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Digital Capture and Release

October 08, 2002 – Disc One: The Feature

Winning numerous awards for its presentation of its feature film, and the quality of its extras, the Episode I DVD set a precedent for what the Star Wars DVD experience should be. The same team that developed that two-disc set returns to bring Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones to DVD.

Unlike Episode I, the Episode II DVD arrives only six months after its theatrical release, hitting stores on November 12. The lessons learned in making The Phantom Menace DVD helped prepare the team for what was to come.

“A DVD takes about a year-and-a-half or so to produce,” says Jim Ward, Lucasfilm’s Vice President of Marketing and Executive Producer, who led the DVD project. “As early as 2000, when we were shooting principal photography in Sydney, we were already trying to figure out what the configuration of the DVD would be.”

While Director George Lucas and Producer Rick McCallum were busily shooting Episode II, Lucasfilm’s Marketing Department was developing the Episode I DVD, and also earmarking content and areas to explore for the Clones DVD. “The Episode I disc gave us a really good benchmark. We had a very good blueprint so that we could multi-task everything and get it done,” says Ward.

“My contribution to the DVD is the movie itself,” says George Lucas. “Because Episode II was shot with a digital camera and created digitally, you can almost say it was made for the DVD format.”

Attack of the Clones will be the first major live action feature mastered direct from the digital source. Because the image stays within the digital medium from start to finish, the feature itself has unprecedented clarity. Lucas credits THX, under the leadership of Rick Dean, Head of Special Projects, for assuring the quality of the transfer.

“They did a phenomenal job making sure that there was no loss of definition to the digital images that were so full of motion and detail,” says Lucas. “Their expertise in image and sound replication preserved the creative work that so many artists and sound designers had put into making this movie.”

“We spent millions carefully developing and mixing the soundtrack and creating infinitely detailed visuals, and it breaks my heart that many theaters out there aren’t equipped to show it the way we intended,” laments Rick McCallum. “But with home theaters now fully digital and getting better and better every year, DVD is now a real safe haven for people who really love films and want to see it as the creators intended.”

While the DVD format is known for its enormous storage capacity, it comes at a price that must be carefully balanced in the mastering process. The more material packed onto a single disc, the poorer the quality for all of it. As a result, Disc One optimizes the presentation of the feature by keeping such extras as deleted scenes and documentaries on Disc Two.

“It’s always a challenge. We sit down and understand what the bit-rate budget is,” explains Ward. “Our first and foremost priority is to make sure the bit rate budget for the film is the highest it can possibly be. Other people will take a lower bit rate on the film in order to cram some other content in there.”

Like the Episode I disc, Episode II uses the fantastic environments of the Star Wars galaxy to deliver the menu information and navigation options. Producer Van Ling worked with digital resources direct from Industrial Light & Magic to create worlds to explore. Each time Disc One is inserted into a DVD player, one of three planetary themes is randomly selected for the menu interface. Viewers may find themselves inspecting the clone hatcheries of Kamino, the towering skyscrapers of Coruscant, or the treacherous conveyer belts of the Geonosian droid factory to select their viewing options.

The movie is divided into 50 chapters, which makes homing into a favorite scene easy. Sound options on domestic discs include an English 5.1 Surround EX track, delivering audio experiences such as the reverberating twang of seismic charges, the wailing howl of Zam Wesell’s speeder, or the layered chaos of the Clone War in THX-certified clarity and balance. Spanish and French-dubbed Dolby 2.0 audio are available on separate tracks.

The second English audio setting is a commentary track assembled by Gary Leva, the same editor who put together Episode I’s commentary. The Clones track features Lucas, McCallum, Editor Ben Burtt, Animation Director Rob Coleman, and Visual Effects Supervisors John Knoll, Ben Snow and Pablo Helman. “We take it for granted that these guys are inventing the process every step of the way,” says Ward. “Everyone else follows their lead when they’re finished, but these guys are the ones that are inventing it. I think it’s wonderful to allow people to understand and learn more about the process through such commentaries.”

Star Wars fans fortunate enough to have seen Episode II in a digital theater will be happy to know that the D-cinema version of the movie — which differed from the standard film print version — formed the basis of the DVD master. “The digital version of the film is on this DVD, but there are also some additional, minor changes. You’re going to have to figure those out for yourself,” says Ward.

Disc Two: The Extras

“Obviously, the movie itself should be the driving force, and the reproduction of the movie’s sound and picture quality should be exactly as the filmmaker originally created it. The opportunity to include ‘extras’ is just one of the added benefits that the DVD format allows,” says Lucas. Disc Two of the DVD set is a trove of extras, called “value-added material” in the business.

Van Ling has again transformed the Episode II locales into menu screens, turning the Jedi Archives, the Coruscant nightclub, the Naboo spaceport docking piers, Dex’s Diner and elsewhere into areas of navigation for Disc Two. As with Episode I, the supplemental material delivers a mix of informative and entertaining goods that illuminate the filmmaking process from start to finish.

“We have a working mandate when we make these DVDs to include value-added material that people actually want to watch, and to leave out games, and make-your-own-scenes and other gimmicks. We’re not about that,” explains Ward.

A long-form documentary, “From Puppets to Pixels: Digital Characters in Episode II,” tracks the trailblazing journey that ILM’s talented artists had to undergo in creating computer-generated co-stars. “That’s where the news was in the making of this particular film, so that’s where our cameras went,” says Ward.

Hundreds of hours of documentary footage shot by Lucasfilm’s documentary group were viewed and distilled into the 52-minute piece, crafted by Jon Shenk in a “fly-on-wall” narrator-less style. Several stories are tracked from beginning to end, the centerpiece being the development of a digital Yoda. It starts with Rob Coleman and his crew working on early proof-of-concept tests of the new Yoda, then follows what was shot on-set, and covers the broad strokes and subtle details of the finished animation — including the most deceptively difficult shot the animators dubbed “The Widowmaker.”

The film also examines the making of CG supporting cast members Dexter Jettster and Taun We, from clay maquette to finished, living form. Rare behind-the-scenes footage shows the interaction that actors Ron Falk and Rena Owen provide before their digital alter egos are inserted into the scene.

Also documented is the perfection of digital doubles, computer-generated stuntmen used for Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jango Fett and Count Dooku during some of Episode II’s most dynamic action sequences. A team of artists worked on the simulated physics of computer-generated clothes and hair to deliver convincing doppelgangers of the human form.

Lucas isn’t worried about disrupting the illusion that so many artists have worked carefully to craft. He instead sees these documentaries as important educational tools. “The visual effects artists at ILM and sound design teams at Skywalker Sound are not magicians giving away their secrets,” he explains. “They are artists sharing their expertise and passion for filmmaking.”

A second documentary, “State of the Art: The Previsualization of Episode II” shines a spotlight on the Animatics Department. Pre-Visualization Effects Supervisor Dan Gregoire and his crew developed remarkably sophisticated low-resolution computer-animated versions of scenes to plan and refine them in a quick and efficient manner.
The Speeder Chase, the Droid Factory, and the Clone War are covered in the 23-minute documentary, complete with examples of the sparse, bluescreen-filled plate photography, and the Art Department’s concept paintings and animatics that fleshed them out. The Clone War sequence in particular has several concepts and shots that never got past the animatics stage in the documentary.

In “Films are Not Released: They Escape,” the documentary cameras follow Sound Designer Ben Burtt and his crew in the capturing, building, and layering of Episode II’s sound universe. Everything from the drone of a Jedi starfighter engine, to the percussive machinery of the droid factory, to the soft smooches of forbidden kisses for the finished picture is covered. “It takes teams of sound recordists, sound designers, foley artists, effects editors and even alien language creators working together in blending all the sound elements to create the final sound mix,” says Lucas of the 25-minute documentary.

These three documentaries are joined by three featurettes (“Story,” “Love” and “Action”) and all 12 parts of the Making Episode II web documentaries, offering valuable educational material to aspiring filmmakers. “If you’re a kid, and you want to be in the movie business, but you’re in a state that has no film school, and you have no concept of what’s involved, it’s very hard to demystify the process,” says McCallum. “I want people who don’t have the ability to enter the system to be able to see how it’s done, so they can understand. This DVD offers that opportunity.”

Further illuminating the filmmaking process is a collection of eight scenes deleted from the final cut of Episode II. Optional introductions by Lucas, McCallum and Burtt explain why the scenes were cut. The original plate photography for these scenes were filled with areas of bluescreen, and ILM was busily delivering the 2,000 shots that would make it into the film. For these scenes, the digital environments and elements were crafted by the Animatics Department at Skywalker Ranch, led by Pre-Visualization Supervisor Dan Gregoire.

The DVD also collects a lot of the marketing material that went into telling the world about Attack of the Clones. Fans may have recorded some of these off television, or seen them here at starwars.com, but the DVD presents this video in the highest possible quality: the Across the Stars music video, the character- and story-based television commercials, and the theatrical teaser and launch trailers. The “Mystery” trailer, which only played online, now gets its largest incarnation through the DVD.

There’s more of course (never-before-seen photos, an ILM effects reel, R2-D2: Beneath the Dome trailer, a few carefully stashed “Easter eggs”) — even after finally viewing every last shred of content, the DVD will continue to be a gateway to further Episode II material in the months to come through a web-link to dvd.starwars.com.