ILM Legends Share Fun Stories About Making ‘Star Wars’ in Interview With Newsy’s Clayton Sandell
Earlier this week, Disney released Light & Magic, a documentary series directed by Lawrence Kasdan that explores the rich history of legendary visual effects studio Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), from its origins to today (you can read John Hoey’s review of the series here). Newsy‘s national correspondent Clayton Sandell visited Skywalker Ranch recently to chat with some of the key players in the documentary, including ILM legends Joe Johnston, Ben Burtt, and Kasdan himself.
Kasdan explained the work dynamics inside ILM as follows:
“What a lot of these people share, and what the company shares, is this ethos. You will run into problems that we know we’re gonna solve. We don’t yet have the tools to do this thing, but we will not give up until we do.”
Johnston, who worked as a designer at ILM in the early days before moving on to become a filmmaker himself (he’s since directed films like The Rocketeer or Jumanji), was also interviewed by Sandell. When looking back upon the early days of the company, he said:
“I didn’t particularly know what I was doing. And a lot of people didn’t particularly know what they were doing. We made a lot of mistakes and we had a lot of failures and we had a lot of successes, and we sort of learned how to do it. George really gave us, and I think particularly me, a lot of freedom to design this stuff, and to experiment and see what worked.”
He also added that there is a time capsule under the foundations of the main house at Skywalker Ranch. When asked about what it contains, he said:
“All kinds of great stuff. There’s one of my sketchbooks in it, and a bunch of other things, including a $1 bill that I wrote a message on. You’ll have to wait [until they dig it up].”
Also interviewed in the documentary, legendary sound designer Ben Burtt explained how they recorded some of the most iconic sound designs in movie history over there, at Skywalker Ranch. At a particular point, he found himself in a spot where many years ago they’d worked on another iconic Lucasfilm movie:
“We got a shooting range right in this area where we are, where we did all the guns for Raiders of the Lost Ark, the machine guns,…”
He also explained how inserting the sounds in the original Star Wars finally gave them the satisfaction they were looking for:
“The opening of the first Star Wars movie, people thought it came out fine and we were all excited to see it. But once the sound was put in for that shot, with all the lasers flying, it just elevates it to something different. That’s the magic of sound, it brings to life the visuals.”
Ed Catmull, former VP at ILM Computer Division, said the following about the transition to digital at ILM:
“Well, what’s cool about ILM is that they were just trying to get the image on the screen. They were neutral about this stuff because we weren’t good enough. But when we started to be good enough, they were open to it.”
John Goodson, ILM model maker and digital artist, weighed in on the topic as well:
“Most of us were not a part of it. It was really difficult.
I will say that visual effects [artists] are visual liars, and if you do your job well you don’t realize you’ve been lied to. And that’s kind of the trick, to convince you that something is real that doesn’t exist.”
Doug Chiang, executive creative director at Lucasfilm, said:
“I kind of grew up idolizing all of these guys. The way I look at it is like the old school ILM magnified by 10, but all the inherent qualities that makes ILM are still there. It’s the people, it’s the family.”
Here is the full video of Clayton Sandell’s interview with the legends of ILM:
All six episodes of Light & Magic are currently streaming on Disney Plus, featuring long interviews with all of the above, as well as many more guests, including George Lucas himself.
SOURCE: Newsy
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
