Today’s creative director of ILM’s Sydney studio talks Jar Jar Binks, digital armies, and working with George Lucas on the project of a lifetime.
By Lucas Seastrom
Fairly late in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), as the heroes plan their concerted attack on the Trade Federation army occupying Naboo, Jar Jar Binks and Boss Nass have a brief moment together. They walk through a forest, the shorter and squatter Boss Nass’ arm wrapped around Jar Jar’s taller and lankier shoulders. The onetime Gungan outcast is now in rising favor with his people’s leader, and Jar Jar enjoys brushing off Boss Nass’ adulations with mock-humility. It is only when Nass tells Jar Jar that he is to be made a general that Jar Jar breaks character and faints with surprise.
The moment is portrayed in one shot as the camera pans from right to left. The characters’ equal sense of playfulness and pomposity is fun and believable, communicated in large part by their body language and distinct inflections of speech. It’s a type of scene that could be in any kind of movie. What makes this scene different from most others up to that point in time, however, is that both Jar Jar Binks and Boss Nass are computer-animated by the artists at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), with voice performances by Ahmed Best and Brian Blessed, respectively….
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