bit early. 431 00:29:15,628 --> 00:29:21,050 The film industry was in the 19th century, 18th century, 432 00:29:21,134 --> 00:29:24,304 and you look at it and say, "Well, this is stupid. We have computers." 433 00:29:24,387 --> 00:29:27,056 And George was very much a proponent of that. 434 00:29:27,140 --> 00:29:29,684 And once digital became a viable thing, 435 00:29:29,768 --> 00:29:33,772 he was always, you know, pushing the envelope on that stuff. 436 00:29:33,855 --> 00:29:36,483 The thing I really wanted to do was digitize editing. 437 00:29:36,566 --> 00:29:37,734 That was my big thing. 438 00:29:39,319 --> 00:29:40,320 If Dwayne were here. 439 00:29:40,862 --> 00:29:42,739 Oh, it's frustrating in the editing room. 440 00:29:42,822 --> 00:29:44,949 "I said, " This doesn't have to be this way. 441 00:29:45,074 --> 00:29:46,242 "This is crazy." 442 00:29:46,326 --> 00:29:47,452 Oh... 443 00:29:48,077 --> 00:29:51,664 And I said I want to be able to go from top to bottom all digital. 444 00:29:52,373 --> 00:29:56,419 See if you can find somebody to head up the computer division. 445 00:30:00,924 --> 00:30:04,969 My father grew up on a dirt farm in Idaho. 446 00:30:07,639 --> 00:30:12,310 He was one of 14 children, only nine of whom lived to adulthood. 447 00:30:12,727 --> 00:30:14,771 My father was very smart and driven, 448 00:30:14,854 --> 00:30:18,316 and he got his degree in Education to be a teacher. 449 00:30:19,484 --> 00:30:23,488 He brought us out to Salt Lake City at a phenomenal period of time. 450 00:30:25,156 --> 00:30:27,659 Growing up in the '50s, 451 00:30:28,368 --> 00:30:35,250 the iconic figures of that time, were Walt Disney and Albert Einstein. 452 00:30:37,001 --> 00:30:39,003 All right, so Walt Disney's on television. 453 00:30:39,087 --> 00:30:42,465 Will there be mechanical robots controlled by super intelligent beings? 454 00:30:42,549 --> 00:30:45,301 And at the same time, Albert Einstein, 455 00:30:45,677 --> 00:30:49,722 and the ideas of relativity in all those areas of physics 456 00:30:49,806 --> 00:30:53,852 were very fascinating, so I held both of them, 457 00:30:54,561 --> 00:30:56,563 but I actually wanted to be an animator. 458 00:30:59,190 --> 00:31:02,735 The background for this is we've got the Cold War going on 459 00:31:03,111 --> 00:31:06,990 and the government had this brilliant idea, 460 00:31:07,699 --> 00:31:09,492 and that was, they were going to fund 461 00:31:09,576 --> 00:31:12,328 students and universities around the United States 462 00:31:12,662 --> 00:31:17,041 for the development of computer science, and it was what was then called ARPA. 463 00:31:17,834 --> 00:31:23,339 Advanced Research Project Agency. In fact, the Internet came out of ARPA, 464 00:31:24,340 --> 00:31:28,303 but it was first called Arpanet, and the University of Utah 465 00:31:28,386 --> 00:31:32,265 was one of the first four nodes on this network. 466 00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:37,312 So I entered The University of Utah, and got a degree in computer science. 467 00:31:37,854 --> 00:31:42,025 The earliest computers were for financing, bookkeeping and so forth. 468 00:31:42,442 --> 00:31:45,612 But they can imagine at some point it's going to be bigger than that, 469 00:31:45,695 --> 00:31:46,946 we will need picture making. 470 00:31:47,030 --> 00:31:48,031 In graduate school, 471 00:31:48,114 --> 00:31:52,493 the very first class I took was one in computer graphics. 472 00:31:52,577 --> 00:31:55,163 It was like... Gong! Holy cow! 473 00:31:55,371 --> 00:31:58,625 You can make pictures here, we could do animation. 474 00:31:59,292 --> 00:32:01,836 And all of a sudden, bam, everything took shape. 475 00:32:02,086 --> 00:32:05,381 So I thought, well, I'm going to try to animate my hand. 476 00:32:06,591 --> 00:32:11,179 So I made a plaster mold of my hand, learning the hard way 477 00:32:11,262 --> 00:32:13,932 that you should put Vaseline on the back of your hand first. 478 00:32:14,349 --> 00:32:18,728 So I'm sitting there with a razor trying to cut the hair 479 00:32:18,811 --> 00:32:20,980 to get my hand out of the mold. 480 00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:24,734 And then I digitized it. 481 00:32:26,444 --> 00:32:28,488 I went from wire frame to polygonal, 482 00:32:29,113 --> 00:32:32,450 and then I wrote the software in order to be able to animate it. 483 00:32:36,955 --> 00:32:39,332 At this time, it was mind-blowing for people. 484 00:32:40,667 --> 00:32:44,420 I believed, at the time, that we were ten years away 485 00:32:45,046 --> 00:32:47,173 from being able to make an animated film. 486 00:32:48,132 --> 00:32:50,343 You had this list of things that you had to solve. 487 00:32:51,177 --> 00:32:53,763 And at the beginning, you don't know what the answers are, 488 00:32:53,846 --> 00:32:55,264 you just know, that's a problem. 489 00:32:56,057 --> 00:32:58,518 And I didn't even know what all the problems were, 490 00:32:58,893 --> 00:33:01,396 but the ones immediately in front were really big. 491 00:33:02,730 --> 00:33:04,315 So who's going to support this? 492 00:33:05,775 --> 00:33:09,821 Out of the blue, we get contacted that Lucas film was looking for somebody 493 00:33:09,904 --> 00:33:11,739 to bring technology into the film industry. 494 00:33:11,906 --> 00:33:13,825 Richard Edlund came out. 495 00:33:14,033 --> 00:33:17,870 We're trying to keep this whole conversation a secret that's going on, 496 00:33:17,954 --> 00:33:21,833 but Richard, of course, got this big belt buckle which says "Star Wars" on it. 497 00:33:23,126 --> 00:33:24,919 And he's talking to an artist, 498 00:33:25,294 --> 00:33:29,465 who is inherently extremely observant, who calls out the belt buckle. 499 00:33:30,425 --> 00:33:35,221 He's just a friendly person who's also very interested in everything. 500 00:33:36,014 --> 00:33:39,934 So he's now seeing for the first time computer painting, 501 00:33:40,518 --> 00:33:42,478 and it's completely wrapped up into it. 502 00:33:42,562 --> 00:33:45,648 So he realized that something important is happening there. 503 00:33:45,732 --> 00:33:49,444 The first problem we solved was how to describe an object to the computer. 504 00:33:49,569 --> 00:33:52,655 The simplest way to do that is to just draw it off on graph paper. 505 00:33:52,739 --> 00:33:56,159 This is just a cross-sectional view of one half a simple cup shape. 506 00:33:56,242 --> 00:33:59,495 And a computer can then spin this around to make a surface of revolution 507 00:33:59,579 --> 00:34:01,706 of what it would look like from different views. 508 00:34:05,543 --> 00:34:09,088 Now, this sort of picture is made of an array of little spots on the screen 509 00:34:09,172 --> 00:34:10,173 which are called pixels. 510 00:34:13,468 --> 00:34:16,721 You can see here individually, each pixel magnified 511 00:34:17,555 --> 00:34:19,348 to be a little square. 512 00:34:19,432 --> 00:34:22,226 The idea here is that each square has a number stuck in it. 513 00:34:22,351 --> 00:34:24,812 And the brighter the pixel, the larger the number. 514 00:34:25,313 --> 00:34:28,357 And so the computer program then has to figure out what value 515 00:34:28,441 --> 00:34:30,943 or what number to stick in each of these little spots. 516 00:34:32,361 --> 00:34:34,697 With digital manipulation, 517 00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:41,704 the fact is that now, the visual effects artist has at his disposal 518 00:34:42,121 --> 00:34:44,457 millions of addressable pixels. 519 00:34:45,166 --> 00:34:47,835 You can address each point in the frame, 520 00:34:48,044 --> 00:34:50,963 and because of that, nothing is impossible. 521 00:34:51,172 --> 00:34:53,841 Once we got digital, you could do anything. 522 00:34:54,425 --> 00:34:55,760 Absolutely anything. 523 00:34:56,177 --> 00:34:59,263 When I first met George, they were working on Empire Strikes Back. 524 00:34:59,347 --> 00:35:02,183 The state of the art was pretty primitive at the time. 525 00:35:04,977 --> 00:35:07,271 He said he wanted digital audio. 526 00:35:08,648 --> 00:35:14,779 He wanted video editing, and he wanted some digital imaging for compositing. 527 00:35:16,155 --> 00:35:18,116 George believed that the world was changing, 528 00:35:18,199 --> 00:35:19,992 and technology would change everything. 529 00:35:20,076 --> 00:35:22,578 It was as simple as that, he was just open to it. 530 00:35:22,662 --> 00:35:24,956 And he was willing to put the money behind it. 531 00:35:25,748 --> 00:35:28,668 Now, anybody that had done a deep analysis at the time, 532 00:35:29,544 --> 00:35:31,796 would have said, "That doesn't make any sense." 533 00:35:32,505 --> 00:35:33,881 "It's too far away." 534 00:35:33,965 --> 00:35:36,717 But for George, it was like, "I got to start somewhere." 535 00:35:37,802 --> 00:35:39,929 I still don't know how to work a computer. 536 00:35:40,179 --> 00:35:44,559 I barely know how to work my cell phone, but I know what I want to have happen. 537 00:35:45,893 --> 00:35:47,270 And I can talk to somebody, 538 00:35:47,937 --> 00:35:50,439 and they can say, "That's impossible." 539 00:35:51,649 --> 00:35:53,568 And I can say, "Well, think about it." 540 00:35:54,402 --> 00:35:58,656 After working with George for a while, I began to understand the way he thought, 541 00:35:59,615 --> 00:36:04,579 and the way he told the story in pictures. 542 00:36:04,662 --> 00:36:06,539 As the fighters go in, we assume that 543 00:36:06,622 --> 00:36:08,958 - the Rebel cruisers also start to go in. - Yeah. 544 00:36:09,125 --> 00:36:13,462 We'd pin the storyboards on the wall, and then he would go through 545 00:36:13,546 --> 00:36:16,257 with his red pen and he would say, 546 00:36:16,340 --> 00:36:19,093 "We don't need that. We don't need that. Rip those down." 547 00:36:19,177 --> 00:36:23,264 And we learned very quickly not to put the originals on the wall, 548 00:36:24,140 --> 00:36:27,101 'cause he'd take a red pen and draw right through it, you know. 549 00:36:27,393 --> 00:36:29,145 Okay. Next. 550 00:36:29,645 --> 00:36:31,230 You know, it was really like 551 00:36:31,397 --> 00:36:34,317 understanding the essence of the storytelling 552 00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:36,736 by looking at the way he would do these things. 553 00:36:37,778 --> 00:36:40,990 It was really like going to some film school that doesn't exist. 554 00:36:41,073 --> 00:36:43,951 You know, this fantasy film school that you can only attend 555 00:36:44,035 --> 00:36:45,786 by getting in the mind of this guy. 556 00:36:47,163 --> 00:36:53,502 Storyboards really helped me out a lot because I very rarely read scripts. 557 00:36:54,003 --> 00:36:59,508 Being dyslexic didn't help, but I never liked the form that much. 558 00:37:03,054 --> 00:37:08,226 You know, it was just very hard for me to, like, see the movie. 559 00:37:09,727 --> 00:37:11,062 So I would just wait. 560 00:37:11,187 --> 00:37:14,273 I would wait until it got to the place where there were storyboards, 561 00:37:14,357 --> 00:37:18,486 or if George could explain, "Yeah, it's kind of like this," you know. 562 00:37:18,569 --> 00:37:20,071 Then I would run with it. 563 00:37:21,405 --> 00:37:26,577 "Joe told me, " Hey, George is interested in you coming up with some ideas 564 00:37:26,661 --> 00:37:29,705 "for this character that's like a snow lizard." 565 00:37:30,665 --> 00:37:34,418 So I spent a day just drawing, like, really quickly. 566 00:37:34,502 --> 00:37:38,172 It could be this, it could be that. It could be this, it could be that. 567 00:37:38,256 --> 00:37:43,511 And sent it to George, and he picked one and asked for a maquette of it. 568 00:37:47,014 --> 00:37:49,016 So I sculpted a little clay maquette. 569 00:37:50,726 --> 00:37:52,520 But you know, my design was mammalian. 570 00:37:52,603 --> 00:37:55,231 It had familiar aspects to it, 571 00:37:55,314 --> 00:37:58,609 like ram's horns and kind of like a camel face, 572 00:37:58,693 --> 00:38:00,903 but not really, you know... Two sets of nostrils, 573 00:38:00,987 --> 00:38:03,614 but something that was identifiable. 574 00:38:04,699 --> 00:38:08,995 Phil Tippett knew he had to do the tauntaun and he knew that unborn calf, 575 00:38:09,453 --> 00:38:13,916 the hairs on unborn calf are much smaller than on a cow. 576 00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:16,752 You know, full cow, or even a newborn calf. 577 00:38:17,503 --> 00:38:21,340 And so we went on pursuit 578 00:38:21,424 --> 00:38:25,428 of an unborn white calf, you know. 579 00:38:28,347 --> 00:38:31,726 We went around to taxidermists. We went around to slaughterhouses. 580 00:38:32,059 --> 00:38:37,273 And eventually we had to settle on a white, already tanned hide. 581 00:38:37,648 --> 00:38:39,567 And then there's an old process, 582 00:38:39,650 --> 00:38:42,069 you know, from back in the days of King Kong, 583 00:38:42,445 --> 00:38:44,572 in which what you do is you take a white glue 584 00:38:44,655 --> 00:38:48,492 that's water-soluble, and you wet the fur side, 585 00:38:48,993 --> 00:38:51,203 and then you put it into a box with maggots. 586 00:38:51,912 --> 00:38:53,998 And the maggots eat away the flesh, 587 00:38:54,248 --> 00:38:57,752 but they don't eat follicles 'cause there's no energy in a follicle. 588 00:38:58,336 --> 00:39:02,590 So now you have this matrix of white glue 589 00:39:02,965 --> 00:39:05,426 with these little follicles sticking up out of it. 590 00:39:05,634 --> 00:39:08,971 And then what you do is you brush in a thin layer of latex 591 00:39:09,055 --> 00:39:11,682 and you turn it over, and then you use 592 00:39:11,891 --> 00:39:14,560 the water soluble glue and get it out, 593 00:39:14,643 --> 00:39:18,647 wash it out of the hair and now you have an unborn calf that's stretchable. 594 00:39:21,942 --> 00:39:24,695 So that's how the tauntaun was done. 595 00:39:26,072 --> 00:39:28,199 But try to explain that to people, 596 00:39:28,282 --> 00:39:31,952 you know, at a slaughterhouse or at a taxidermy place. 597 00:39:32,036 --> 00:39:35,289 People must wonder if we're devil worshipers or something like that. 598 00:39:37,041 --> 00:39:40,628 Well, I spent, like, about 20 minutes trying to sculpt 599 00:39:40,711 --> 00:39:44,757 somethin' that looked kinda like Han, figuring that you'd never ever see it. 600 00:39:45,424 --> 00:39:49,762 So we built this thing and we took it up to George and showed it to him. 601 00:39:49,845 --> 00:39:53,015 Well, this is important 'cause this sort of establishes the whole thing. 602 00:39:53,099 --> 00:39:56,894 Okay. So you think the running forward shot will be... 603 00:39:57,019 --> 00:39:59,814 I think it'll be all right because it's superimposed, 604 00:39:59,897 --> 00:40:02,608 and there's snow blowing in front of it and all kinds of stuff. 605 00:40:02,691 --> 00:40:06,904 And I found that George responded really well to three-dimensional stuff. 606 00:40:06,987 --> 00:40:08,155 Just in general. 607 00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:10,950 Yeah, he would just, viscerally, it's done. 608 00:40:11,283 --> 00:40:14,787 A lot of times with 2D stuff, you get into this conundrum and go, 609 00:40:14,870 --> 00:40:17,998 "Well, what if this one had that one's tail 610 00:40:18,082 --> 00:40:21,210 "and that one's toe," but you get a kabam! 611 00:40:21,585 --> 00:40:23,337 You know, it's just right there. 612 00:40:23,629 --> 00:40:28,217 Maybe also just to make it darker because of the scale. 613 00:40:29,510 --> 00:40:31,387 Not that I understand color on scale. 614 00:40:32,263 --> 00:40:34,849 To me, it's like kind of a form of management 615 00:40:34,932 --> 00:40:36,976 that I learned working with George. 616 00:40:37,476 --> 00:40:42,565 It's just to get creative people to invest, make it theirs, 617 00:40:42,940 --> 00:40:46,694 and back away and let the creative people, you know, run with it. 618 00:40:46,986 --> 00:40:49,738 I don't consider myself a really good leader. 619 00:40:50,114 --> 00:40:54,201 I picked people who were really good, and of course I was probably saying no, 620 00:40:54,493 --> 00:40:55,911 much more than I'd say yes. 621 00:40:55,995 --> 00:40:58,289 You know, if anything, it would be better to have this 622 00:40:58,372 --> 00:41:01,041 - be slightly darker than this. - Okay. 623 00:41:01,584 --> 00:41:03,461 I mean, that's a guess on my part. 624 00:41:04,503 --> 00:41:07,089 But I didn't yell at them. I didn't scream, 625 00:41:07,173 --> 00:41:09,842 "What are you doing? You're an idiot," and all that kind of stuff. 626 00:41:09,967 --> 00:41:12,720 Mostly, I would just say, "Look, try it, we'll see." 627 00:41:13,179 --> 00:41:15,764 We should maybe make it slightly darker than this. 628 00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:20,144 And then it might, you know, the perspective on it might be right. 629 00:41:20,561 --> 00:41:22,605 - Sure. - Right. 630 00:41:22,813 --> 00:41:24,273 - Okay, yeah. - Call me insane. 631 00:41:24,356 --> 00:41:26,775 No, no. Definitely do that. I don't wanna... 632 00:41:26,984 --> 00:41:29,612 - I only wanna do it once. - Right. 633 00:41:31,906 --> 00:41:34,325 One of the things that I learned from George 634 00:41:34,450 --> 00:41:37,369 that was, that's just affected my entire life, 635 00:41:37,912 --> 00:41:41,332 is that we had a shot in Empire Strikes Back, 636 00:41:41,957 --> 00:41:44,960 that he came in one day and he had a helicopter view 637 00:41:45,044 --> 00:41:48,380 flying over this big ice field that had been shot in Norway. 638 00:41:48,839 --> 00:41:50,341 And the camera's flying over it, 639 00:41:50,424 --> 00:41:53,010 and it kind of just looks down on the ice field. 640 00:41:53,135 --> 00:41:54,929 And he said, "Can you put a tauntaun" 641 00:41:55,012 --> 00:41:57,973 "running along like it's running on the ice field down there?" 642 00:41:58,057 --> 00:42:02,228 And knowing, you know, the limitations we had with camera rigs 643 00:42:02,311 --> 00:42:04,605 and making it look like it's actually his feet 644 00:42:04,688 --> 00:42:06,732 are on the ground running and everything, 645 00:42:06,815 --> 00:42:10,319 I said, "No, you know, there's just really no way that we could do it." 646 00:42:10,444 --> 00:42:13,155 "We could build a big giant set and do it that way," 647 00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:16,575 "but that's gonna take a lot of time and cost a lot of money." 648 00:42:16,659 --> 00:42:19,745 And he said, "Well, why don't you just think about it?" 649 00:42:19,828 --> 00:42:22,748 And I said, "Yeah, okay, but there's no way that we can do it" 650 00:42:22,831 --> 00:42:24,208 "with the tools we have." 651 00:42:24,291 --> 00:42:27,127 "Okay, okay, just think about it," and he walked out. 652 00:42:27,419 --> 00:42:30,172 And I thought, "Well, jeez, okay," and I started thinking, 653 00:42:30,256 --> 00:42:32,841 and within 15 minutes, I'd figured it out. 654 00:42:33,259 --> 00:42:36,512 How to do it with the limited tool set we had, 655 00:42:36,595 --> 00:42:39,014 but a clever way of putting stuff together again. 656 00:42:39,848 --> 00:42:42,851 There were no new tools. It was just an approach. 657 00:42:43,435 --> 00:42:47,898 We shot the tauntaun model first, and it was tracked frame by frame. 658 00:42:48,774 --> 00:42:50,901 And then with the aerial plate background, 659 00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:55,239 and the actual piece of film is re-photographed in each new position, 660 00:42:55,322 --> 00:42:58,826 based on the tauntaun and then combined in. 661 00:42:59,326 --> 00:43:02,371 So it meant you could do composites with big moving cameras. 662 00:43:07,418 --> 00:43:11,922 And the amazing thing about it was it was very clear that 663 00:43:12,506 --> 00:43:15,593 before I could verbalize how I had figured it out, 664 00:43:16,093 --> 00:43:18,721 my body had figured it out, and I just felt it. 665 00:43:19,263 --> 00:43:20,598 "Oh." 666 00:43:20,681 --> 00:43:23,142 And then I started thinking about what did I just feel? 667 00:43:23,225 --> 00:43:25,019 And yeah, that fits with that. 668 00:43:25,144 --> 00:43:27,521 And this fits with that. And that fits with that. 669 00:43:27,646 --> 00:43:31,650 Which means I guess your subconscious is like working on this thing or something. 670 00:43:31,734 --> 00:43:36,864 And if I'd stopped thinking one minute and 59 seconds before, 671 00:43:36,947 --> 00:43:40,659 I wouldn't have thought about it that last little bit. 672 00:43:41,869 --> 00:43:43,370 When Dennis is working on a problem, 673 00:43:43,454 --> 00:43:45,664 you don't know how to solve it to begin with. 674 00:43:45,831 --> 00:43:49,418 So there's actually a thing that some people have and some people don't have, 675 00:43:49,501 --> 00:43:51,962 is that when you're starting, you don't have the answer. 676 00:43:52,046 --> 00:43:55,341 And now when you're talking with somebody else who actually gets, 677 00:43:55,424 --> 00:43:58,135 that you don't know what the solution is when you start, 678 00:43:58,218 --> 00:44:00,512 then you have a different kind of relationship, 679 00:44:00,721 --> 00:44:02,765 and it's like, okay, you can become partners 680 00:44:02,848 --> 00:44:05,768 in solving the problem, and that's who Dennis is. 681 00:44:11,357 --> 00:44:16,028 The whole idea of making something real, 682 00:44:16,236 --> 00:44:21,075 is like a kind of a hard path to pursue. 683 00:44:21,784 --> 00:44:25,371 But, you know, I have an obsessive side 684 00:44:25,454 --> 00:44:28,999 that I just look forward to doing this stuff. 685 00:44:29,083 --> 00:44:33,045 When I wake up in the morning, when I'm doing it, I get super excited. 686 00:44:34,004 --> 00:44:36,674 By the end of the day, I'm like too much for myself. 687 00:44:37,341 --> 00:44:40,386 Yeah, I'm exhausted and I have to have like, two or three beers 688 00:44:40,469 --> 00:44:42,888 to calm down. 689 00:44:43,138 --> 00:44:48,352 But what I've just recently figured out is 690 00:44:48,811 --> 00:44:52,189 I've always had depression and anxiety all throughout my life. 691 00:44:55,150 --> 00:44:59,863 The anxiety was never motivated by anything. 692 00:45:00,155 --> 00:45:02,991 It would just come like a storm. 693 00:45:04,618 --> 00:45:06,704 Like, I was plugged into a 220V. 694 00:45:07,246 --> 00:45:09,081 And it was just like "Ahhh!" 695 00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:14,586 I realized if I made stuff, and get out of my mind, 696 00:45:15,462 --> 00:45:16,755 I could... 697 00:45:17,506 --> 00:45:20,175 I was cured. The storm would just go away. 698 00:45:32,312 --> 00:45:35,482 That was my self-narrative 699 00:45:36,233 --> 00:45:40,154 that I kind of thought was operating 700 00:45:40,237 --> 00:45:44,491 until just really recently, when all of a sudden 701 00:45:44,575 --> 00:45:49,621 it occurred to me, that I might be bipolar, 702 00:45:50,414 --> 00:45:53,417 and, um, I am. 703 00:45:54,752 --> 00:45:58,172 The key therapy that I think that has helped me... 704 00:45:59,381 --> 00:46:02,551 I'm very process-driven. 705 00:46:03,761 --> 00:46:06,346 Everything really, you know, is 706 00:46:06,430 --> 00:46:08,932 you do one thing, then you do the next, you do the next. 707 00:46:09,016 --> 00:46:11,143 You're going to make a stop-motion puppet. 708 00:46:11,310 --> 00:46:14,563 You build an armature, then you put clay over it, 709 00:46:14,646 --> 00:46:16,982 then you make a mold, then you cast in the latex. 710 00:46:17,065 --> 00:46:19,276 You trim it, you... 711 00:46:19,818 --> 00:46:22,529 So you have to, you know, have, like, all these skills, 712 00:46:22,780 --> 00:46:26,992 and it really is like a form of alchemy, you know, you really do feel like that. 713 00:46:27,075 --> 00:46:28,327 And then you get on the stage 714 00:46:28,410 --> 00:46:30,746 and it's all blacked off and it's all quiet. 715 00:46:31,705 --> 00:46:34,166 And you just got lights and a puppet, 716 00:46:34,249 --> 00:46:36,960 and you're bringing it to life, one frame at a time. 717 00:46:40,214 --> 00:46:43,634 And this is being shot in stop-motion photography, 718 00:46:43,926 --> 00:46:50,349 where one frame of film is shot for every, you know, infinitesimal movement. 719 00:46:51,183 --> 00:46:55,646 So in, like, one frame of film, if this guy is running along, 720 00:46:55,729 --> 00:46:57,898 his back leg has to be moved... 721 00:46:58,982 --> 00:47:00,776 A little bit like that. 722 00:47:01,652 --> 00:47:03,904 And his foreleg has to like, come forward. 723 00:47:05,656 --> 00:47:09,618 And his head has to go down and maybe up a little bit. 724 00:47:10,285 --> 00:47:12,412 All of his bags have to be moved. 725 00:47:12,955 --> 00:47:17,960 The rider has to rock on the saddle in relationship to whether this guy's 726 00:47:18,043 --> 00:47:19,586 going up or down. 727 00:47:19,795 --> 00:47:23,632 And all the little pieces of filigree on the saddle are moved, too. 728 00:47:25,050 --> 00:47:30,597 People ask, you know, "Don't you find it boring or tedious to do that stuff?" 729 00:47:30,889 --> 00:47:35,143 And... "No, What are you talking about?" 730 00:47:35,227 --> 00:47:37,896 Because you get in the zone. 731 00:47:41,817 --> 00:47:44,820 You know, and it's a form of meditation, really. 732 00:47:45,028 --> 00:47:50,659 And you are just slowing time 733 00:47:50,742 --> 00:47:56,248 way down and you're not even aware of it at all. 734 00:47:58,292 --> 00:47:59,418 And... 735 00:48:00,586 --> 00:48:06,341 I think that's kept me from you know, killing myself. 736 00:48:35,579 --> 00:48:39,124 Here are a few of the matte paintings we're using on Empire Strikes Back. 737 00:48:39,207 --> 00:48:41,960 This is an example of one that is an interior 738 00:48:42,044 --> 00:48:44,671 of Darth Vader's Star Destroyer bridge, 739 00:48:44,755 --> 00:48:47,257 where we've added the windows and the ceiling. 740 00:48:49,176 --> 00:48:51,929 On Empire Strikes Back production had wrapped, 741 00:48:52,012 --> 00:48:54,014 and now we were into visual effects. 742 00:48:54,598 --> 00:48:56,892 And I was the department head. 743 00:48:58,769 --> 00:49:03,398 This matte painting shows the Millennium Falcon at Cloud City. 744 00:49:03,482 --> 00:49:05,317 In the clear area of glass, 745 00:49:07,069 --> 00:49:11,782 Han Solo comes out and meets his host at Cloud City. 746 00:49:12,491 --> 00:49:15,911 You've got a lot of guts comin' here, after what you pulled. 747 00:49:21,541 --> 00:49:24,920 This is another angle of the Star Destroyer bridge 748 00:49:25,003 --> 00:49:27,255 with the windows and ceiling added. 749 00:49:27,464 --> 00:49:29,091 Take evasive action! 750 00:49:33,679 --> 00:49:36,431 This one's been painted by Ralph McQuarrie. 751 00:49:37,057 --> 00:49:40,936 One of the real blessings I had 752 00:49:41,019 --> 00:49:44,314 was meeting and getting to know 753 00:49:44,982 --> 00:49:51,071 the great Ralph McQuarrie, and I don't say that lightly. 754 00:50:02,791 --> 00:50:04,084 There wasn't much room, 755 00:50:04,167 --> 00:50:09,131 so we painted in the little matte department that we had. 756 00:50:13,343 --> 00:50:17,889 Ralph was a remarkable human being. 757 00:50:18,890 --> 00:50:22,936 He was just patient and he would do these wonderful paintings. 758 00:50:24,646 --> 00:50:28,525 This is Cloud City, and it was something that evolved. 759 00:50:31,695 --> 00:50:35,741 George said he wants a city floating in the clouds, 760 00:50:35,824 --> 00:50:39,911 and we looked at Flash Gordon cities, you know, from the '30s. 761 00:50:40,495 --> 00:50:44,374 And he thought of just something like this art deco look. 762 00:50:44,958 --> 00:50:46,710 The whole thing just bobbed along 763 00:50:46,793 --> 00:50:49,921 like a cork in the cloud in some miraculous way. 764 00:50:50,422 --> 00:50:53,341 I came to other forms, you know, 765 00:50:53,425 --> 00:50:58,138 thinking, you know, shapes that were like pieces of pottery maybe. 766 00:50:58,346 --> 00:51:03,477 And, as I worked in openings and windows, 767 00:51:03,602 --> 00:51:07,981 I think began to look, you know, maybe like an aircraft carrier or something. 768 00:51:08,065 --> 00:51:11,443 That seemed more fitting, I don't know why. 769 00:51:11,526 --> 00:51:13,695 Most of these things are rather hazy. 770 00:51:13,862 --> 00:51:17,574 They just feel right, you know, sometimes, and sometimes they don't. 771 00:51:17,657 --> 00:51:20,494 So you just keep fiddling until they start to feel right. 772 00:51:23,914 --> 00:51:29,628 I have to admit, the only thing I was not pleased with 773 00:51:30,087 --> 00:51:34,382 is his clouds looked like illustrator clouds. 774 00:51:38,470 --> 00:51:42,265 Clouds are probably one of the hardest thing there is to paint, 775 00:51:42,682 --> 00:51:45,936 and I didn't want to offend Ralph McQuarrie. 776 00:51:46,019 --> 00:51:48,855 But his first clouds looked like cauliflowers. 777 00:51:48,939 --> 00:51:52,359 I mean, they just didn't look like clouds. So... 778 00:51:52,651 --> 00:51:57,322 So I said, "You know, Ralph, we've got so much work to do", 779 00:51:57,405 --> 00:52:01,118 "and tell you what, you do the wide shots 780 00:52:01,201 --> 00:52:05,622 "of the Millennium Falcon at sunset on the platform. 781 00:52:05,705 --> 00:52:07,165 "You do this, you do that. 782 00:52:07,249 --> 00:52:12,879 "You do the establishing stuff, and by the way," 783 00:52:12,963 --> 00:52:15,549 "you know, let me do the clouds." 784 00:52:16,007 --> 00:52:18,635 "Why not? I'll do that. You're busy." 785 00:52:19,010 --> 00:52:21,138 I don't know whether he bought that or not, 786 00:52:21,221 --> 00:52:22,514 but I did the clouds. 787 00:52:28,770 --> 00:52:31,398 And it was a struggle. 788 00:52:31,481 --> 00:52:34,860 And sometimes George would say, "Why don't you let Ralph do the clouds?" 789 00:52:35,944 --> 00:52:37,571 Step aside, kid. 790 00:52:39,823 --> 00:52:40,907 That's not true. 791 00:52:50,167 --> 00:52:53,378 Universe with Walter Cronkite. 792 00:52:53,628 --> 00:52:57,132 Tonight, the science behind a fictional universe. 793 00:53:00,177 --> 00:53:01,928 While we were still working on Empire, 794 00:53:02,012 --> 00:53:05,265 we had heard Walter Cronkite was coming to ILM to talk to George 795 00:53:05,348 --> 00:53:08,935 and shoot some stuff on the stage and see what was going on. 796 00:53:09,186 --> 00:53:11,038 He took us on a tour of his facilities... 797 00:53:11,062 --> 00:53:14,441 They wanted to show the tauntaun in Empire Strikes Back being shot. 798 00:53:15,317 --> 00:53:18,445 We know no one has a clue how we create these things. 799 00:53:18,737 --> 00:53:21,448 Well, this is the stop-motion animation department. 800 00:53:21,907 --> 00:53:25,744 And they're making tauntauns run across the snow. 801 00:53:26,369 --> 00:53:29,122 And so we decided to do it in a way you would never do it. 802 00:53:29,206 --> 00:53:31,333 'Cause we knew no one would recognize it. 803 00:53:31,458 --> 00:53:33,126 So it's the two of us in there. 804 00:53:33,251 --> 00:53:35,378 We brought in what's called the surface gauge, 805 00:53:35,462 --> 00:53:37,923 a bunch of those, which is what animators use 806 00:53:38,506 --> 00:53:40,926 to mark little things on puppets. 807 00:53:41,051 --> 00:53:45,555 What else did we bring in? Some weird gizmos with rulers on it 808 00:53:45,639 --> 00:53:49,434 and whatever we could grab filling the scene with this 809 00:53:49,935 --> 00:53:52,520 while he's having a very serious conversation with George 810 00:53:52,604 --> 00:53:54,648 and talking about what we're doing out there. 811 00:53:54,731 --> 00:53:57,859 It's a whole art of... They studied movement. 812 00:53:57,943 --> 00:53:59,027 They shot animals. 813 00:53:59,361 --> 00:54:02,489 And studied them against grids and things to study the motion. 814 00:54:02,781 --> 00:54:05,951 And then they practiced for months and months, doing tests. 815 00:54:06,576 --> 00:54:08,336 We're acting like we're doing stuff. 816 00:54:08,370 --> 00:54:10,914 But we weren't doing anything for real, 817 00:54:11,248 --> 00:54:13,124 and playing it very serious, I think. 818 00:54:13,583 --> 00:54:15,961 But it was fun, you know. We weren't hurting anybody. 819 00:54:16,044 --> 00:54:18,296 And if anyone actually knew we were doing it wrong, 820 00:54:18,380 --> 00:54:21,925 it showed they had some idea of how the work actually was accomplished. 821 00:54:22,259 --> 00:54:26,888 But to do it with Walter Cronkite, who the had the nerve? Come on. 822 00:54:27,138 --> 00:54:29,641 What were we thinking? 823 00:54:30,267 --> 00:54:33,478 As a science, it's fascinating, but you're ruining my fantasies. 824 00:54:35,647 --> 00:54:38,900 It sounds like me just trying to be a jackass, which maybe it was. 825 00:54:39,526 --> 00:54:42,445 But it's also through the course of all these movies, 826 00:54:42,904 --> 00:54:44,990 it's an interesting lesson to learn about 827 00:54:45,073 --> 00:54:49,369 what an audience perceives and what you really need to do. 828 00:54:49,995 --> 00:54:51,204 Asteroids. 829 00:54:51,746 --> 00:54:52,831 Oh, no. 830 00:54:53,498 --> 00:54:54,833 Oh. 831 00:54:54,916 --> 00:54:56,167 Chewie, set 271. 832 00:54:57,043 --> 00:54:58,169 What are you doing? 833 00:54:59,045 --> 00:55:01,381 You're not actually going into an asteroid field? 834 00:55:01,464 --> 00:55:03,508 They'd be crazy to follow us, wouldn't they? 835 00:55:03,591 --> 00:55:05,343 On Empire Strikes Back, 836 00:55:05,510 --> 00:55:09,597 my version of seeing what you could get away with were potatoes 837 00:55:10,098 --> 00:55:13,601 in the asteroid field, and I think it was my comment 838 00:55:13,685 --> 00:55:17,314 on the fact that some of the models that were built look like potatoes. 839 00:55:21,526 --> 00:55:23,653 My assistant, Sel Eddy, and I, 840 00:55:23,737 --> 00:55:29,034 bought some asteroid-looking potatoes, stuck them on this rig. 841 00:55:29,701 --> 00:55:34,831 They actually had a pronged pipe for the Styrofoam asteroids we were using. 842 00:55:35,373 --> 00:55:38,460 You would just shove it on there, took one of the asteroids off, 843 00:55:38,543 --> 00:55:42,255 put the potatoes on, shot it against blue screen. 844 00:55:52,557 --> 00:55:55,685 They're flying through, there's shots, looking out the window and stuff, 845 00:55:55,769 --> 00:55:59,856 and some of them are potatoes, but you'd never know in a million years. 846 00:56:00,023 --> 00:56:02,317 Not only is it funny, but it keeps you thinking 847 00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:04,903 about what's the best, fastest, cheapest way to do this. 848 00:56:04,986 --> 00:56:06,905 You know, it's every producer's dream. 849 00:56:06,988 --> 00:56:09,783 You know, being a successful visual effects person, 850 00:56:10,492 --> 00:56:13,244 often times is someone who knows how to cheat 851 00:56:13,745 --> 00:56:16,039 and also to spend the least amount of money. 852 00:56:16,831 --> 00:56:19,209 There were all sorts of problems that we came up with 853 00:56:19,292 --> 00:56:21,211 that we had to invent our way out of. 854 00:56:21,836 --> 00:56:24,923 For example, the stars streak and disappear shot, 855 00:56:25,423 --> 00:56:28,426 that's the one where the stars going into hyperspace. 856 00:56:28,927 --> 00:56:31,721 And then we have to cut to a shot of the Millennium Falcon. 857 00:56:31,805 --> 00:56:33,848 zipping away from me. 858 00:56:34,391 --> 00:56:37,102 And the problem is, I can only get the model 859 00:56:37,185 --> 00:56:41,481 to be this big in frame on a 42-foot track. 860 00:56:42,857 --> 00:56:45,026 I said, "Okay, I got an idea how to do that." 861 00:56:45,110 --> 00:56:49,656 So I took the Millennium Falcon and I shot a 4x5 Polaroid cocked 862 00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:56,454 Cut it out and placed it on a piece of glass and shot it. 863 00:56:56,871 --> 00:56:59,582 Sent it to George and he says, "Great, I'll cut it in." 864 00:57:01,709 --> 00:57:03,753 We didn't have to do a take two on that. 865 00:57:06,339 --> 00:57:09,676 One second shot and it got the biggest applause in the movie. 866 00:57:10,343 --> 00:57:12,846 So, I mean, this is how you learn to cheat. 867 00:57:15,181 --> 00:57:17,267 Dailies will be screened in five minutes. 868 00:57:17,517 --> 00:57:19,602 Dailies will be screened in five minutes. 869 00:57:21,813 --> 00:57:23,022 There's more? 870 00:57:23,106 --> 00:57:26,901 When we come in, we're sort of like this. 871 00:57:26,985 --> 00:57:29,529 Looking down on it. Sort of, three-quarter down. 872 00:57:29,612 --> 00:57:33,741 It comes into the frame, and then we come down like that. 873 00:57:34,284 --> 00:57:37,162 And I would try to get it as small as possible at the end. 874 00:57:37,287 --> 00:57:39,581 So it really looks like it's shooting away from us. 875 00:57:39,747 --> 00:57:41,124 The perfect effect, 876 00:57:41,249 --> 00:57:46,421 is conveying the point of the movie, the emotion of a moment. 877 00:57:46,504 --> 00:57:49,007 It is invisible in some ways. 878 00:57:50,467 --> 00:57:52,469 We have the responsibility 879 00:57:52,552 --> 00:57:56,681 to keep the train of drama even and flowing. 880 00:57:58,016 --> 00:58:01,102 Enhance it whenever possible, whenever it's necessary... 881 00:58:03,313 --> 00:58:05,940 And to reel back when it's necessary. 882 00:58:06,274 --> 00:58:08,735 If you have a visual effects shot and everyone's going, 883 00:58:08,818 --> 00:58:11,404 "Wow, what a cool effect," you have failed. 884 00:58:15,867 --> 00:58:17,785 While we were still working on Empire, 885 00:58:17,869 --> 00:58:20,955 we already knew what was coming up on the next group of shows. 886 00:58:21,539 --> 00:58:25,668 One was Raiders of the Lost Ark and one was Dragons layer. 887 00:58:30,965 --> 00:58:34,969 ILM started becoming more of a work for hire company 888 00:58:35,053 --> 00:58:39,182 than a George Lucas production company, because Jedi was right around the corner. 889 00:58:39,474 --> 00:58:42,644 It would take me, again, at least a year to write the script. 890 00:58:43,102 --> 00:58:46,814 So we had to do something to keep all those people there and keep them employed. 891 00:58:47,232 --> 00:58:49,484 So that's when we started taking outside work. 892 00:58:49,943 --> 00:58:52,237 We had this mandate from George, 893 00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:55,406 to not refuse the films of any of his friends. 894 00:58:56,449 --> 00:58:58,868 If Spielberg came up and wanted to make a film 895 00:58:58,952 --> 00:59:01,538 by such and such a schedule, we had to make it work. 896 00:59:09,420 --> 00:59:10,900 I was very excited about it. 897 00:59:11,422 --> 00:59:14,300 We did draw in some very interesting projects. 898 00:59:15,510 --> 00:59:18,346 And it's also opportunities for a lot of different work. 899 00:59:20,139 --> 00:59:23,601 We started making films that were like the golden eggs. 900 00:59:25,937 --> 00:59:28,523 And suddenly everybody wants to come to ILM. 901 00:59:35,530 --> 00:59:40,243 But it was a very painful growth period. 902 00:59:41,035 --> 00:59:44,747 Each project had a whole new set of challenges.