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The ILM Visual Effects Masters – RARE Press Conference
During a Star Wars Celebration event in LA, 6 heavyweights from Industrial Light & Magic gave a rare Press Conference to just a handful of reporters. Here, DJ asked them about working with George Lucas in the early days of making he first Star Wars movie.
At the 2007 event were Dennis Muren, Richard Edlund, Ken Ralston, Jon Berg, Phil Tippett and John Knoll.
ILM Celebrates the Career of Jon Alexander
First opening in 1987, the original Star Tours attraction at Disneyland included what was the most complex optical composite created at Industrial Light & Magic up to that time. A “view” out the window of a starspeeder was in fact a state-of-the-art flight simulator developed by Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) and Rediffusion Simulation with miniature effects by ILM. Among the thrilling encounters for passengers onboard was a harrowing trip through a cluster of icy comets which the crew dubbed “ice-teroids.”
Compositing in this photochemical era involved a piece of equipment known as an optical printer. With iterations dating back to the earliest days of cinema, optical printers combined separately-photographed elements by recapturing them – one frame and one layer at a time – onto a new roll of film negative. Optical printers and the artists who operated them created the final effect one viewed onscreen with everything carefully (and painstakingly) blended together. Going back to Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), ILM had developed the most sophisticated compositing techniques yet seen, allowing for even greater refinement and finesse.
The ice-teroid shot in Star Tours combined some 60 elements of individual sections of film. By comparison, the most complex shot of a space battle in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) just a few years earlier had little more than half the number. One of the two optical printer operators to work on the new shot for Star Tours was Jon Alexander, hired only that year in 1986….
How ILM Put “the Empire” in Empire State Building
Move over, King Kong. Last night, it was Star Wars’ turn to take over the world-famous skyscraper
By Dan Brooks
With all that happens in New York City, it can be hard to impress residents of the Big Apple. (I should know — I’m a native.) But last night, passersby in Midtown might’ve been surprised by what they saw if they looked up: X-wings, TIE fighters, and more from the Star Wars galaxy, all traveling across the Empire State Building.
As part of Lucasfilm’s month-long “Imperial March” consumer products campaign, and starting the “March to May the 4th,” the iconic New York skyscraper hosted a dynamic light show, which saw classic Star Wars moments and new visual effects featured on the 1930 building’s beautiful Art Deco facade. The 5-minute sequence was created by Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm’s visual effects house; for all of ILM’s legendary work, this was a project like no other…
How the ILM Model Shop Brought Ahsoka’s T-6 Jedi Shuttle to Life
Industrial Light & Magic model maker John Goodson gives us a closer look at the complexities at work in the tiny craft fabricated for Ahsoka’s Jedi shuttle on Ahsoka.
There was something strikingly familiar about Ahsoka Tano’s Jedi shuttle, the T-6 1974. “I already know this ship,” model maker John Goodson thought as he set to work building the craft that would transport Tano and Professor Huyang on their first live-action adventure in Ahsoka, now on Disney+.
However, the physical creation of Tano’s shuttle was its own journey, bringing the unique mode of transportation first created for the Jedi of the prequels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars back to the screen with a painstakingly crafted and intricately mechanized model….
Jedi at 40 | ILM Legend Thomas G. Smith
By Dan Brooks
General manager of ILM in the early to mid-‘80s, Smith reflects on the rancor, working with George Lucas, and the fate of a memorable Easter egg.
It may be hard to believe, but some good actually came from the Empire’s second Death Star.
For Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Industrial Light & Magic had built a huge model of the new technological terror’s surface — “two times larger than a tennis court,” legendary ILM general manager Thomas G. Smith tells StarWars.com — and it was too large to be stored after filming. On the orders of George Lucas himself, who usually saved and preserved every model from the Star Wars films, it was to be trashed. So, Smith and some other ILMers took the model apart, rented some trucks, and drove the pieces to a nearby garbage dump. But someone actually wanted to save the Death Star.
“My son was working at summer employment there, and he saw all these pieces going into the dump and he thought, ‘No, no, no,’” Smith says. “‘Some of that stuff looks good!’” Smith’s son saved a box of pieces for himself and held onto it for years — ultimately putting it to ironically good use…
Anne Polland – Costume/Wardrobe/Creature Project Manager, ILM
Welcome to a look inside The Holocron. A collection of articles from the archives of *starwars.com no longer directly available.
(*Archived here with Permission utilising The Internet Archive Wayback Machine)
Anne Polland
Costume/Wardrobe/Creature Project Manager, ILM
Anne Polland has worked with Lucasfilm Ltd. since the production of More American Graffiti in the late ’70s and now is with Industrial Light and Magic. Raised on a ranch in California, she left college to work in professional 
ILM Presents – Empire at 40
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ILM – Creating the Impossible
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Star Wars: Empire of Dreams Part 1 | Founding ILM
*Part 1 of the Empire of Dreams: Making of Star Wars documentary from the Star Wars Trilogy 2004 DVD set.
An in-depth making of documentary about the original Star Wars trilogy, covering the productions of the three films and their impact on popular culture.
*Please note this is a trailer for the Documentary, not the full length version.
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From Space Battles To StageCraft: The Legends Of ILM Discuss Half A Century Of Movie Magic
The subjects of the new Light & Magic documentary, now streaming on Disney+, pull back the curtain on the camaraderie and innovations that helped shape modern film history.
Kristin Baver
For nearly 50 years, Industrial Light & Magic has been a proving ground for imaginative storytelling, bringing together like-minded individuals from a variety of disciplines to innovate the art of visual effects in filmmaking.
In its infancy, ILM was a place for creating the impossible, where ingenuity was rewarded with results, critical acclaim, and box-office hits that would inspire the next generation of creators. “It is something that could never happen again,” director and visual effects artist Joe Johnston tells starwars.com, “All these different elements came together — some of which had to be created on the spot! They didn’t exist, like the motion control. And there were these people, many of whom hadn’t worked in film before, but they had a specific skill and a talent to do one thing. It was just something that came together at that moment in time that could never be repeated again. And you know, we were all lucky to have been a part of it.
”For every success, there was always a new problem to tackle in the evolution of the medium, and the pioneers at the heart of ILM’s accomplishments never rested on their laurels. “I just stay curious and when I finish a show, I try to look at the work I had done as obsolete,” adds Dennis Muren, a longtime visual effects supervisor, and now consulting creative director at ILM. “I’m serious about that. It doesn’t mean you don’t like it. But, is there another place that could have gone that would satisfy me more and maybe the audience would like and the director might be surprised by it? It’s searching all the time and being curious.”
To celebrate the release of Light & Magic, the new Disney+ documentary series directed by Lawrence Kasdan tracing the story of ILM from its genesis on the first Star Wars film to its latest advancements with ILM’s StageCraft technology, we visited Skywalker Ranch to meet with some of the brilliant minds who helped turn ILM and Skywalker Sound into what they are today…
Rogue One is Back, the Rebel Spirit of ILM, and More!
This week in Star Wars, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story heads back to select IMAX theaters, Skiff Guard Lando sneaks his way into Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, and we get our groove on to Gamorrean Girl while we check out some Easter eggs in LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation. Plus, we are back at Skywalker Ranch to chat with some of the legends at Industrial Light & Magic about the spirit of the company seen in Light & Magic streaming now on Disney+.
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This Week in Star Wars
This Week in Star Wars | Marvel Star Wars: Revelations Reveal, Inspiring ILM Legends, and More
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