“Just think about it.”
With this simple advice, Star Wars creator George Lucas inspired the special effects artists at Industrial Light & Magic to pioneer new techniques and make the impossible a reality.
“One thing you never heard from them was ‘That’s impossible!’” Lawrence Kasdan, the director and executive producer of the new documentary series Light & Magic, tells starwars.com. “Giving up was unacceptable.” Instead, ILM was infused with a spirit of ingenuity and a belief that there was always a way, whether it was bringing dinosaurs back from the dead or sending audiences hurtling through the stars during an epic dogfight in space. And in Kasdan’s estimation, Lucas’ approach reflects the humanistic atmosphere that made ILM special, putting people first and allowing creativity to blossom through the free exchange of ideas and technological techniques.
In Light & Magic, the new six-part documentary series now streaming on Disney+, Kasdan pulls back the curtain on the titans of the filmmaking industry to tell the stories of the individuals who made the magic happen, from ILM’s inception to modern day innovations. Recently, Kasdan sat down with starwars.com to discuss how he fell in love with cinema, the day an invitation to write Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark changed the course of his career, and why the lessons of Light & Magic are important for the next generation of would-be filmmakers….