Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Dec 08, 2005
Issue #151

Senate Back in Session  
Thanks to the DVD release of Episode III, viewers have been able to see more of Bail Organa in his historic role as co-architect of the Rebel Alliance. Though his part in Episode III’s theatrical cut is substantive — being the adoptive father of Leia and Yoda’s getaway speeder driver are nothing to be balked at — there was originally more Bail in Revenge of the Sith.

The demands of the personal tragedy of Anakin Skywalker meant that the political tragedy of the Republic ended up considerably trimmed. “I knew going in that this politician would go through some transformation,” says Jimmy Smits, reflecting on his role. “This character has scenes that have that political tenor, but he’s much more conspiratorial and suspicious and wanting to be more active.”

The politics behind Imperial ascension is a story told many times throughout history, and writer George Lucas distills many real world precedents in Palpatine’s rise, particularly events in ancient Rome. Though the Republic backroom politics were largely edited out of Episode III, their impact can still be felt in the movie, says Smits.

“George is really quite eloquent about the whole demise, about how you start as a Republic, and without the proper checks and balances, total power can corrupt totally,” Smits says. “Those are chords that run deep in the film without hammering in that this is a philosophical point.”

Helping Smits get into the role of Organa were such accomplices as the intricate wardrobe of the character, and the exotic and varied colleagues he surrounds himself with. “Trisha Biggar is incredible, what she has done with all the costumes. They make you feel regal and noble, walking around in them. It totally puts you into what that character is supposed to be,” he says. “Also, you’re working with this international cast. You have accents from different places, which is what you’d find in another universe with all these characters from different worlds. All of that comes together.”

Bail Organa — Viceroy of the Royal House of Alderaan, father of Princess Leia, founder of the Rebellion — these are the makings of a very important character in the Star Wars mythos. But to Smits, the role’s significance was far closer to home and heart.

“To be involved in something that I saw as a young person, in terms of watching the films, and having my children see the subsequent Star Wars films, was really cool for me.”

Dec 23, 2005
Issue #152

Oz on Wizardry  
Frank Oz has a way of turning puppets into pop culture icons, especially everyone’s little green friend Jedi MasterYoda. As Yoda evolved from the sophisticated puppet of the original trilogy into a digital fighting machine in the prequels, Oz had plenty to say about the wonders of CGI and the future of traditional puppetry.

“When I did Empire it was twenty or twenty-five years ago, and the world was not digital then,” Oz says. “Now it is; and the expectations from the audience are different. And to a degree, if you don’t do things digitally, the character will stand out too much compared to everyone else in George [Lucas]’s movie — which is extraordinary.”

“The main thing about Yoda as a digital character is that I really didn’t have to do the work,” Oz laughs. “When I did the others, it was a lot of sweat. But now, I do just half a day and these ILM guys work for over a year — it’s bizarre, because I get the credit! For me, it’s a delight because I see the progression of Yoda as they’re doing it in those movies. It’s also great because he could not do the things that he’s doing on the screen now, in the last two episodes, if he were a puppet. It’s wonderful to see that growth.”

Oz credits Animation Director Rob Coleman and his team for not only preserving Yoda’s true character, but expanding and improving on it.

“There is no way I could have done anything near to that terrific fight,” Oz admits. “One thing that you may not be aware of is that when the animators made Yoda into CGI for the first time, their job was to not live up to their capabilities. The job was not to live up to their potential. If they did all the things that they could have done, the transition would have been too jarring. What they did very artfully, was to mimic me to such a degree that it helped to bound their talent. In the next one, they had to bump it up a little higher. There was a real transition there. They had to really be aware to match it and yet give it a little bit more life.”

Even with CGI taking center stage in not only Revenge of the Sith but also in future science fiction and fantasy films, Oz is certain that the art of puppetry is far from extinct.

“I don’t think there’s any kind of a competition,” Oz explains. “But my feeling is that just like the old saw about ‘will digital take over humans?’ Each has its own place. And the same thing with puppetry and the stuff in movies like Monsters, Inc. Each has its own place. Each can do something that the other cannot. And there’s value in each one.”

Jan 19, 2006
Issue #153

Creature Collaboration    
The galactic population has swelled considerably since Luke Skywalker first stepped, goggled-eyed, into the dank interior of the Mos Eisley Cantina. With each Star Wars film, new aliens and cultures are revealed with increasingly sophisticated methods of bringing them onto the screen. The aliens of Revenge of the Sith included everything from digital creatures to shadowy extras encased in slip-on rubber masks

Episode III’s Creature Shop provided the practical aliens that would be captured on camera — with the Wookiees and the Utapauns being the most labor intensive for the small team. “I think we had the smallest team they’ve ever had on Star Wars,” says Dave Elsey, Creature Shop Supervisor. “It wavered a little bit between 15 to 20 people.”

This small team based out of Sydney meant that everyone had a chance to influence a creation as it made its way through the Creature Shop, becoming a truly collaborative venture. “We were lucky because we had done a television show a few years beforehand entitled Farscape and were able to train a lot of local people in Australia to handle that,” says Elsey. “So, when we did Star Wars, we felt the good thing to do would be to get the same team back, again because we knew that we could keep things quite small, but also handle enormous amounts of work.”

This collaboration extended beyond the borders of the department, for while Elsey’s team was responsible for a creature’s features, it still fell to others to clothe and equip the aliens.

“Well, with aliens it’s always quite difficult because they’re not all human shapes. You’re always adding humps and other bits and pieces that upset the costume department most of the time,” Elsey explains. “On Star Wars, Trisha Biggar is the veteran of the Star Wars movies so she is used to anything. She can handle it. We’d talk about fittings, because we were changing the size of the actor’s necks. Everything that we could try out to stretch out or shrink down or fatten up we would do, and Trisha would make adjustments to that. She never complained — she’s fantastic. At the end of the day, I hope you would agree that our stuff looks good sticking out of Trisha’s stuff.”

Feb 02, 2006
Issue #154

Mustafar has become one of the most spectacular sites in the galaxy. A world of jagged obsidian cut through by searing rivers of lava, the hellish landscape became the perfect setting for the tragic finale of Revenge of the Sith. It’s not a world of comforts, and neither was bringing it to life at Industrial Light & Magic.

“We used a series of fairly large miniatures to create the immediate landscape,” explains Visual Effects Supervisor Roger Guyett. “Outside of that, we used digital technology, using textures from the models themselves to extend them out. Then even further, we used a lot of moving 3-D matte paintings and HD footage of actual volcanoes. It’s really an elaborate tapestry of pieces.”

The heat blasted facility perched atop a blackened cliff face was a digital model, but the rocky landscape and much of the lava flow was captured practically. “We ended up with a 30-by-40-foot set of the seemingly uninhabitable topography of Mustafar,” says Brian Gernand, Practical Model Supervisor. “It was a rock-like environment with a four-foot wide and approximately 40-foot long path of lava coming down. Included with that were tributaries, waterfalls, all kinds of other inlets and glowing hot spots around this environment.”

To give the viscous lava the illusion of self-illuminating heat, the 15,000 gallons of Methylcel needed to be penetrated by a light source. The bottom of the river beds were actually transparent, with powerful lights shining through the thick goop. “I think, in the end, there was a calculation of something like 250,000 watts of light under the set that were being blasted through,” says Gernand. “That’s what made the stage environment such a difficult place to be — it was about 110 degrees on that stage!”

Guyett concurs that the stage conditions for the Mustafarian lava flow miniature was hardly heavenly. “It’s one of my favorite moments from working on Star Wars,” he says. “The guys start shooting the model and they’re all in shorts, there’s smoke on the set… It’s like actually working on a volcanic planet. I would just turn up for 10 minutes and say, ‘Things look beautiful here.’ (But) I would think, “… I’m glad I’m not doing this all day long!”

Feb 16, 2006
Issue #155

The Grand Experiment 
With the completion of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, George Lucas and his crew have taken digital cinema from its shaky infancy to visionary heights with the Revenge of the Sith finale.

“In order to do something like Episode I, II or III, I had to create worlds in ways that I couldn’t do in the old fashion way,” says Lucas. “I couldn’t build sets that big, I couldn’t have that many extras, I couldn’t create that many costumes.”

During some of the earliest interviews about this trilogy, Lucas had expressed that one of his greatest concerns about the future Star Wars films was expense. “It will be unbelievably expensive,” he said at the 1989 opening of the Disney/MGM Studios, where he broke the news that Star Wars would return in the ’90s. “And that’s one of the things holding it up. If there was a way of doing them less expensively, it could make it easier to go ahead and do more. But there are just huge, huge amounts of money involved.”

The decade that followed saw huge investments of time and creativity in digital experimentation. In 2005, Lucas reiterated the concern of what it would take to bring these new Star Wars epics on the screen using traditional methods. “Financially, I’m a little tiny company — I’m not like these big studios here, and for me, doing a $100 million movie is a really big deal. That’s as much money as I can pull together. I couldn’t possibly produce a $300 million movie; it’s just not possible for me to do that. So, I have to be able to create a big world for a very small price.”

It began by creating big worlds for a small screen: namely, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Were it not for the early ventures in digital backlot, crowd replication, set extensions, and other visual tricks practiced in the critically acclaimed television series, the new Star Wars movies may not have happened. The other breakthrough was the commitment to leaving film behind and shooting entirely on HD video.

“We were designing cameras three years before Episode I, but we didn’t get it finished for [principal photography],” says Lucas. “We did get it finished for shooting our delay unit, which is a two-week shoot we do a year after. We shot two weeks of it digitally with a real big, huge, funny prototype camera. It sort of looked like an old Technicolor camera with cables all over the place.”

When it came time for Episode II, the digital cameras weren’t finalized and delivered until just weeks before principal photography began. “It was real Beta-testing movie making,” says Lucas. “We were experimenting; we hadn’t quite done this before. We were learning as we went along and made Episode II. The great thing about Episode III is that I used the same crew, same cast, same equipment, same everything and we all knew what we were doing. It took me one movie to figure it out. And we pushed it much further because on the first film we had maybe 25% digital sets; the second movie, we had maybe 50% digital sets and in Episode III, I’d say there’s 85% digital sets. We were able to push the limits of what we needed and it allows you a whole different kind of flexibility from what people were used to in making movies.”

Mar 02, 2006
Issue #156

Layers of Sound 
“From the beginning of the first Star Wars film, George Lucas always encouraged the sound development to start in pre-production,” says Ben Burtt, Sound Designer and Co-Editor of Revenge of the Sith. “That way, sound is being talked about when you first see the artwork, and sound effects and concepts for sound are there from the beginning as the films were shot. Once the film is being edited, sound is put in right away.” Though that is the tradition with Star Wars movies, the standard Hollywood model had been to scramble to develop sound deep in the post-production period. “In that case, there may be only a short amount of time left to work out all of the concepts; but for us, the sound has really been developed over a long period of time.”

Like many elements in Episode III, the sound design is a mix of new and old as the Star Wars saga bridges together, and the prequel trilogy segues into the classics. Burtt was very much cognizant of that as he began putting together elements for the opening space battle. “I knew when those ships came in that they were going to be the new Jedi starfighters, which were related to the TIE fighters from A New Hope. I felt the sound should have some continuity, so I started working with the old TIE fighter sounds and adding NASCAR sounds to it to develop something that would hint at the direction of the technology.”

Burtt describes there being about a thousand different sound projects for the film, not including foley effects like footsteps. In addition, the sound crew also provided performances both large (Matthew Wood as General Grievous) and small (Burtt as the Niemoidian captain). “We’re a small operation, a sound crew of 9 people, so we tend to use ourselves as characters,” says Burtt. “Matt and I played in the recent films probably about 30 or 40 incidental characters — battle droids, Nemoidians, Gungans, Utapaun pit crews, R2-D2, all kinds of robots, and we’ve enjoyed that because it gives us the feeling that we can really put our performances into the film.”

Since the first Star Wars, Ben has been the “voice” of R2-D2, combining synthesizer and organic sounds with his own voice to create the distinctive beeps and boops of the beloved astromech droid. “We revived some of our old equipment for this film,” he says. “We pulled out an old ARP synthesizer from under my house, and it was all moldy. Howie Hammerman, our engineer, got it working again so we did lots of new Artoo for this.”

The combination of many disparate and sometimes surprising sound sources has been a Ben Burtt trademark, and it continued with this final installment of the saga. “You look at General Grievous’ wheel bike, and it’s nasty, loud and dangerous. I thought a chainsaw would be perfect,” says Burtt. Likewise, the low rumble of the very first Star Destroyer we see on screen is actually the filtered sound of Niagara Falls. And the sound of Vader’s heartbeat while he is undergoing his final transformation into a Sith Lord who is more machine than man?

It was a sonic boom emitted by the space shuttle, as heard in northern California.

Mar 16, 2006
Issue #157

Inside the Mask
One of the most haunting images of Revenge of the Sith is the fearsome black mask that lowers over Anakin Skywalker’s ravaged face, forever sealing him in an implacable armored shell, marking a seemingly irreversible transformation into Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.

Though the Sydney-based Costume Props Department developed a full suit of armor for Hayden Christensen, the shot of the helmet lowering was achieved separately in postproduction by Industrial Light & Magic. The ILM Model Shop was tasked with building the separated helmet, and Practical Model Supervisor Brian Gernand assigned the task to Don Bies, for good reason.

“He knew of my affinity for movie history and Star Wars lore,” says Bies. Years ago, Bies worked as the archivist for the Lucasfilm Archives, the repository of the props, costumes and models used in various Lucasfilm productions. In that role, Bies had actually rescued the original Vader helmet used in for the unmasking in Return of the Jedi.

“The original prop I found at the bottom of a crate with a bunch of junk on top of it — shredded papers and stuff like that,” recalls Bies. “The crate almost got tossed, but I decided to check it and pulled out this brown flannel bag, and inside were the pieces of the mask.”

The mask became one of Bies’ favorites pieces in the Archive, and he studied it extensively, unknowingly preparing himself years in advance for the assignment of recreating it for Revenge of the Sith. The original mask, on a museum tour in Japan at the time of Episode III production, did not have much inner detail, allowing considerable artistic freedom in designing the inside of the mask.

“Ryan Church had created a design that was very manufactured and more medical,” says Bies. “I started making suggestions as to how to build it. His direction was that it’s supposed to look painful; it goes easy but it doesn’t come off easy. Having that freedom allowed me to start playing around with different materials. I used the readers from computer hard drives in there — it made it look like if you slipped this thing on your face that it would cut into your cheeks.”

Bies worked off of extensive photographs of the original prop, discovering that many of the “found” objects used to dress the original could not be found locally. “A lot of must have been from England surplus stores. I ended up having to laser cut almost all of it,” says Bies.

Some of the material he did find included electronic molex connectors, stainless steel studs from punk rocker collars, and parts from a Tamiya tank model kit. The two silver knobs bracketing Vader’s mouthpiece, nicknamed the “tusks,” came from a surprising source. “We were running short on time, so I actually bought them from a fan.”

Joining Bies on the project were John Duncan, who built the “harmonica” mouthpiece and Carol Bauman who helped paint the helmet. The helmet deviated from the original in that it used the Episode III mold which had a symmetrical face, and the new incarnation was solid black as opposed to the two-tone paint job seen in Episode VI.

“They had a heck of a time shooting the thing,” explains Bies of the shot looking at the mask coming down. “Kim Marks, who shot it, tried to get the angle right. When you get it over the lens, it distorted crazily because of the wide angle. So they had to tilt it. It’s really angled forward and looks more ominous.”

For the side angle shot of the mask lowering onto Anakin face, it was actually a composite since Hayden Christensen had already been photographed in Sydney separately a year earlier.

Mar 30, 2006
Issue #158

Hyperspace Race for the Presidency
Asteroid Beltway pundits have been closely watching the heated race for the presidency of Hyperspace: The Official Star Wars Fan Club. Despite the fact that Corellian pollsters have been reluctant to quote the odds of the outcome, the starwars.com Homing Beacon has pegged two clear front-runners in a race that is still up for grabs.

If the election were held tomorrow… well, there’d be a lot of confusion, because this presidency is not determined by election. Rather, it’s part of a recruitment contest currently being held by starwars.com Hyperspace. The fan who recruits the most members into the Fan Club will be awarded with the title for a year, an all-expense paid trip to Comic-Con International 2006 in San Diego, a guest editor position for an issue of Star Wars Insider, online VIP status and more. (Click here for details).

Running neck-and-neck for the high office are Tommy “uscwannabe” Costabile and Dustin “dustin@rebelscum.com” Roberts, outspoken candidates who are reaching out to the fan community to make their dreams of presidency a reality.

“Well obviously, my track record speaks for itself. I stand head, shoulders, knees and toes above the other… wait a second. There’s other people competing?!” said Roberts, who has announced stalwart astromech R2-D2 as his running mate.

Costabile, bedecked in a natty black robe, is running alone despite past proclamations that there should always be two, a master and apprentice. “I have the ability to run this presidency in this post Clone War-era, which is essential to the preservation of the peace the great Emperor Palpatine has created. I myself have overheard the Emperor discussing the Senate’s dissolution. Too many people in power leads to horrific, horrific situations. I can assure this will not be the case while I’m around! I offer a future!” Costabile punctuated his statements with protracting cackling and impressive display of static electricity.

Though both candidates have varying views on the tough issues of Gungan-control, Jedi marriages, and the teaching of midi-chlorians in school, they are in agreement that the Fan Club President position should belong to a true Star Wars fan.

“When you say a ‘real fan,’ which do you mean?” asked Roberts, known to some as DLR. “Those über-dorky, forum-trolling, Natalie-drooling, lightsaber-waving fans, or the film school elitist that can explain the hegemonic ethos of the Jedi? Cuz’ I can relate to them all. They’re my peeps!”

“Having a president that doesn’t know much about Star Wars would be the equivalent of putting C-3PO in charge of the Jedi Order,” said Costabile. “It must not happen!”

Roberts has been making waves by enlisting a number of fan sites to spread his message of presidency. “There’s no one else that can be more DLR-er than I. You may have some Dustins running, or some Robertses. But when it comes right down to it, just remember you can’t spell ‘leader’ without DLR.”

Costabile is not fazed at all by Roberts’ campaigning, and balks at any notion of campaign spending caps. “When Empreror Palpatine was just a Chancellor fighting the oppression of the Separatists, did anyone tell him we didn’t have enough money? No way, Weequay!”

Though both stand at the top of the frequently updating leaderboard that is tracking current recruitment levels, the contest is still wide open. The presidency could go to you, newsletter reader, if you know of fans, friends and family that would be willing to enter your screen name as the person who prompted them to sign up or renew their Hyperspace membership. Besides, a year’s worth of Hyperspace makes a great gift… and according to our crafty astromech’s calculations, a run for the presidency may actually be cheaper than a flight and accommodations at this year’s Comic-Con…

…But we’ll leave that kind of calculation to the politically minded. The contest continues until May, and till then, it’s anybody’s guess as to who will step up to the enormous podium in the Hyperspace rotunda and address his dellow felegates.

“This is what we’re fighting for,” says Costabile. “To be the leader of the greatest Fan Club in the history of Fan Clubs!”

Apr 13, 2006
Issue #159

The Force of Fashion
While the Star Wars saga is jam-packed with exciting space battles, exotic creatures and shocking plot twists, it’s the innovative costume designs worn by everyone from regal queens to scantily-clad slave girls that intrigue designer Nick Verreos the most. As the founder of NIKOLAKI women’s wear clothing line and an instructor at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, Verreos is most-recently recognized as one of the contestants on season two of the hit Bravo reality TV show “Project Runway.”

As a young child, Verreos’ memories surrounding the Star Wars saga coincide with his family’s relocation from Venezuela to the United States. “I was 10 when my family and I had recently arrived to the U.S., and I first saw A New Hope for the first time,” Verreos recalls. “A memory that is still captured in my head is of me sitting in the theater when the lights go out, and John Williams’ amazing score begins blaring out the speakers and those words start scrolling up. I swear my heart beat so fast I almost fell out of the seat. I still get shivers just seeing that intro and hearing that music; it brings me back to when I was just a boy.”

“I think at the time, as a young kid, it was great to disappear from the real world and be entertained by such a grand fantasy film,” Verreos continues. “I was always a fan of sci-fi, in fact ‘Space: 1999’ was one of my favorite TV shows growing up, so being a fan of Star Wars was a natural fit for me. The escapism of it all, the ‘what’s out there in the other planets,’ the strange creatures, and especially the costumes, was enthralling for me. I also think that in a way, it helped develop my curiosity for other cultures and countries. By dreaming and being able to suspend myself to other worlds, it eventually made me a far more creative individual in the long run.”

The memorable costumes of the Star Wars saga seemed to trigger a special appreciation that would later inspire Verreos as he began his fashion career. “The most fashionable character of the saga is a toss up between Princess Leia and Queen Amidala,” Verreos says. “Princess Leia’s infamous metal bikini was so Paco Rabanne meets Courreges — hot! She was the Bridgite Bardot of galaxy. In The Phantom Menace, Queen Amidala was giving us intergalactic couture. She was a Dior fashion show by John Galliano all wrapped up into one person — a mini diva! When I first saw those Queen Amidala costumes in Vogue magazine, I remembered sketching more voluminous gowns with heavier fabrics. I fantasized that I would do a runway collection with very theatrical, bigger-than-life ensembles, something that Queen Amidala would wear. I used her as my muse and client.”

While Queen Amidala’s style inspired Verreos to try new elements in his own designs, that doesn’t mean there weren’t a few fashion victims in the saga that even the Force couldn’t fix. “Oh dear, Obi-Wan Kenobi and that hemp-looking robe and that 1980s Flock of Seagull-meets-Duran Duran braid of his — bad, bad and more bad!” Verreos laughs. “I would cut that braid off and give him some color, maybe around the neckline or the edges of his robe — something!”

Jedi fashion faux pas aside, Verreos has nothing but respect for costume designer Trisha Biggar and her fantastical creations. “The FIDM exhibit, which was shown at the school I teach at, was so beautiful and inspiring,” Verreos says. “To see those costumes up close and personal was a great moment for me. These one-of-a-kind costume designs are now icons in the world of Hollywood costume-making.”

“It’s so very important to honor costume designers and the silent workers in the wardrobe department for their work,” Verreos says. “I admire and adore Trisha Biggar’s wonderful and inspiring designs. Costume designers work tirelessly just like the producers, directors, and screenwriters — if not more sometimes! They are essential to the overall look of a movie, especially a period film or one such as Star Wars. Living with a costume designer, I know firsthand how often times they are given a tiny budget, a shorter deadlines, and a lack of respect from directors and producers that treat them as ‘silly little dressmakers.’ So it’s refreshing to see Star Wars fans caring about Trisha’s hard work and her incredible team of talented and qualified craftsmen, drapers, patternmakers, sewers, and illustrators.” “It’s these people who attend school to learn the craft, then apply it for years by working on film and television,” Verreos adds. “Just because costume-making and designing is a tactile thing and considered a ‘craft,’ does not mean it worth any less than the special effects or acting in a film. So kudos to Trisha Biggar and all the other costume designers.”

Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Jul 21, 2005
Issue #141

Comic-Con 2005 Round-up
From July 13 to 17th, San Diego, California continued its tradition as host of the biggest celebration of the popular arts — Comic-Con International. starwars.com was there, providing the most thorough online Star Wars coverage of the event. With so much news coming out of Comic-Con, it’s hard keeping up with all the new developments; here’s a round-up of some of the bigger stories.

Members of Hyperspace: The Official Star Wars Fan Club will want to check out exclusive content from the show including images of future products, the full audio of several Star Wars panels (including the Star Wars Spectacular) and exclusive video, including the brand new two-part documentary “The Journey”. If you’re not already a member, click here to start.

Star Wars Animation Begins. The theme for this year’s Comic-Con was Star Wars is Forever. Lucasfilm’s Head of Fan Relations, Steve Sansweet, revealed that Lucas Animation will be carrying on the spirit of adventure and excitement through a new animated Star Wars series set to debut in the Fall of 2007. Production has begun, and Sansweet announced several of the talented people behind the new endeavor, including Catherine Winder, Dave Filoni, Chris Kubsch, and Henry Gilroy.

Lucasfilm is Hiring. With Lucas Animation and LucasArts ramping up to produce new Star Wars and non-Star Wars series, features and games, now is the time to prepare that resumé and send it over. The next generation of talented digital artists is needed, and fans that have the skills are invited to apply at lucasfilm.com.

Episode III DVD On Its Way. The Summer of Sith is not over yet, but already there’s more Episode III to look forward to at the end of ’05. Though exact release dates and feature-specs have yet to be revealed, Sansweet did preview some of what was to come. Like the DVDs for Episodes I and II, the Episode III DVD will contain completed deleted scenes — with score, sound and visual effects — as bonus material. He even screened one of these lost scenes exclusively to the Comic-Con audience: the first clandestine meeting of concerned Senators Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, Padmé Amidala and others to forge an Alliance to restore the Republic.

Not a Decoy! Natalie Portman Drops By. For the first time ever, Natalie Portman attended Comic-Con to help promote her upcoming film, V for Vendetta. Not forgetting her Star Wars roots, she paid a surprise visit to the massive Star Wars pavilion on the exhibit floor. In the interests of security, her appearance was kept to a whisper. Fans in line to buy products from the StarWarsShop.com store were randomly selected and asked to return at a specific time for a surprise. When they did, they found themselves greeted by Portman and posed for a keepsake Polaroid with the actress.

Dark Horse Comics. The 20th anniversary of Dark Horse Comics is just around the corner, and to celebrate, they are revamping their entire line of Star Wars comics. Several long-running series are drawing to a close, to be replaced by several new exciting titles. Dark Horse editors only revealed upcoming developments that start the year 2006 — there’s much more on the way. But to start, the biggest and most welcomed surprise is a return to the ancient Star Wars-past with the launch of an ongoing Knights of the Old Republic series.

And Much More… Editors and authors at LucasBooks previewed upcoming titles, many of them amazingly detailed high-end art books. Hasbro showed upcoming Saga packaging and unveiled their smaller-scale Unleashed line. Sideshow Toys announced that they’re taking over production of the 12″ action figure line. Many other licensees showcased upcoming products and convention exclusives. To catch up on all the news, sights and sounds from Comic-Con

Aug 04, 2005
Issue #142

Braving the Prequel Path
With the successful release of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith, filmmaker George Lucas says that he hopes this extensive backstory of Anakin Skywalker’s transformation to the iconic figure of Darth Vader will influence fans’ future viewings of the original trilogy.

“When I finished with Return of the Jedi I thought that was the end of it,” Lucas confesses. “I thought I was going to go and raise my kids, then I’ll come back and direct little artsy movies that I always wanted to do. So by the time my kids were old enough where I could go back and direct, I realized that I could tell the story the way I wanted to. And I thought it might be interesting to tell a story that changes and influences the way the first three films are viewed because it really is about Darth Vader, and not about Luke and Leia. And that would be more apparent when you see what the backstory really was.”

However, in telling the backstory the way he felt was best, Lucas had to take what he regards as risks with the prequels.

“The first trilogy — Book One — is about the father, while the second trilogy — Book Two — is about the children,” Lucas says. “When you combine them together they become one big piece. When I told people that Episode I was about a ten-year-old boy, people panicked, and they said it wasn’t going to work because everyone wanted to see Darth Vader going around and killing people. But I really wanted to be thorough about telling the story about where Darth Vader came from. When I did the second film, people were mortified that it was going to be a love story. But we got through both of those films, and people were excited for Episode III to see the rest of the story.”

One of the larger issues that surfaced in the telling of Anakin’s fall to the dark side and his rise to becoming a corrupt figure was that of the fall of democracy at the hands of the very people who initially fought oppression.

“You have the personal issue of Anakin and his turn to the dark side, but then the children later bring him back to being a human being,” Lucas says. “But the larger issue is that you’ve given up your democracy, and that the bad guys never took it — it was handed to them. That theme was there 30 years ago which came out of the Vietnam War and Nixon wanting to change the rules so he could get a third term.”

“I’m a big history buff and I was really into Caesar at the time,” Lucas recalls. “I always wanted to know why the Roman Senate gave Caesar’s nephew a dictatorship after they had gotten rid of Caesar. Why after the revolution in France did they create an Emperor? Why did the Germans after they had a Democracy after World War I, turn it into a dictatorship? Those were my initial questions 30 years ago.”

Aug 18, 2005
Issue #143

Big Numbers: Episode III Animation
Episode III is big; so big that big numbers are frequently thrown around describing specific aspects of its production. Industrial Light & Magic probably has the most impressive numbers to show encompassing the sheer scale of their accomplishment in bringing Revenge of the Sith to spectacular life: 2,151 visual effects shots for a total of 375,040 frames of work.

“We began working on this movie in October of 2003,” recalls Rob Coleman, Animation Director of Revenge of the Sith. “In terms of animation, we had 1,269 shots that we animated. To put that into perspective, for Episode I we did 60 minutes of animation. For Episode II, we did 70 minutes. In this one we did 90 minutes.”

To handle such a large job, the animators needed tools that allowed them to achieve their shots with specific finesse, and that could be customized to handle the volume of animation required. They turned to Maya, the standard in high-end animation software from Alias. “Because of George [Lucas] pushing us, we had to create new tools and new ways to work, and Maya was a large part of how we solved very challenging creative problems.”

Thousands of starships tangle in the atmosphere high above Coruscant, each producing scores of laser beams, explosions and flak hits. The elements quickly began to multiply. “George wanted this [space battle] to be bigger and better than the one in Jedi. That’s the high water mark right now,” says Coleman. “He wanted the flying to be much more realistic. He saw what ILM had done with Pearl Harbor, and he asked me specifically if I could get those guys and have them do the opening space battle. That was Scott Benza, Glenn Mcintosh and Paul Kavanagh and others. They created a flight rig that handled all the realism — all the buffeting, bouncing and moving.”

Also animated in large numbers were the soldiers of the Clone Wars: the clone troopers, Wookiee warriors and battle droids that would populate the sprawling battlefields. Equipping and animating these soldiers was facilitated by customizing tools to meet these needs. Technical Animator Supervisor James Tooley and his team led the development and scripting of tools to create efficient ways to arm an army.

“The tools were animator-friendly,” says Coleman. “It made it very easy to place clones into ships, or guns onto clones, or different weapons onto Wookiees, because we’d have one master Wookiee and 15 different props. They created buttons for our animators so they could just click on it, and it would connect directly to the creature that they wanted and it would wrap the fingers around the weapons and constrain them to it. That really was an advantage to us.”

This customization kept animators animating, and not fretting about the technology. “I remember when I started [years ago], I had fingerprints all over my monitor because I really wanted to reach in and grab it and move it just a little bit,” says Coleman. Now, the process has become much more animator-friendly thanks to custom tools developed by ILM.

“It was very creative software with huge-time savings which really helped us do what we do.” Given the scale of Episode III, every second saved was rendering time earned. One final big number: the shots of Episode III resulted in a total rendering time of 6,598,928 hours, spread across the rendering farms of multiple processors. To do it on a single system running continuously, it would take over 750 years to produce.

Don’t try that at home

Sep 01, 2005
Issue #144

Building Better Wookiees
With the common yet inaccurate phrase “it’s all done on computers” spreading widely among moviegoers, people often wonder what makes computer-generated imagery (CGI) difficult or time-consuming. The computer is essentially creating an accurate simulation of the complex behavior of light interacting against a modeled surface. What makes CGI realistic is precise recreation of a light ray’s particular bounce, refraction or absorption when it hits a given object. These calculations are done for every frame of the movie, often taking many, many hours per frame.

Organic textures with rough shapes and odd curves add complexity to the light paths, as do qualities such as translucency. When it comes to creating a furry digital creature, the realistic movement and sway of all those thousands of hair strands is taxing enough for the computer to calculate — now consider adding that each hair is interacting with the light in a specific way, and reflecting and refracting light into its environment and surrounding hairs.

“It takes an awfully long time to generate hair for a lot of hero Wookiees,” says Sequence Supervisor and Development Lead Patrick Conran, “and even with our most severe pipeline efficiencies turned all the way up, you’ve got a hundred Wookiees. It takes a long time before you ever manage to start rendering anything.”

Before the Wookiee efficiency solution was cracked, ILM had to finish one shot for the November 2004 teaser trailer of a vanguard of Wookiee warriors charging from an embankment. “We had five practical Wookiee suits spread over four different shoots composited together, and we had to take that and add them into a miniature and digital matte painting background, and then generate our CG Wookiees behind them,” explains Tim Fortenberry, Digital Effects Artist. “We rendered it the old fashioned way. It took something like 5,000 processing hours initially and a terabyte and a half on disc. So it was definitely not a good way to do the entire sequence.”

The artists and technicians at ILM found a better way to create crowds of Wookiees to fit the already tight schedule of Episode III postproduction. “Looking at the concept art, we noticed that [Kashyyyk] was pretty overcast and there is pretty low contrast. We definitely used that to our advantage,” says Fortenberry.

Rather than calculate the quality of light striking and bouncing off all the fur on their digital Wookiees for each shot and angle, ILM “baked in” a pre-set quality of light to all the Wookiee models. “We were able to do this without using any spotlights or deep shadows, which really made it much more manageable,” says Conran.

Also helping speed the process along was letting a Wookiee’s distance from the camera dictate the detail of the model. While the practical Wookiee suits were used for the closest of shots, the hero digital models had somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 hairs on their surface. The ones further in the background would have less, say 40,000 hairs. They’d be so small in “camera space” though that it wouldn’t be noticeable, and it would speed up the computer’s calculations. The ones furthest from camera had no hair at all — they instead had thickened bodies with flat, painted hair texture on them.

Another time-saving technique had to do with the flexibility of the Wookiee models. After composing a shot with hundreds of Wookiee warriors, someone may want to change specific Wookiee characters. Rather than having to re-render the scene to accommodate a completely different Wookiee model, ILM built an “über-Wookiee.”

“This model had all the variations built into it,” says Fortenberry “It essentially puts all the changes to the Wookiee model at the very last step before rendering. So, if there are changes, there’s no going back to Creature Development or the Animation Department. You’d turn on the features you’d want on the Wookiee, and dial out the ones you don’t.”

Sep 15, 2005
Issue #145

The Evolution of Space Battles
As the digital future began to unveil itself in the early ’90s, John Knoll saw its potential. ILM was constantly innovating, using their high-end systems to produce the CGI effects that wowed audiences in The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park. These astounding visuals required a robust processing pipeline to produce, but Knoll saw advantages in creating relatively simple digital effects outside that pipeline.

“I developed a bit of a frustration that we didn’t have a particularly good way of doing simple work inexpensively,” explains Knoll. “I started becoming an advocate of trying to use inexpensive off-the-shelf commercial systems for doing simple work. Use the complicated stuff for the complicated work, and do the simple stuff with simple tools.”

To that end, Knoll produced a convincing proof-of-concept test in 1993 of dog-fighting X-wing fighters and TIE fighters, all done with off-the-shelf desktop tools. “Nothing happened for quite a while, until 1995 when George Lucas decided that he was going to revamp the Star Wars pictures a little bit,” recalls Knoll. “I pitched doing the revised space battle using some of these techniques.”

The end result was a number of updated space battle shots done entirely on consumer-level computers. It worked so well that similar techniques and tools were used for Episode I. “I spent a lot of time studying the ‘style book’ of Star Wars — the way the shots were lit, the way they were composed, how the movement of the ships worked — because I felt it was very important that the new space battles still feel like Star Wars,” says Knoll.

The digital models allowed the color and shapes of the ships to move past the restrained bluescreen-friendly designs of optically printed models, but for Episode I, they weren’t all digital. The massive Trade Federation battleships were hulking miniatures to capture the detail required of them. “The big ships I still did as a miniature, because at the time I was really concerned with how heavy this model would be. A model like this could easily become several million CVs [surface control vertices], so I had grave concerns of being able to render something like that.”

Now fast forward to Episode III. Not only are the ILM computers able to handle the complex geometry of something as big and detailed as a Trade Federation battleship, but they handle thousands of warships in battle over Coruscant, with detail so fine that the snubfighters and audience can fly right up to them, just a few meters above their hulls.

“I’ve definitely been a beneficiary of Moore’s Law,” says Knoll, describing the 1965 prediction that computer power will double every 18 months. “This time, it looked like we were capable of creating big ships all in computer graphics. We have advanced quite a bit in our ability to handle dense hard surface models and have very high resolution textures on them, and to be able to render them efficiently.”

Whereas a few years ago, the scale of one ship would have required it to be a miniature, for Episode III the scale of the battle involving big ships meant it was much easier and more cost-effective to do it digitally. “It’s a huge fleet,” says Knoll. “There are many, many of these ships and you don’t want to have to spend a lot of time on stage shooting 16 different model elements to go into shots. It’s very expensive to do. Of course, it’s a lot cheaper to do in computer graphics.”

Sep 29, 2005
Issue #146

The Evolution of Environments    
Lucasfilm’s pioneering efforts on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles created a host of production techniques that made the Star Wars prequels possible. Digital technology opened up the scale of the critically acclaimed series, granting it a lavish feature film look for a fraction of the budget. The show employed low resolution effects that married 16mm film footage with digital extensions and additions executed in consumer grade software like Photoshop. With this technique refined, it was scaled up to theatrical film quality for Star Wars.

When it came time to do Episode I, it was apparent that the production was beyond the scale of anything ILM had ever attempted. With so much of the film relying on innovations in computer-graphics, the visual effects supervisors had to determine ways to balance the workload between CG and other methods.

“We started pushing a lot of things that didn’t have to be computer graphics into other techniques,” says John Knoll, the only visual effects supervisor to work on all three prequel films. Contrary to a popular yet mistaken notion, Episode I had more miniatures constructed and filmed than the entire original Star Wars trilogy; it wasn’t all computer-generated effects. The bulk of that miniature use was for the creation and extension of environments such as the cities of Theed and Mos Espa, the interior of large starships, and the Jedi Temple.

“I like using miniatures because the image you get back is constrained by nature to be physically possible,” explains Knoll. “The only thing in computer graphics that constrains the image to be physically realistic is your own eye. The gamut of what you can create out of a renderer is very large, and the gamut of images that look real is very small. But when you shoot a miniature, you get a lot of that for free, so we did a lot of environments that way.”

In some cases, like the high speed desert landscapes during the Podrace, miniature use wasn’t possible. “The miniatures would have to be so enormous to cover that much terrain that we couldn’t afford to build them,” says Knoll. Instead, Episode I employed a hybrid solution developed by Knoll and matte painter/modelmaker Paul Huston. It combined very detailed photographs of miniatures wrapped around simple low-res geometry that a computer could easily handle.

“In essence, you’re using the computer graphics as an image warping tool rather than a rendering tool,” says Knoll. “The frames looked very realistic because at any one time, 80 percent of what you’re looking at is a photographed real object.”

The latest generation of coupling real photographs with computer-generated geometry is called Zenviro, and was used extensively in Episode III. “One of the big expenses in shooting miniatures is actually the stage time,” reveals Knoll. “The actual cost of building the asset in the model shop and building and texturing a model in computer graphics is very often comparable. It’s not actually the cost of building the asset that kills you; it’s the stage time.”

As a solution, ILM still built many of the miniatures required but did not shoot them all on stage with a motion picture camera. “We would shoot high resolution photographs, take a relatively simple CG model of it that didn’t have all this fine detail, and just project the photos on it and use it to generate the background for the shots.” Examples of this technique can be found extensively aboard the Trade Federation cruiser, throughout the hallways, bridge, elevator shafts, and General’s Quarters environments.

To find out more about the creation of Star Wars environments, check out your local bookstores for Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days, a new photo-packed book from Harry N. Abrams books, written by John Knoll.

Oct 13, 2005
Issue #147

Seeing Through Vader’s Eyes
To promote the November 1st release of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith on DVD and Star Wars Battlefront II, actor Hayden Christensen recently talked about the challenge of mentally transforming Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader and the aftereffects of donning the dark helmet.

Preparing for the Anakin’s inevitable transformation meant that in Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Christensen would consciously have to hold back, letting his character’s anger and anguish build up to a climax in Episode III.

“It was challenging, because you are cast as this character that is the connective tissue to someone that represents all that is evil,” Christensen explains. “So your natural instinct is to try to take him there. George [Lucas] was constantly asking me to pull back from that and to make him someone who is struggling, and someone who allows his frustrations to present themselves in ways that aren’t necessarily perceived as evil, but maybe in other ways. The character was more about who he was at that time of his life and Episode III was about changing him and making him evolve into Darth — which was why I was very excited to get to Episode III and finally get to do that. It was something that I had sort of built up in my head for so long.”

Rather than journeying to a darker place in his own psyche, Christensen says that he dug deep into the mind of Vader himself, thinking about what Anakin would do in every crucial decision-making moment.

“As an actor, I usually try to keep my motivation within the context of what my character is going through,” Christensen says. “So, I don’t think of my dog that died when I was 8 years old and how that made me feel. I try to stay within the psychology of Anakin. It was just really letting his frustrations seep in and how that would affect me.”

Christensen also had the benefit of working alongside prolific actors — Christopher Lee and Ian McDiarmid — to help him hone his skills as an actor on the set.

“I think I’ve learned the most, from all the actors I’ve worked with, from Ian,” Christensen confesses. “It was just an eye-opening experience getting to sit in that opera scene with him and listen to him tell that story and watch the subtlety, and everything that he’s able to convey within that subtlety. I’d just sit there and shake my head and be like, ‘Oh, I’m not supposed to be shaking my head. Whoops!’ And, he’s such a kind man and is willing to share his wisdom and help you when you ask for it. So, I’ve learned an awful lot from him.”

Since the theatrical success of Episode III, Christensen has noticed that more of his younger fans are now identifying him as the legendary Man in Black rather than the impatient Jedi Padawan that he portrayed in Episode II — which may make for a rather interesting Halloween.

“Now I’ve got two characters that people can dress up as,” Christensen jokes. “I was expecting a different reaction, to be honest. Kids still are enamored with this hero and I would have thought [Episode III] would have changed how they saw Anakin and maybe they would have been a little shy at first. But it really hasn’t changed anything. If anything, they’re just more drawn to him. I still get little kids coming up to me wanting lightsaber training and I play along with it. I love it. I stay at home at Halloween now. When my mom tells me that there’s someone dressed up as Anakin, I’ll go to the door and give them their candy, which is fun.”

Oct 31, 2005
Issue #148

Episode III and Battlefront II Arrive  
The Star Wars home entertainment day you’ve been waiting for has arrived! On November 1, the explosive and emotional finale to the saga, Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith, arrives on DVD and Star Wars Battlefront II, the sequel to the most successful Star Wars game ever, arrives on Xbox, Playstation 2, Windows PC and Sony PSP formats.

Lucasfilm and Fox Home Entertainment present a two-disc set for the Revenge of the Sith DVD, with uncompromising picture and sound mastered directly from the original digital source material. The DVD will include a brand-new full-length documentary produced by Lucasfilm Ltd. as well as two new featurettes — one that explores the prophecy of Anakin Skywalker as the Chosen One, and the other that looks at the movie’s amazing stunts. A 15-part collection of Lucasfilm’s groundbreaking web documentary series, Making Episode III, will also be included in the set. A two-level playable demo of Star Wars Battlefront II is also included on the DVD.

For those who actually want to live out the action of the Star Wars universe, there’s Star Wars Battlefront II, available on the same day. LucasArts’ sequel to the smash hit Star Wars Battlefront adds all new space combat, playable Jedi characters, and never-before-seen environments straight out of Episode III to the hard-hitting action. In addition to the group combat, Star Wars Battlefront II also has an all-new single-player experience that transports gamers through an epic, story-based saga centering on Darth Vader’s elite 501st Legion of stormtroopers.

Trump’s Apprentice Takes on the Sith Apprentice – On November 10, Donald Trump’s hopefuls on The Apprentice on NBC will be taking on the biggest Star Wars event of the fall — the launch of Revenge of the Sith on DVD and the Star Wars: Battlefront II video game.

Be sure to tune in this week to get to know the individuals who will inspire a major Star Wars promotion.

Nov 10, 2005
Issue #149

Obstacles Matter Not
Now that Episode III is available on DVD, viewers can carefully examine the painstaking work of Animation Director Rob Coleman and his team that brought the many digital characters to life, including Jedi MasterYoda.

To get his animation team back in prime shape for their work ahead on Episode III, Coleman says that they replaced the footage of the Episode I Yoda puppet with their Episode III digital model as a test to see how far they could push his usual performance boundaries. This footage worked its way into the DVD, where it can be see as part of “The Chosen One” featurette on Disc 2.

“We did that between Episodes II and III as an exercise to get the team back into the character,” Coleman explains. “On Episode II, I was stressing about living up to what Frank [Oz] had created. A lot of our focus was on the final battle sequence between Yoda and Count Dooku. We had never seen Yoda do that before. In the process, we were learning about acting as animators. It was really exciting for me to have the team back again between Episode II and III. We used Episode I as a testbed because we didn’t know what was going to be in Episode III, so we got the team back up to speed. We really honed our acting skills and, using that as a springboard, we moved right on to Episode III.”

While the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) has evolved with each prequel, some have expressed concerns that the digital arts may overshadow the performance that legendary puppeteer and actor Frank Oz put into everyone’s beloved little green friend. But Coleman says that the worry is unwarranted considering the research that went into making the CGI Yoda into a real, believable character based on Oz’s work.

“The real example is that when we first did a test [for Episode II], it looked like a creepy little green man,” Coleman says. “It didn’t look like Yoda. We could do all kinds of extra things with the face that a puppet couldn’t do. In learning about the character and trying to get to the essence as well as its spirit, I went back and studied what Frank Oz had done frame-by-frame. It became part of the character. We literally got down to the amount of wiggle through the ears. Whether it was because Frank was holding a 60-pound puppet above his head all day long and his hand started to shake, or if it was something that he was putting in consciously, it was simply part of the character.”

“When we started to do the computer animation, we had to add in what I call performance ‘dirt’ — shake, wiggle, and little jars in the performance that Frank did naturally as an extremely talented puppeteer,” Coleman explains. “My group had to learn all of that. When we first showed it to Frank, we were showing him a pretty creepy-looking green man. It didn’t look like this beloved character that we had come to love.”

While just making the leap to a digital Yoda and his unprecedented acrobatics formed the obstacles in Episode II, Episode III was more of a refinement of the digital character, and the challenges came from more subtle performance and acting.

“I was really terrified before Episode II came out about the fight,” Coleman confesses. “Once we got through that, I felt that we could really up the ante in terms of the performance and the interaction between Yoda and the live actors he was sharing the screen with. It put more pressure on the crew and me to really challenge ourselves. In the process, we were rewarded with some very nice close-ups. There’s a really nice scene between Anakin and Yoda in Yoda’s sanctuary, which I don’t think would have been in Episode II had it been written at that time. I don’t think George Lucas would have been comfortable enough to give us sustained close-ups and to give us a thinking time, which is really the acting time.”

Continues Coleman, “Any time you look at real people onscreen, we learn more about them as a character when they are not talking compared to when they are — the reactions, the facial expressions, the thinking, or the doubting. They are not listening to the person — they are worried about something else. It’s a joy as an animator to be given those shots with a character like Yoda.”

Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Thursday, December 23, 2003
Issue #101

What do droids, Chewbacca, legendary disco producer Meco and rocker Jon Bon Jovi have in common? They all celebrate the holidays on Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album. With memorable tunes such as “What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)” and C-3PO’s retelling ofa sci-fi infused “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” the album is a quirky addition to any holiday music collection. In fact, the record was so sought after by collectors, that in 1996 Rhino records and Lucasfilm, Ltd. decided to re-release Christmas in the Stars for eager fans.

The album’s story takes place in a droid factory where robots trudge away at building toys year round for S. Claus. However they don’t understand the meaning of Christmas until C-3PO and R2-D2 show them how to appreciate the holiday spirit. Even Artoo adds to the season festivities by learning how to whistle the catchy Christmas ditty, “Sleigh Ride.” Later we learn who gets what from their wish list: a scarf for Luke Skywalker, perfume for Princess Leia and earmuffs for Han Solo.

Recorded in 1980, many of the album’s songs were written by Maury Yeston, a Yale University music professor and composer. Producer Meco Monardo, who already topped the charts with his best-selling disco albumsStar Wars And Other Galactic Funk and Encounters of Every Kind, envisioned and supervised the unusual project.

British actor Anthony Daniels lent his voice to reprise his role as C-3PO and Lucasfilm’s sound artist Ben Burtt provided the sound effects of R2-D2 and Chewbacca.

However, the most trivia-worthy album liner note is the debut of a then 18-year-old Jon Bon Jovi, who ends up singing with a high school choir on “R2-D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” At the time the album was in production, Jon Bon Jovi , then known as John Bongiovi, swept floors and did odd jobs at the famous New York City recording studio Power Station, ran by Jon’s cousin Tony Bongiovi. As Meco auditioned singers for Christmas in the Stars, Tony suggested Jon for one of the lead vocal parts, and the rest is caroling history. Soon after Jon’s singing debut, he recorded his own demo at the Power Station which included a hit song called “Runaway.” The single eventuallylead to a deal with Mercury in 1983.

Even though Christmas in the Stars did not lead to a series of additional Star Wars holiday-themed albums as Meco initially had planned, the album still remains a favorite among movie and music collectors alike.

Thursday, January 22, 2004
Issue #102

CG That’s More Than Skin Deep
Through its use of digital doubles performing hazardous stunts or synthetic characters like Yoda the Jedi Master, Episode III will continue to blaze new ground in the development of believable computer-generated organic characters. One of the tools Industrial Light & Magic uses is subsurface scattering rendering — a technique that was in early development for Episode II, and one that has garnered recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. On February 14, Christophe Hery will represent ILM in receiving a special certificate of merit from the Academy as part of the 76th annual Academy Awards.

The technical award Hery will accept is one of nine that the Academy will give this year and represents a major leap forward in the effort to create photo-realistic images on screen. While Hery started working on subsurface scattering during the production of Attack of the Clones, the technique wasn’t perfected in time to use on the digital characters in that film. Instead, the public saw ILM’s first use of the technique on Dobby the Elf in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, later in 2002.

“The idea is to simulate the effect of translucency and depict how light penetrates inside the skin and scatters around the different tissues, then comes out at different points,” Hery explains. “Traditionally in computer graphics, we’ve followed the idea that light shines on a particular point and bounces off the same point. Subsurface scattering allows light to go into a certain point and come out in different places. It opens the door to all different kinds of materials in computer graphics — especially skin,” he says.

For a simple example of the natural effect that subsurface scattering replicates, hold your hand up to a bright light and notice how light shines through your skin and creates reddish and yellow glows. That kind of detail, which was previously missing from CG techniques, is what subsurface scattering brings to digitally rendered characters.

Although the process was first used more than a year ago, the Academy carefully reviewed submissions for their merit before deciding which of the 14 submissions would receive an award. Thanks to ILM’s work with subsurface scattering in films like The Hulk and the use of similar techniques by other visual effects companies to create successful digital characters, the last two years of film production have demonstrated that it is becoming increasingly possible to make photorealistic humans and other creatures with translucent elements such as skin, Hery says.

“It’s possible to make these look like they belong to the world around them,” he says. “We forget that what nature is doing is very complex. All the time (in computer graphics) you’re pushing the envelope, you have to go to the next level. This is just one component — one big component — of rendering human skin.”

Thursday, February 05, 2004
Issue #103

Digital Digits: VFX By The Numbers
Industrial Light & Magic is still gearing up to take on the bulk of visual effects requirements for Episode III, but here’s a numerical snapshot of where they stand as of February 4, 2004.

Total number of shots: 2,000
Client Finals (final shots as approved by George Lucas): 37
Final Omits: 1
Shots Turned over to ILM: 809

Finals needed per week: 32
Weeks to go: 61
Shots left to go: 1,963

Length of the opening shot, from after the crawl to the first cut (in frames): 3,768

For continued coverage of the postproduction process, be sure to check out the Post Notes article that appears regularly at starwars.com Hyperspace.

Thursday, February 19, 2004
Issue #104

Late Night with Mark Hamill
“My idea of fun on a talk show is being in a world of comedy and performance rather than being a guest,” says Mark Hamill. The actor behind Luke Skywalker proudly displays his preference for performance over dry talking heads in his directorial debut, the not-quite-cinema-verité documentary, Comic Book: The Movie. Insomniac Star Wars fans could have glimpsed seeds of this straight-faced make-believe approach to comedy in the mid-1980s, on NBC’s popular “Late Night With David Letterman.”

“[Late Night writer] Chris Elliott lived in my neighborhood, and I was a big Letterman fan,” recalls Hamill. “I used to say to him that I wish Dave’s show had no guests, because I like the comedy better than hearing somebody talk about their latest movie.”

Hamill was slated to appear as a guest during the height of Return of the Jedi mania, but when viewers tuned in that night, it appeared the actor was overbooked. He instead appeared “live via satellite” from Episode VI’s Royal Premiere in London. Letterman conducted the unconventional interview over a monitor, but stopped when he noticed recognizable members of the Late Night band walking behind Hamill. Intrigued, the host stepped over to the hallway next to the set, and found a sheepish Hamill standing in the hallway talking to a camera. Caught in a fib, Hamill confessed that his presence was not requested for the Premiere, and instead “they just wanted the aliens and the robots.”

“I jumped at the chance to do that bit,” says Hamill. “Dave doesn’t do rehearsals, so when we went on the air, it was the first time he did that line. I say to him, ‘Don’t be mad, Dave.’ And he replies, ‘I’m not so much as mad … as I am disappointed.'”

Another appearance of the same vintage came about as a response to a Viewer Mail segment. An inquisitive fan wanted to know how a guest in a cooking segment managed to crack an egg with one hand. To explain the highly technical effect, Letterman handed it over to Hamill, who appeared in a pre-recorded segment delving into the magic of ILM special effects.

“I thought it was reallyfunny, because it was satirizing those ‘Making Of’ specials,” says Hamill. “What I loved about it was the unbelievably elaborate explanation of something that was so simple. ‘First the hand is shot against bluescreen. Later an egg is added optically. Squibs are added to the egg…’ I loved that.”

A string of appearances on the “Late Night” was made possible by Hamill being busy in New York theater at the time. “They’d shoot at 5:30, so they’d be done by 6:30. I’d be in the theater district, but I wouldn’t have to be in the theater until 7:30 for my show at 8. It worked out beautifully. I must have done at least a half-a-dozen of those before I overstayed my welcome,” he says with a laugh. “I realized that somewhere along the line I got replaced by Tony Randall.”

Thursday, March 04, 2004
Issue #105

Issue #98 of the Homing Beacon introduced readers to many of the voice actors performing in the first installment of the Star Wars: Clone Wars micro-series. With the second season of ten episodes coming this month, here’s a look at some of the new vocal talents and characters to be featured.

Returning as main characters are Mat Lucas as Anakin Skywalker, James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO and Tom Kane as Yoda. Grey De Lisle is once again Padmé Amidala and Asajj Ventress. She will add Shaak Ti to her list of characters, as the beautifully exotic alien Jedi Master appears in the final episode.

Kevin Michael Richardson will provide the voice of the tusked Whiphid Jedi, K’Kruhk. He has leant his voice to Star Wars video games in the past, portraying Mace Windu and Eeth Koth in games such as Star Wars: Obi-Wan and Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles. He is the voice of Jolee Bindo in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. He can also be heard as Deus Ex Machina in The Matrix: Revolutions.

Daran Norris, who voiced Durge in the first season, will play Jedi Masters Ki-Adi-Mundi and Daakman Barrek. Norris plays Mr. Turner on “The Fairly Odd Parents,” and he can be seen in Mark Hamill’s Comic Book: The Movie as an ersatz Commander Courage.

Playing Luminara Unduli is Cree Summer. Her distinctive voice is often recognized as Penny from the “Inspector Gadget” series, and she was on-camera on “A Different World” as Freddie. She has a connection to the animated Star Wars universe, providing the voice of Princess Kneesaa in the first season of “Ewoks.”

Tatyana Yassukovich plays Barriss Offee. She can be heard as the voice of the storyteller in 2000’s Chocolat.

Andre Sogliuzzo returns to play Captain Typho. The actor also provides the voice of all the clone troopers, the ARC troopers, and the battle droids. He also provided the voice of the clones in LucasArts’ Star Wars: Clone Wars video game.

Known to many fans as the voice of Bender on “Futurama,” John DiMaggio not only plays a Padawan in the micro-series, but is also the menacing voice of General Grievous in the series. General Grievous is an Episode III character who makes his debut in the final episode of Star Wars: Clone Wars. Don’t expect much in common between Grievous and Bender though. The General of the droid army isn’t likely to invite any Jedi to bite his shiny metal posterior.

Star Wars: Clone Wars micro-series begins again on March 26 on the Cartoon Network, and online on starwars.com Hyperspace, with exclusive audio commentary by creator Genndy Tartakovsky.

Thursday, March 18, 2004
Issue #106

Incredible Details
Continuing a tradition that began way back in 1997, illustrators Hans Jenssen and Richard Chasemore, along with senior art editor John Kelly, traveled across the ocean from England to California, spending a week at Skywalker Ranch. The two talented artists and intrepid book designer were visiting the Art Department last week to examine the many vehicles and elements that they will illustrate for the forthcoming Episode III Incredible Cross-Sections book, due out in 2005 by DK Publishing to coincide with the film’s release.

“Seven years ago…” reflects Jenssen, taken slightly aback after doing the math. “That’s when we cut our teeth doing the classic book. And then the Episode I vehicles book was the next one we did.” After the original trilogy and Episode I Incredible Cross-Section books, both artists went on to do similar books for Episode I locations, and Episode II vehicles and locations.

In those seven years, much has changed. Chasemore and Jenssen have had the unique opportunity to work closely with the designers of the prequels, and Episode III brings the evolution of technology and industrial design to the point closest to the original trilogy.

“Everything’s different now, particularly the way we get our reference,” says Chasemore. “We’re here getting angles, reference, finding out what’s been produced and what hasn’t. We’ve been allowed to have the actual digital models this time, which is new.” By basing their illustrations from digital concept models, the artists will be able to ensure an unprecedented accuracy in their eventual exploded-view illustrations of various Episode III vessels.

“One of the most valuable things of our visit is to be able to talk to the guys in the Art Department who designed all this stuff,” says Jenssen. “We’re able to talk about their ideas, and find out what their rationale was — or lack of rationale, whichever is the case — and making shapes of the ships.”

In addition to working with Ryan Church and Erik Tiemens, the Episode III Concept Design Supervisors, Chasemore and Jenssen have perused the Episode III Visual Script, a hefty white binder containing a chronological compendium of vehicles, characters and hardware in the film, presented scene-by-scene.

“I think there’s more varied vehicles of varying sizes, and a lot of things with big guns on it, which is always good,” says Chasemore. The two artists work together to divvy up the vehicles. Simplifying the process is the precedent of the other films and their previous cross-section illustrations.

“It’s usually quite obvious,” says Chasemore. “If Hans has already worked on a vehicle, and we’re seeing a newer or older version, we tend to do what we did in the past, so that evolution of technology is in the right style.”

This book will focus on vehicles, their preferred subject matter compared to the much more complex locations. “Locations easily swallow up 500 hours to 600 hours of work, while the biggest vehicle is about 400 hours at the most,” says Chasemore.

“You can scoot through the less complex vehicles in about 200 or 250 hours or so,” adds Jenssen.

That said, their proudest work can be found in the Insidethe Worlds of… book devoted to the original trilogy locales. Penned by James Luceno, this book is due for release this fall from DK, and peeks through the walls of such familiar locales as the Mos Eisley cantina, Echo Base, and the Emperor’s throne room.

“I finished that project about a week before I came out here,” says Chasemore. “That’s going to be the best book; it’s just awesome.”

Both Chasemore and Jenssen are scheduled to be guests at Jedi-Con 2004, running April 9-11 in Düsseldorf, Germany. They have secured permission to show some of their upcoming original trilogy work at the convention, providing fans with a first glimpse at some of their favorite pieces.

Thursday, April 01, 2004
Issue #107

The London Office
By Pablo Hidalgo

The Star Wars prequels have shot around the world, with Australia becoming the home base for principal photography for both Episodes II and III. Throughout the years, a crew from JAK Productions has maintained a London office at the famous Elstree Studios, as much of the behind-the-scenes talent calls the UK their home.

“I think a lot of people are surprised by how much work generates from here,” says Polly Leach, a Production Coordinator in the London Office. “There’s a very firm stronghold of the Lucasfilm and Star Wars empire in England.”

Crucial pre-production and planning stages occur in London for each episode, long before shooting actually began. Many of the key team members are JAK veterans, dating all the way back to The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. “The Production Art Department and Costume Department were pretty busy over there, at the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003,” says Leach. “Gavin Bocquet had a whole Art Department set up at Elstree Studios, with a lot of models and speeders for George to approve. Likewise, Trisha Biggar does a lot of her fabric buying in London, and she was buying non-stop to prepare for Episode III.”

With half a world dividing the preproduction and production headquarters, coordinators on both ends needed to work closely to ensure that everything — and everyone — arrived in Sydney and returned to London intact. Heading up the Production Office in Sydney was Virginia Murray, Production Coordinator. Leach stayed at Elstree, until the end of the shoot, when she flew over to Sydney to coordinate the return trip.

“I get the feeling that George Lucas and Rick McCallum are terribly fond of the United Kingdom, and it is so nice that Rick keeps a base here,” says Leach. One of her main functions during her stay in Sydney was to serve as Asset Supervisor, collating all the information about three movies’ worth of props, costumes, vehicles and more. “I helped Rick find a home for them, for the things he doesn’t need for pick-ups.”

The Production Office in Syndey coordinated the inclusion of a starwars.com presence on the set — in the form of daily from-the-set updates and a live webcam. Plans are in the works to try to bring the same Hyperspace access to the brief stint of additional photography in the UK this August.

Thursday, April 15, 2004
Issue #108

Sansweet’s Summer Star Wars Tour

This summer, fans can catch a true insider’s glimpse into what’s up in the Star Wars galaxy, straight from Steve Sansweet, head of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm, Ltd.

Just as the Star Wars saga has grown to be a vital force in popular culture through the years, Sansweet and his Star Wars presentations have become a part of popular convention culture. Fans who attend will enjoy a look into the making of the highly-anticipated Star Wars Episode III. Sansweet will also share insights into the DVD release of the original Star Wars trilogy, scheduled for this September, as well as news on other special events on the horizon.

Sansweet just returned from sharing a presentation with a large and enthusiastic group of fans at Jedi-Con IV in Düsseldorf, Germany the weekend of April 9-11. As he continues traveling to conventions this summer, he will continue to update his presentations. Fans never know when to expect a new surprise or two along the way.

Exciting visuals, audience questions, Lucasfilm answers — these not-to-be-missed presentations are planned for the following conventions this summer:*

WonderCon    April 30, May 1 & 2, Moscone Center, San Francisco
Star Wars Encuentros    July 16-18, World Trade Center, Mexico City
Comic-Con International    July 21 – 25, San Diego Convention Center
Wizard World Chicago    August 13-15, Rosemont Convention Center
GenCon Game Fair    August 19-22, Indiana Convention Center, Indianapolis
Dragon*Con    September 3-6, Atlanta, Georgia
*Schedule is subject to change. Please keep checking starwars.com for the latest updates, specific times, dates, and locations.

Thursday, April 29, 2004
Issue #109

The Hyperspace Horizon
By now Star Wars fans know that the Official Star Wars Fan Club and starwars.com Hyperspace have merged into one, offering the greatest Star Wars experience ever for subscribers. A year’s subscription includes a unique membership kit, six issues of the new-and-improved Star Wars Insider, as well as all the exclusive online content that current subscribers have been enjoying since the launch of Hyperspace in June of 2003. (Click here for more details!)

“Hyperspace subscribers have had a great year of unprecedented inside access and the response has been great,” says Director of Lucas Online, Paul Ens. “Now that Hyperspace is the online component of a larger Fan Club experience, we’re looking forward to new opportunities to make that fan experience even better this year.”

Episode III is what fans are most interested in, and the final Star Wars film will continue to be the focus for both Insider and starwars.com Hyperspace in 2004-2005. “Right now, we’re planning on webcam coverage of the additional round of shooting in August, as well as bringing back the Set Diaries direct from London,” says Ens.

In the meantime, subscribers can look forward to an inside look at a big Lucasfilm event planned for this summer. “Hyperspace really became ‘the-next-best-thing-to-being-there’ during Sydney, and we want to continue that during the convention season,” says Ens. “That’s why we’re working on letting subscribers in on some of the surprises that will be unveiled this summer at Lucasfilm’s big Comic-Con presence. If you can’t make it to San Diego, then tuning into starwars.com Hyperspace is the next best thing.”

One of the new features for 2004 is a brand new Episode III photo series unlike any previously run on the site. “It’s quite different as it’s very interactive, and it will allow users to explore some of the Episode III production environments in a new way,” says Ens.

“A key element to Star Wars’ success has always been the collective experience, be it waiting in line, watching the movie in a packed theater, creating new adventures with action figures, gathering at a Star Wars Celebration or knowing you’re reading the same Star Wars novel as thousands of other fans at the same time,” says Ens.

“The internet has redefined what the concept of a community can be, and it only makes sense for the Official Fan Club to embrace and facilitate this important aspect of being a fan. This fall, look for new ways for fans to reach out to other fans, spotlight their fan groups, or share their creativity or opinions with their local and global communities.

“Naturally, look for Hyperspace to tie-in closely with this fall’s Episode III teaser trailer and Star Wars Trilogy release on DVD,” says Ens, “and making those landmark events even better for our members. Plenty of other surprises are also in store… stay tuned.”

Thursday, May 13, 2004
Issue #110

Star Wars wouldn’t be the Star Wars without its various species and unusual creatures that dominate the screen. No one understands the importance of latex masks, fake appendages and creepy eyes than Episode III Creature Shop Creative Supervisor, Dave Elsey.

“We create anything that’s not human — all of the aliens basically,” Elsey explains. “This includes anything that has any appendages, horns, contact lenses, teeth, and eyes — right up to full suits and animatronics.”

When an actor who must undergo prosthetic makeup first arrives on the Episode III set, he or she will meet Elsey and his team and then prepare the daunting undertaking of being cloned — that is, having a duplicate made of their faces.

“Usually our initial dealing with the actor is when they arrive and meet us for the first time, we shake hands, and then we get them to strip down and wrap them in plastic and put bald caps on their heads,” Elsey explains. “Then we take what is called a ‘life cast,’ which is a plaster cast of their heads. Actually, it’s quite a good ice breaker, because the first thing we do is dump a load of gunge on their head and we use a material called alginate, which is used for dental casts. We basically mix up a bucket of that and we completely cover their heads in that material, then we back that up with plaster bandages and open it up and we make plaster casts. These casts have to be very, very detailed for what we’re doing — literally every skin pore has to be in the right place.”

These casts serve as stand-ins for the real faces during the time-consuming sculpting phase. The artists in the Creature Shop build their material atop the casts, so that when their masks are finalized, they will fit perfectly to an actor’s features. When the pieces of prosthetic makeup are ready to go on the actor, he orshe will often sit in the makeup chair for hours as Elsey’s team carefully place each piece in its exact place.

“It’s good for the actor, because he gets to sit there and watch the whole thing develop from the makeup chair, right from scratch, because he has no idea really what’s going to happen up until that point.” In one unusual instance, Elsey and his team were asked to create an exact duplicate of Ewan McGregor as Jedi MasterObi-Wan Kenobi, which was later nicknamed Foamy-Wan Kenobi.

“When the scripts arrived it seemed that Hayden Christensen was going to be carrying around Ewan for days on the shoot, and we didn’t want Hayden to put his back out straight away as soon as he started production. So we made a lightweight version that looks exactly like Ewan. It’s going to be a very interesting collector’s piece by the end of the movie,” Elsey chuckles.

Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Thursday, August 08, 2003
Issue #91

Jump to Hyperspace, Jump to Sydney

You have only until this Sunday, August 10 to become a Hyperspace member and submit your entry to be eligible to win a trip to the set of Episode III in Sydney, Australia.

Along with watching the Episode III shoot unfold live on the webcam, and even participating in the creative process by choosing the color-scheme for Obi-Wan’s droid in the new movie, Hyperspace members have been living vicariously through the daily set diary of Pablo Hidalgo. “Pabawan” has been in Sydney since before the shoot began, faithfully representing fandom and sharing with us all he sees and hears.

Since the winner of the trip to the set will have the opportunity to live Pablo’s life for a day placing the webcam and writing a set diary for starwars.com, we asked Pablo to give us some insight into a typical day for him on set…

August 5, 2003

5:00 a.m.     Alarm goes off.
5:30 a.m.     Alarm continues to go off.
6:00 a.m.     Off to work. It’s a nice day in Sydney, so I’m walking.
6:30 a.m.     Arrive at Fox Studios, and head up to my office. Catch up on Stateside emails, both business and personal.
7:00 a.m.     Breakfast at the catering tent. Check the Call Sheet: eight Jedi extras costume fittings listed throughout the day. Call Costume Archivist Gillian Libbert to get details. Possible Set Diary in the works.
7:30 a.m.     To the set; Trade Federation Cruiser bridge is shooting today. Watch shooting of animatronic Neimoidian pilot. Take notes for potential Set Diary. Chat with Creature Shop Animatronic operators to get the specifics.
8:00 a.m.     Between takes, ask if it’s okay to put the webcam on set for the Wednesday and Thursday shoot, since the shooting is moving to a webcam-accessible stage. It’s a rather major sequence being shot, so I promise to concentrate mostly on crew and off-set action. Thursday is OK, but I’m asked to hold off on Wednesday. I continue taking pictures of the set and the filming. Since I don’t know what the Set Diary is yet, I always take many more photos than I end up needing.
9:30 a.m.     Take Dave Weitzberg from ILM to the Creature Shop; introduce him to the crew and show him around.
10:00 a.m.     Off to costume fittings. Watch the first Jedi extra, Gervais Koffi get fitted.
10:30 a.m.     Back to office. More emails. Rick McCallum drops by the office to look at some of the pictures I’ve taken. I take the opportunity to hit him up for an online chat for next week. He’s all for it, but I’ve got to coordinate with his assistant, Jacqui Louez, to fit it into his schedule.
11:00 a.m.     Ghent phones from the States. One of the webcams is down. Rush off to stage to check it out. The cam’s been unplugged. Thankfully, it’s on the floor end so I don’t have to climb up into the rafters to reconnect it. Head back to office. Talk to Ghent about this week’s newsletter, which you’re reading right now. I then return a call to Anthony Daniels. He wants to do another chat this Friday. I confirm the time of the chat and when the driver should pick him up. I let Second 2nd Assistant Director Paul Sullivan schedule this.
11:30 a.m.     Back on set. Talk to Colin Ware, the man underneath the Neimoidian pilot mask. Bingo. I know for sure I’ve got material for a Set Diary here.
12:00 a.m.     Head to costume fitting. The next Jedi extra, Josh Canning, is being fitted. Another Set Diary is forming in my mind.
12:30 a.m.     Back to office. Catch up on email.
1:00 p.m.     Lunch in the catering tent. Talk publishing related news with the visiting editor from LucasBooks, Jonathan Rinzler.
2:00 p.m.     Back on set. Get a phone call from Gentle Giant Studios. They tell me to turn on the webcam. Run back to computer to switch them live to cover a tour walking through their scanning area. Meanwhile, I re-dress the webcam wiring on the set construction stage to prevent it from getting disconnected again.
3:00 p.m.     Back to costume fittings. Take many photographs of Jedi extras Aliyah Williams and Dominique Chionchio.
4:30 p.m.     Take a walkthrough of a few stages to scope out webcam placement for later in the week.
5:00 p.m.     Another phone call from Gentle Giant. They’re soon to start a new scan. When Anthony comes on in his tarnished protocol droid outfit, I flip the webcam on.
5:30 p.m.     Back to set, in case any late-breaking story ideas pop up.
6:30 p.m.     Shooting wraps. Head back to office. Begin going through audiocassettes, reviewing quotes and notes.
7:00 p.m.     Download photos from digital cameras onto computer. Organize photos. Today’s total: 82 images.
7:30 p.m.     Start writing first draft of article. Review. Proof. Rewrite.
8:30 p.m.     Begin formatting of article, input into publication tool, uploading of images. Review and readying of other site content for Stateside team to publish the next day.
9:00 p.m.     Finish up work. Tidy up office. Head off to the movies and a bite to eat.

If you’re not already reading the Episode III Set Diary, join Hyperspace today to get in on the inside.

Thursday, August 21, 2003
Issue #92

Multi-Dimensional Clone Wars
The advantages and impacts of computer-rendered three-dimensional animation were made clear to the public consciousness with Industrial Light & Magic’s dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and are now well-known to Star Wars fans who followed the development of Jar Jar Binks and Episode II’s digital Yoda. With Finding Nemo leading the 2003 box office, 3-D computer animation itself has even become its own popular genre.

Less widely known is that the same familiar three-dimensional modeling and animation techniques that made possible the visuals of Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones have been adopted by two-dimensional animation productions as well — from the spacecraft of Lilo & Stitch to moving cityscapes in “Futurama.”

With ambitious stories to be told starting this November in the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated microseries, creator Genndy Tartakovsky decided to borrow some of the computer-generated efficiencies used in thenew Star Wars films. “If the animation is simplistic, then we’ll do it in 2-D,” Tartakovsky told Star Wars Insider. “If it’s an element that just kind of flies through the scene and doesn’t do a lot of turns, we’ll do it in 2-D. But if it’s got a lot of complicated moves, then we’ll make it 3-D.”

To make the Republic or Separatist forces flip, spin, dive and explode, Tartakovsky turned to Rough Draft Studios — an Emmy-award-winning group specializing in a seamless blend of traditional cell artwork with computer animation for such programs as “Futurama”, “Grim & Evil” and “Samurai Jack”. Using standard 3-D animation techniques, Gregg Vanzo and the Rough Draft team can compose a complex scene and iterativelychange speed, timing, trajectories and camera angles without the time and cost that would be associated with making changes to hand-drawn sequences.

When a movement is finalized, it can simply be rendered without the complex shading, texture and reflections associated with a photo-realistic animated style. The result is simple solid shading and basic black outline of the shapes. “It looks as if it’s been hand drawn and colored,” noted Tartakovsky. “They’ll look exactly the same.”

This November, starwars.com Hyperspace members will have the first online access to the Clone Wars microseries, along with member-exclusive behind-the-scenes features. Join us today for unprecedented inside access to the countdown to Clone Wars and Episode III.

Thursday, September 04, 2003
Issue #93

Heroic Costumes

Many of the elements of Episode III are harbingers of things to come in the original trilogy. The Costume Department has worked diligently to not only foreshadow future events, but also give the final Star Wars chapter its own distinct style. Though the film is the most visually diverse of the saga, spanning the largest number of locales and cultures, there will definitely be costumes that look familiar.

“There’s a link of characters between Episodes III and IV,” says Trisha Biggar, Costume Designer. “In terms of quality, there will always be a difference between how things look in Episode III and Episode IV, just because we have a great deal more time to achieve things than the people in Episode IV did. But there’s always a mind to keep the flow from III into IV, and that’s been achieved in color and feel and referring back to Episode IV for the characters who have continuity, rather than trying to copy exactly any particular costumes from Episode IV.”

For Obi-Wan Kenobi, his role as a Jedi pretty much defines his overall look, but there is room for subtle progression from The Phantom Menace to A New Hope. “We started in Episode I with a younger version of the costume from Episode IV. We kept that for Episode II. For Episode III, a couple of years have passed, and we changed his costume to blend into Episode IV. We changed the color of his undershirt and the color of his trousers, so he’s very slightly becoming a little more like the old Obi-Wan.”

Anakin Skywalker clearly has the most profound transition from the prequel to the original trilogy, but the evolution of his Jedi robes from Attack of the Clones to his garb in the new installment is more understated than his future look of dark armor. “We changed his cloak shape, and gave him a new slightly more Jedi-like cloak this time,” says Biggar. “We changed his colors, and we darkened them all down, hinting at what he’s going to become. Although he was quite dark brown before, there were some lighter aspects. This time, we’ve really taken shades of dark brown to give him a dark outline even though he’s still a Jedi.”

Though Senators Padmé Amidala and Bail Organa are absent from the original films, they continue to evolve Episode III, building upon their looks from the previous chapter. “In Episode I, Padmé was very formal and very ceremonial, and that became slightly relaxed for Episode II. In Episode III, we see her in a couple of business-like — but not heavily ceremonial — costumes, so generally her look is softer, and we get a chance to see her in a more relaxed state. I think even more relaxed now than she was in Episode II — softer, more feminine,” explains Biggar.

“Though we saw Bail Organa in Episode II as a Senator, George wanted him to look slightly more high tech in a way,” she says. “We ended up using more metal pieces in his costumes. He has a high-tech metal comlink, and his ceremonial Senate costume has a beautiful metal collar piece.”

Thursday, September 18, 2003
Issue #94

With the first phase of principal photography now complete on Episode III, the movie moves further into the digital world of postproduction. The artists at Industrial Light & Magic are sparing no time in tackling the thousands of effects shots required to complete this final chapter of the Star Wars saga. While a trio of ILM crew observed the shooting in Sydney, Australia, a growing team back in Northern California has already been busy working on creating digital assets required for their work.

Visual Effects Supervisors John Knoll and Pablo Helman, and Matchmove Supervisor Jason Snell depart Australia this week for ILM’s facilities. Both Knoll and Helman are scheduled to work the day after they arrive. “We’ll be supervising model development and Viewpaint right away,” says Knoll. “That’s already been going on, so there’s some catching up for us to do. George [Lucas] said he’d get us the first Yoda sequences to begin working on in a month or so.”

Animation Supervisor Rob Coleman, who spent time on the set earlier in production, is beginning to assemble a team of animators to create the wide range of major digital characters in Episode III. “Rob will start animating in October,” says Helman. “He’s got a list of who his team is going to be, but he’s not going to be putting that together until next month.”

Jason Snell will be delivering his accurate digital wireframe models of the sets that he’s made during production based on photographs and measurements taken in person. The matchmovers at ILM will begin to create virtual additions and enhancements to the tangible sets.

“The first thing I’ll do is take all the models that I’ve built and clean them up and color-code them, and submit them to the Sets/Creatures assets area,” he says. “When the plates start coming in, the matchmovers will check out the set environments that I created to be able to work with them. That first week, I’ll organize all my sets and put them into a database. The following week, I’ll be working with model makers, specifically the hard surface modelmakers who are building the set extensions to make sure they are the proper scale and will work with the models that I work with, and I’ll do that until we start getting plates.”

Thursday, October 02, 2003
Issue #95

Being Po Nu do
“It’s never good to fall asleep at work,” advises Episode III extra Paul Nicholson. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but it’s hard not to when most of the air you’re breathing is the same air that’s just been expelled from your own lungs, you can barely hear nor see and you’re not allowed to move cause you’re dead.”

Nicholson counts himself lucky to have landed a behind-the-mask part in Episode III as Senator Po Nudo. On the off chance you are a fan of the Aqualish representative from Ando, you may be sad to hear that Po Nudo does not survive to the end of the new movie. In fact, the greatest extra acting challenge for Nicholson was the fact that Nodu’s dead body serves as set dressing for a scene that took the “living” actors over ten hours to shoot.

“I could move my head inside my mask a bit,” Nicholson recalls, “and I eventually found a way to watch the other actors while remaining dead. I only had a 1 mm diameter drill hole to look out of, so I really couldn’t see much — especially considering my four eyes had been layered in KY jelly to make them shinier. And I really needed to pee.” He downplays any physical challenges, as Nicholson is an enthusiastic Star Wars fan who moved to Sydney three years ago “just to be in Star Wars”, he claims. “It paid off. I would have paid to be in that movie.”

By day, Nicholson works as a valet at a hot Sydney restaurant where he had spotted Star Wars celebrities including Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor, but getting to see them in action on-set was naturally a thrilling experience.

“Hayden swings that metal baton around really, really well,” Nicholson is pleased to report. “Ewan McGregor is a hardcore saberman as well. They exhausted themselves to make their scenes look great.” Along with the chance to witness some Episode III history-in-the-making, and gather some autographs from cast and crew in his copy of the Attack of the Clones Visual Dictionary, Nicholson will carry away one other treasured memory. “Ewan sang ‘I am the Walrus’ with me at one stage, because I kind of looked like one.”

While the Star Wars extra experience was particularly unique, Nicholson endorses the entire craft of being a movie extra. “Join an extras agency,” he advises. “Look one up in your local directory. There are always television commercials and shows being made everywhere. You can do it at any age. It’s a fun way to meet people and the food is always good.”

Thursday, October 16, 2003
Issue #96

Exploring the Ruins of Dantooine
Since its debut, Star Wars Galaxies has become an engaging window into that far-away galaxy for thousands of avid online gamers. Through the massively multiplayer role-playing game, a player creates a unique character in the Star Wars galaxy, and interacts with other player-characters in real-time in a vivid computer-generated 3-D environment. These characters work, play, fight, adventure and live the Star Wars life in a way never before possible.

Such a mix of characters and scenery makes for a rich source of storytelling potential. This December, Del Rey Books will publish an original novel inspired by Star Wars Galaxies.

Voronica Whitney-Robinson is the author of the book, and helping keep her tale true to the spirit and details of the online universe was Haden Blackman, Producer for Star Wars Galaxies. A fellow Star Wars-scribe, Blackman has penned a number of Star Wars comics tales and, most recently, The New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels.

“Voronica certainly drove the plot, but I was involved to ensure that we were going to the planets that were most interesting in the game, and that we were interacting with in-game characters,” he says. “I helped guide her in that specific content, so that the characters in the books are doing things similar to what players would be doing.”

Obviously, the planet Dantooine figures prominently in the book, and it’s a key world in the game. Beyond settings, though, there are a number of non-player characters from the game that the heroes of the book will meet. “Nym, who is an alien pirate we developed for Star Wars: Starfighter, is in the game. Also, the characters in the book interact with Princess Leia in a similar way that players would: finding her in a Rebel base on Corellia, and getting new information and a mission from her.”

It’s even possible that some players may spot their own game contributions in the novel. “The book highlights not only the content we provided, but also things the player community has developed as well,” says Blackman. For instance, one enterprising player took advantage of the game’screature dynamics, which allow players to control creatures and command them to attack other creatures. “One player actually did that in conjunction with the opening of his own casino in the game, so when he opened, he had this big tournament that he invited everyone to,” recounts Blackman. “Voronica took that idea and ran with it, and I think it’s one of the first scenes in the book.”

Such interaction between novelist and game producer results in creative cross-pollination. Gamers who have read the novel will be familiar with certain elements that will eventually work their way back into the game. The main characters of the novel, Dusque Mistflier and Finn Darktrin, will appear in the game as non-player characters. “If you read the novel, you’ll know their back-story and their history, and that will make the missions they give you and the interactions you have with them a little more significant,” says Blackman.

He also hints at another element from the novels making an appearance. “In the novel, I suggested that she put in a mutant version of a creature we have in the game, and we’re actually going to take that idea and run with it. We’ll introduce that creature — the mutant version of it — in the game.”

Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine comes out in December from Del Rey Books.

Thursday, November 03, 2003
Issue #97

Fine-Tooned Heroes
The Clone Wars begin on November 7, as the epic micro-series debuts both on the Cartoon Network and online at starwars.com. The animated shorts are heavy on action, and the familiar characters and hardware of the Star Wars galaxy had to undergo streamlining and design modifications for the demands of hand-drawn animation. This meant simplifying the designs to their very essence, yet still retaining their recognizable qualities.

This challenging task fell to Art Director Paul Rudish who, under the direction of Genndy Tartakovsky, came up with the truly distinct look of Star Wars: Clone Wars.

“Early on, in preproduction, I kind of got bogged down with a little too much reference and trying too hard to get things looking like the films,” says Rudish. “Genndy came in and slapped my wrist and said, ‘Okay, put your books away. You’re getting bogged down. Now draw your impressions of the characters. Let’s try to draw how you think the characters feel, as opposed to trying to draw them exactly like the actors.”

The three main characters of the prequel trilogy — Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala — each provided their own challenges, but Rudish says Kenobi proved to be the easiest.

“Obi-Wan is the chivalrous knight,” he explains. “The King Arthur-thing kind of comes across real easy on that guy.” Though Kenobi starts the micro-series sporting the same robes and hair as seen in Episode II, as he journeys to Muunilinst to take on the bounty hunter Durge, he dons a suit of plastoid armor to do battle atop a speeder bike. “We gave him some extra brown robes on top to keep his Jedi-ness, but he’s got to have his safety gear when he gets on his speeder bike,” says Rudish. He adds with a smile, “We have to promote proper bike safety.”

Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, proved to be one of the most difficult. “He’s got a weird mix in that he needs to be somehow brooding and dark, and still be a cute Tiger Beat boy. How do you try to keep him youthful and yet make sure he has a good scowl all the time?”

In exploring the character, Rudish says the more he based his art on Hayden Christensen’s features, the more difficult he found bringing out the dark side. “They always came out looking kind of pretty, so we eventuallysteered away from specific caricatures and just tried to tweak him a little more. In retrospect, I think some of the elements in the line work in his face is more like Vader’s mask. It’s in the shape of his nose, and the square jaw and triangular mouth kind of shapes. I didn’t really think I did this on purpose, necessarily, but looking back at there, I think maybe I subconsciously tried to Vader-ify a little bit.”

The Clone Wars micro-series is divided into two sets of ten episodes each. In the first ten, Padmé has what amounts to a small cameo — she’s more heavily featured in the second set. “As far as Padmé, [Model Designer] Lynne Naylor-Reccardi helped out a lot. The two of us went back and forth with drawings of her, and kind of distilled it down to various elements. Basically, she’s pretty much… cute. She doesn’t have a funny nose or anything you can really latch onto to caricaturize. So, we went with cute girl. ‘Let’s make her eyes bigger!'”

Of the redesigned heroes, Rudish can easily recall who his favorites are. “Once I got to doing layouts of Artoo and Threepio, that really turned into lots of flashbacks of being seven, and drawing my favorite droids as a kid,” he says. Though the droid designs are new, Rudish recalled watching the earliest incarnations of Star Wars animation when he was young.

“I was certainly into it when those shows were on TV — I used to watch ‘Droids’ and ‘Ewoks.’ I didn’t specifically refer to these things, but they’re definitely engrained in my mind,” he says. “I was blown away by ‘The Holiday Special.’ It was when I was seven, and had been jonesing for any kind of Star Wars you could get at that point. When that came out, I thought, ‘oh, that is so cool!’ Then I tried to run upstairs after the show was over, and tried to draw the comic book of the entire [animated] cartoon that I had just seen. I tried to remember it, and I got about eight panels into it, and crapped out. Luke crashlanding his Y-wing into the ocean… that’s about as far as I got.”

Thursday, November 12, 2003
Issue #98

The Star Wars: Clone Wars micro-series has started, and is currently running on The Cartoon Network and starwars.com Hyperspace. To provide the voices of the classic characters are a group of talented voice actors who, in most cases, have played these characters before.

If Anakin sounds familiar, particularly to video gamers, it’s by design. Mat Lucas is the voice of the Chosen One in the micro-series. He previously played Anakin in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars video game from LucasArts, available for the GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation 2.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is played by James Arnold Taylor, whose vocal talents can be heard in many video games and animated works. He provided numerous voices for The Animatrix short films, was the voice of Pippin in the video game release of The Fellowship of the Ring, and has provided guest voices in such Cartoon Network programs as “Powerpuff Girls” and “Johnny Bravo”

Providing the elegant vocal tones of the evil Count Dooku is Corey Burton. Burton previously played Dooku in several LucasArts video games, including Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. He can be heard in many Disney projects, and fans of ’80s animation will remember Burton as the voice of Xamot, one of the evil Crimson Guard Commanders on “G.I. Joe,” and as the Decepticon Shockwave and the human tag-along Spike in “The Transformers.”

Tom Kane does the voiceof Yoda. He had previously played the ancient Jedi Master in Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing, and Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles. He has also performed for many other LucasArts titles, dating back to providing the voice of Leebo the droid in Shadows of the Empire. Cartoon Network viewers can hear him regularly as Professor Utonium, the creator and guardian of the Powerpuff Girls.

Nick Jameson is another LucasArts veteran. For the micro-series, he plays Palpatine, a role he previously voiced in Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance, Star Wars: Rebel Assault II — The Hidden Empire and Star Wars: TIE Fighter. Fans of Kyle Katarn should note that Jameson first provided the voice for that character in the original Dark Forces game.

Though Padmé Amidala and the deadly Asajj Ventress don’t have much in common, they are both voiced by singer Grey DeLisle. DeLisle also played Padmé in such video games as Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing, and Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles. She provided the voice of Padmé’s daughter, Princess Leia, in Star Wars: Force Commander. She plays a variety of characters for various Cartoon Network projects, and is the new voice of Daphne on various “Scooby Doo” specials.

For the role of C-3PO, Cartoon Network went straight to the original source. Anthony Daniels provided the voice of the classic protocol droid character, just as he did for the original Droids animated series in the mid-1980s.

Thursday, November 26, 2003
Issue #99

At the Main House of Skywalker Ranch, Episode III is currently taking shape in its earliest iterations. Though the principal photography shot this past summer in Australia has already been pieced together into a chronological “assembly” of the movie, this does not represent the first cut. An assembly is more of a blueprint for future edits, and a starting point for George Lucas to further refine the film.

“We’re breaking down the first 25 minutes, which we need to have from George locked by January 5th, so that we just keep moving,” describes Producer Rick McCallum.

Each day Ben Burtt and Roger Barton, the editors of Episode III, continue cutting away, finding the best takes, and piecing together continuous action and scenes to tell the story.

“What happens is that George comes in about 8 a.m, answers his mail, and works with Ben from 9 to 12:30,” McCallum says, describing the typical working day. “Ben’s doing all the action sequences and cutting together the animatics for those, like the opening space battle, and two other sequences that are the primary things he has to work on. Roger is doing the drama, and George works with him from 2:30 until 6.”

Barton and Burtt are also identifying the missing pieces of the puzzle. With so much of the movie yet to be developed as visual effects, there is much that is missing. The editors have the tools needed to temporarily fill in the gaps. Next to Burtt’s AVID workstation is a microphone. Into this, he records placeholder dialogue for digital characters or principal actor dialogue that has been changed.

The two editors also have their disposal a tool called iViz. This computer graphics package allows the creation of quick-and-dirty low-resolution digital stand-ins to previsualize the characters that ILM will eventually create to populate the scene. “You load in your models, and you have a virtual camera you can actually move around. It helps George plan out a shot in real time,” says McCallum.

In between his sessions with both editors, Lucas heads upstairs to the Animatics Department. In the film industry, animatics are generally regarded as a pre-production function, but the malleable nature of digital filmmaking has blurred the lines between pre and postproduction. Previsualization Supervisor Dan Gregoire’s group of artists are designing the motion of entirely synthetic shots, plugging in low-resolution versions of digital elements into plate photography, and pre-planning live action sequences to be shot in later rounds of additional photography

There are entire sequences that were not shot during principal photography in Australia, but are instead reserved for shooting planned for next year. These rounds of production are also for “re-shoots,” additions, inserts or modifications of sequences that add and/or replace what was shot this past summer.

“In March, we’ll most probably go to London, since it’ll be easier for scheduling. I’d like to able to isolate the Wookiee shoot, and do that in Australia at a later date, so that I don’t have to bring everybody from Australia over to London,” says McCallum.

“It’s going really well,” adds McCallum. “I’m really pleased. Hopefully, by Christmas we’ll really see the film for the first time.”

Thursday, December 11, 2003
Issue #100

October 1st was already was a significant date on author Matthew Stover’s calendar, but this year had an added surprise. “Shelly Shapiro [from Del Rey Books] actually called me on my anniversary, October 1st, to find out if I was interested in writing the Episode III book. Which I responded, of course, I’m interested!”

Stover joins the ranks of such bestselling authors as R.A. Salvatore and Terry Brooks in adapting a Star Wars screenplay into a novel. What makes the prequel adaptations notably different from the novelizations of the original trilogy is the opportunity to expand on the stories. The novels for Episode IV, V, and VI do not tread far what’s seen on screen. The prequel tales, conversely,include several original scenes created specifically to expand and enrich the film’s story.

As he gears up to write the adaptation, Stover has already read the Episode III script and has positive words to share. “I’ve never done an adaptation before, so I don’t know what kind of pitfalls may be awaiting me, but on this end, so far, it looks like it’s going to be a great experience. From having read the script, it looks to me like the story is so strong, I don’t really anticipate a lot of difficulty.”

Though this is his first adaptation, Stover has already penned two Star Wars novels. His first was Traitor, a standalone paperback in the epic New Jedi Order series notable for its unconventional storytelling techniques and controversial examinations of the Force. The second book, Shatterpoint, was a hardcover novel focusing on Mace Windu’s return to his homeworld during the Clone Wars. It too was unique for a Star Wars novel in its gritty depiction of the horrors of war.

“Shatterpoint gave me an opportunity to do a lot of research,” says Stover. “Doing that novel in particular made me feel very comfortable in the Star Wars universe. Traitor was a very specialized piece of work. It was a very, very specific incident in The New Jedi Order. Pretty much all of the heavy lifting had been done for me already in the previous books. Traitor was an extraordinary opportunity to write a book where I didn’t have to do any backstory at all, because that was all done for me.”

Both books touch on the dark side of the Force and offer the inner thoughts and perspectives of prominent Jedi characters. These qualities are expected in the Episode III adaptation. “I think that Lucasfilm and Del Rey feel I have a certain insight into the dark side. That is, after all, what I was writing about in both of my previous Star Wars books,” says Stover. “Also, this is going to be action packed, and I think they like the way I do my action scenes.”

Early in 2004, Stover will travel to Skywalker Ranch to meet with George Lucas, who is currently busy overseeing the editing of the first cut of the film. “The next step for me now is meeting with Mr. Lucas and finding out the things that he wants to emphasize about the story, and the tone that he wants it to take,” he says. “I have some ideas of what I would like to do, but of course, all final decisions are entirely up to him.”

Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Thursday, March 20, 2003
Issue #81

Backbone of Reality
Since the beginning of the Star Wars saga, the Industrial Light & Magic model shop has been crafting vehicles and locales from a distant galaxy, continuing a decades-long tradition of miniature work standing in for things that would be impossible or impractical to create in real size.

Nowadays, the computer has taken over many visual effects disciplines, but there is still a need for the model shop, which has become increasingly high-tech alongside the digital innovations. Its task is similar, but with a new twist: the model shop is crafting practical miniature work for things that would be impossible or impractical to create in CG.

“Many times practical miniature effects have proven to be a very efficient solution to some challenging shots that film directors envision,” says Model Supervisor Steve Gawley. “We often use computer aided machines to fabricate true 3-dimensional parts that are derived from computer files we generate. We also use digital files from the CG group as well as providing 3-D maquettes from which digital animation elements are built.”

As a facility, ILM is involved in a dozen different projects at the same time, and Episode II had over 2,000 shots done over a two-year period, which is really aggressive,” explains Vice President of Creative Operations Jeff Mann. “As a company, you can only do so much in the digital pipeline. We have to make decisions about how to do all of that work at the same time, and you just can’t do it all in the digital world. The decision comes down to what would look the best and be the most cost effective. Miniatures and models play a key part in things like pyro effects, where you’re having to blow things up and controlthat kind of shot, or when you need realism in a 3-D landscape.”

“Sometimes, the model shop picks up shots near the end of that pipeline, if CG gets totally booked up,” explains Lorne Peterson, Model Supervisor. “Many times, we’ll be relatively free right near the end of production, so we can do a Geonosian ground plain for the last battle. Sometimes it’s money and time. Sometimes it’ll be more expensive to do things in CG than it does to do the model, so the model shop will get those shots.”

Once the decision has been made to create a miniature, the next step is to figure out how much of that miniature to build, and at what scale. Usually, digital animation and practical miniature effects are combined, as the models give a backbone of reality to shots, like the inner dome of the Kaminoan training facility, or the far wall of the Geonosian droid factory.

“After you get the design drawings, you have to go back to the storyboards or animatics, and decide what kind of model you need,” says Gawley. “Many times, you don’t build the whole thing. It’s through the vision of the director and what he wants to happen in a scene that we then give an estimate of what to build. If everybody agrees on what’s needed in the miniature world, we go from there.”

“There are times when we go outside to the parking lot and lay out with tape how big the different models will be,” says Peterson. “We ask, ‘do we want to pay for one that size or do we want to pay for one this size? Will that do for your shot or will this do for your shot?”

Large miniature sets are still photographed outside, in ILM’s parking lot, to take advantage of the California sun for lighting. This practice dates back to the original Star Wars, when Death Star surface segments were shout outside in a relatively low-tech fashion: a VistaVision camera mounted on the back of Steve Gawley’s pick-up truck drove past the miniature in the lot. “I think Steve told me that he was paid an extra \$50 to have his truck next to the explosions,” laughs Peterson

Thursday, April 03, 2003
Issue #82

Episode III: Early Editing
Not a single frame of Episode III’s opening sequence has been shot, and yet some of it is being edited. How is this possible? Thanks to animatics, the lines between pre-production, production and post-production are blurred. The video-resolution computer-animated action serves as a moving storyboard, establishing a template for live action and final animation to follow when assembling the finished movie.

Previsualization Supervisor Dan Gregoire leads the team of 11 computer artists envisioning and exploring Episode III in animatic form. A veteran of Episode II, Gregoire is applying the lessons learned from previsualizing such dynamic sequences as the Clone War and the droid factory in his approach to Episode III.

“We’re taking what we learned in terms of developing assets first and getting those loaded up and as well defined as we can early into the process. Then we go about animating the shots,” says Gregoire. “It lends a lot more continuity to the sequence, visually and creatively, and kind of streamlines the entire process.”

An asset in this case is any computer model or element that will be animated in the shot. This includes preliminary versions of characters, vehicles and props. This early stage is marked by broad experimentation, as nothing is yet locked. This means that not only can the sequence and length of shots be edited, but so too can the models used in a given shot.

“When you start to see the assets come together in proximity and scale, decisions get made, and occasionally things change,” says Gregoire. “We’ve sometimes had to redevelop some assets, or at least edit the way they are being displayed and animated, and of course define more specifically how these shots are put together,” says Gregoire.

Some of the shots being developed are also first explored by Ben Burtt, who at this early stage is acting as an editor without any footage. Burtt is assembling the Art Department’s storyboards into a rough sequence. “He’s cutting those together with pans and motion and turns, and whatever else he can do in the Avid in terms of translating them and timing them out,” says Gregoire.

“He’s even putting in his own dialogue, reading it himself in the sequence, and cutting in temporary music and some basic sound effects to get a base underlying soundtrack,” explains Gregoire. “As the shots progress, the animatics artists have a tremendous amount of control over what they put into it, as long as they stick with the essential essence of what is supposed to be happening.”

An interview with Dan Gregoire, entitled “Beyond the Storyboard,” will be available in Star Wars Insider #68, shipping to subscribers on May 16, and hitting newsstands on June 3.

Thursday, April 17, 2003
Issue #83

Episode III: Countdown to Summer
“We get our preliminary first draft of the script next week, which we’re very excited about,” says Producer Rick McCallum, who is currently overseeing the preparation of Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia. In just over two months, the stages of the motion picture facility will be the used for shooting Episode III.

“We’re currently on schedule to begin on or around June 30, finishing some time in September,” says McCallum. Already, the crew down under has enough information from George Lucas to begin construction of environments, props and costumes.

“After that George will be rewriting to a more formal first draft and will keep revising right up until the start of shooting,” adds McCallum. “The story he wants to tell is firmly in his head. All the details are stored away in there, without a lot of influence from anyone else. He’s been talking a lot about how this movie fits with Episode IV in some very cool and unexpected ways.”

It won’t be until the summer (or technically, the southern hemisphere’s winter) that the actors arrive in Australia, but already Stunt Coordinator Nick Gillard has met briefly with both Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor in the US. “Hayden is coming shortly to begin massive rehearsals, stunt rehearsals. We expect Ewan in the next 4-5 weeks. He’s starting to work on all the fight sequences in the movie which I think will be extraordinary,” he said.

Thursday, April 29, 2003
Issue #84

Gee, Your CG Hair Looks Terrific
It wasn’t entirely by accident that most of the computer-generated characters from Episode I had smooth amphibious skin or hard metal finishes. When it comes to unmanageable hair, the digital variety has the most kinks to work out. The workload of Episode I favored hairless subjects, as did Episode II, though the digital creations in Attack of the Clones did feature a few exceptions: Yoda had a hazy crown of wispy white hair, and the digital doubles of the main characters had to be as stylishly coiffed as the actors who played them.

“With the digital doubles, you have less hair than you would a furry creature, but it has to be specific hair,” says Steve Sullivan, Research and Development Director from ILM. “You’re actually trying to match a given actor, so the artist needs to be very precise in the parameters.”

Some of the Industrial Light & Magic’s early experimentations with digital hair were with creatures in Jumanji and The Flintstones. Just getting a computer to recreate the thousands of individual strands was a milestone, but teaching it how to move was a different challenge altogether.

“For the lion in Jumanji, it was very complicated to have something as dense as a mane. There is no way an individual artist could control all the hairs directly, so they went with an approach with ‘hero hairs’ or ‘guide hairs.’ An artist would animate those and place them carefully, and then the computer would generate all the stuff in between. So, the hair colors, densities, lengths and so on were generated by the computer, but very much controlled by the person. These hairs didn’t react at all to the environment or the motion of the lion, so somebody had to animate them by hand,” says Sullivan.

The proper interaction of the hair with the underlying digital model is now handled by dynamic physics simulation, the same complex computations used to properly recreate the folds and drape of digital clothing and the hundreds of fragments of crashing Podracers. Now, the digital hair reacts as it would to real wind, gravity, and motion, without having to be continually managed by an animator. Still, the task is not that easy.

“The current approach is like this: say you wantedto comb your hair,” explains Sullivan. “You’d look in the mirror, turn off the light, try and comb it, wait a few hours, turn on the light again, and see how it looks. It’s very indirect and very painful, and that’s what the artists who do this kind of work have to deal with. We have a long way to go still, and our mission is to try and make it as simple as possible. You can imagine what a hair system should be like. It should be easy. Your mom should be able to use one of these systems, but it’s going to be years till we get to that stage.”

Thursday, July 03, 2003
Issue #85

In His Own Words
One of the most enigmatic characters to arise in Episode II was Count Dooku, a fallen Jedi and the latest Sith Lord revealed in the saga. Through Dooku, important concepts are introduced to the growing story: that a Jedi could indeed fall from the light, and that a Jedi Knight could take up arms against his former master. For all his impact, the character is still shrouded in mystery. The actor who played Dooku, the legendary Christopher Lee, offers his insights.

“He’s very aloof, very self-contained, obviously completely fearless,” describes Lee. “He is extremely intelligent, perhaps more so than almost anyone else. He’s obviously a man of immense power. I don’t suppose that the question of moral values enter into his head. He’s not immoral — he’s amoral. Morality is a word that doesn’t figure in his vocabulary at all. It’s power. Which is something that exists very much in our world today.”

But was Dooku always like this? New fiction from the Expanded Universe will soon shed light on Dooku’s younger days. The forthcoming Star Wars: Legacy of the Jedi, by Jude Watson and Scholastic Inc., tells a tale when Dooku was a noble Jedi Knight. Like his pupil, Qui-Gon Jinn, he will be headstrong and unorthodox for a Jedi Knight.

“Maybe at one time when he was younger, when he became a Jedi, I’m sure he did behave in a totally moral and correct way,” speculates Lee. “Probably like the old Knights Templar when they started in the 12th century, they started as very good people to protect all the pilgrims on the Crusades. But gradually over the years they disintegrated morally, spiritually and in every way. I know that because I played the Grand Master of the Templars in a film. Eventually, their whole order disintegrated. Who’s to say that this isn’t going to happen in the third Episode?”

Thursday, May 29, 2003
Issue #86

As an artist and director, Iain McCaig keeps a busy schedule with his own creative projects. When Episode II entered pre-production, there was some question as to whether or not he’d return to the Art Department team that helped envision George Lucas’ growing Star Wars universe. McCaig did indeed come back, but the same question arose when Episode III started down the conceptual development path. Once again, McCaig found that he couldn’t resist the call to return to the galaxy far, far away.

“It’s an artist thing,” laughs McCaig. “Whatever you make — it’s corny to say — but they actually are your children in some ways. Helping create Anakin and Padmé in Episode I, I couldn’t abandon them after that. I needed to know what happened and see them through to their final moments. You want to accompany your kids as far as you can go.”

Episode III is the final chapter detailing what fans already know is a bleak resolution for Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala. The Chosen One succumbs to the call of the dark side, with disastrous consequences for those he loves. McCaig notes satisfaction with the way this transformation currently exists, as words on the script pages and accompanying artwork.

“In Episode I, when we saw Jake Lloyd, we wondered where’s the dark side? Why isn’t this kid creepy?” recounts McCaig. “And then, in Episode II, Hayden Christensen came across as a justifiably angry teenager more than a kid who crosses over to the true dark side. Killing the Sand People… they killed his mom! I could go mad and do something like that. So, I kept waiting for the dark side to take hold. In this film, you realize, it’s more about Anakin making the wrong choices. He’s given a glorious moment by George — I’m so happy with the part of the script — where he truly has to make a choice. In the end, I think that’s a smarter way to go than a slow transformation. It’s more tragic this way.”

Tragedy follows the beautiful Amidala as well. Since Episode I, McCaig has helped develop Padmé’s intricate costumes, which often serve as reflections of her political position, and where she is in her life. “What are we wearing this year in Star Wars?” smiles McCaig. “In Episode I, she was the Queen, and she was wearing disguises. I once said she should be able to slip out of the back of the costume, and you’d never know she was gone. Ironically, in this one, she’s back to wearing disguises. As well as now hiding this marriage to a Jedi, which is not allowed, she has to hide the fact that she’s going to have babies. All of the costumes had to disguise these facts.”

Thursday, June 12, 2003
Issue #87

Like Mace Windu, Jedi KnightKi-Adi-Mundi appeared in Episode I primarily as a chair-dweller in the Jedi Council. While Mace broke out in Episode II to show why he’s the second-best (outdone only by Yoda) swordsman in the Jedi Order, Ki-Adi-Mundi’s heroics remained generally unseen at Geonosis.

As many Star Wars fans know, physical action for the Cerean was scripted and filmed in a sequence where Ki-Adi-Mundi led a group of Jedi on a parallel mission inside a FederationDroid Control Ship. That storyline was abandoned so early, there wasn’t even enough material to craft it to finished form for the Episode II DVD… and so the mystique grew.

For starwars.com Hyperspace members, that long-anticipated lost footage made its debut this week. (If you haven’t already, Hyperspace members click here to see it. Or become a member to see what the excitement is about.)

For Silas Carson, the actor who played Ki-Adi-Mundi, the release of the sequence is welcome validation amidst doubting associates. “So many people have asked if I gotto do any fighting, and I’d tell them, ‘Yeah, I did quite a few days of filming and breaking a sweat.’ But when we went to see the movie, I saw that they cut that part out. The arena rescue was a packed sequence anyways.”

In the video, fans may want to make note of Ki-Adi-Mundi’s unique fighting style. “Because my background is mostly theater,” explains Carson, “I’ve done some sword fighting. Everybody always used their lightsaber double-handed, and I told [Stunt Coordinator] Nick Gillard that I’d really prefer to use mine single-handed. I’m the only Jedi who fights that way.”

Still, Carson takes the edit in stride. “You have to ask yourself, ‘Does it tell the story?’ Films can get very, very long if you put everything in there. I would imagine there’s a huge amount of footage that George hasn’t used.”

Like the fans themselves, Carson was counting the days when starwars.com spoke with him last week. “I can’t wait to see it!”

Thursday, June 26, 2003
Issue #88

Back for Moore
By Pablo Hidalgo

Sly Moore doesn’t say much, nor does she have to. She stands at Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s side, her ghostly pallor and piercing eyes alone leaving an unforgettable impression. In contrast to her cold, expressionless alter ego, actress Sandi Finlay is warm and energetic, particularly when talking about her return for Episode III.

“I’m very thrilled,” she grins. “I was panicking a bit thinking that she may not be back this film.” About 90 minutes of makeup transforms Finlay into Moore, with a set of uncomfortable and vision-reducing contact lenses completing the look. “They’re like glass in your eyes,” she groans, “but I love dressing up. I think all actors are big kids that just like to dress up. It’s a lot of fun.”

The makeup and eyes may be Moore, but the shaved head is all Finlay. “I’ve been bald for about nine years now. I love it. You can be beautiful with hair, but you have to be damn gorgeous without it!” she laughs.

Her return to Star Wars will reunite her with her on-screen boss, the man who runs the galaxy, Chancellor Palpatine. “I’m very much looking forward to working with Ian McDiarmid again,” she says. “He’s great. He said to me, ‘if you’re ever in London come to my theater and stay at my house.’ I found the Star Wars family really, really bonding. Even if you’re involved with them just a little bit; they’re just so cool.”

A founding member of this family joining Episode III is Peter Mayhew, the mighty Chewbacca. Finlay has met Mayhew during her convention appearances. “Oh, I love him,” she laughs. “When I first met him a couple of years ago, I walked to him in the green room and I just said, ‘Can I cuddle with you? I love Chewie! I love Chewbacca!’ And we had this great big cuddle, and Angie, Peter’s wife, joined in and welcomed me to the Star Wars family. There were just tears everywhere. We went out to dinner, and I hung out with him quite a bit actually. He’s a beautiful, beautiful man.”

Now having appeared at several conventions, Finlay continues to be amazed by the passion of Star Wars fans, particularly when it comes to her character. “I’ve had a big response from the fans about Sly Moore, which has been really cool,” she says. “I have fans telling me all about Sly Moore and where she’s from, and my powers, and they go right into my history. It’s pretty wild, actually. I’ve been in so many different movies, and I’ve never had this response. This is just outrageous.”

Thursday, July 10, 2003
Issue #89

Bruce Spence: Capping Trilogies
Though Bruce Spence knows only the basic details of his character in Episode III, he does consider himself fortunate to be invited into the Star Wars saga.

“It was just fortuitous that the offer came up,” says Spence. “Being that it’s a small role, I often don’t do them. But having finished my work on Peter Pan, I was available, and I could fit it in. I’m only too happy to be involved.”

Described as a “helpful alien,” Spence has already undergone a lifecast for the Episode III Creature Shop to begin working on the prosthetic makeup that will transform him into an otherworldly being. Creature Shop Creative Supervisor Dave Elsey was eager to work with Spence’s distinctive countenance, as he almost had a chance to during his time on “Farscape.”

“Bruce Spence was once a possibility to play the character of Scorpius, but that didn’t happen,” says Elsey. “Some time later, he did come on the show, only he ended up playing a character that didn’t need makeup.”

With his upcoming appearance in Episode III, Bruce Spence has managed to appear in the final chapters of the three biggest trilogies in production right now. He plays the role of the Trainman in The Matrix: Revolutions and will be the Mouth of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

“It’s a bit wild,” he says. “It’s interesting, because they’re all similar stories. As Joseph Campbell explained, it all goes back to mythological epics. I’m making different contributions to each film. Though I think the least substantial constribution will be Episode III, I just regard myself as being lucky. After all, being in show business, I think a lot of it is luck.”

Thursday, July 24, 2003
Issue #90

Hearing Voices: Duncan Young
When the supporting roles for Episode III were still being cast, Duncan Young tried out for one of the smaller parts, but didn’t get it. Casting Director Christine King had worked with Young before, and did find a place for the actor. Rather than playing just one role, he’ll now play several, though it’s quite possible he won’t be seen or heard in the finished film.

Young is now part of the crew, working as the off-screen reader for many of the digital characters in the film. “I’ve done mostly Yoda so far, and some off-screen dialogue for characters that are speaking over intercoms and radios and things like that,” he explains.

For his part, it’s not important that Young sounds like the characters. It won’t be his voice used in the finished film. It’s the on-set performance that matters. “I’m not much of a Frank Oz impersonator, so I don’t even attempt that,” he says. “It’s more getting the rhythms right. [Animation Supervisor] Rob Coleman has spoken to me in great detail. For him, it’s getting the timing right, so that when Frank comes in to do it, it slots in seamlessly. I think the brief is to err on the side of slower, so he has plenty of room to color and massage it.”

Even though he won’t appear on screen, Young did have to undergo makeup and wardrobe for one of his first days of shooting. The tall performer matches Jimmy Smits in height, and was a suitable substitute for one scene for which the real Bail Organa wasn’t available. “Jimmy Smits wasn’t in Australia, and they needed to shoot that scene because the set was built and it was going to be taken down,” Young says. “So, I stood in and got the wig and the beard on. Of course, in the final product, they’ll erase me out and put the real deal in.”

Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Thursday, October 17, 2002
Issue #71

Windu Speaks

Next month, Mace Windu comes to home video as Episode II arrives on DVD and VHS on November 12. No longer just sitting around the Council chambers, Windu gets to face off against enemies of the Republic and dispense Jedi justice with his violet-bladed lightsaber.

“I was thrilled about that,” Samuel L. Jackson says. “It’s wish fulfillment. All my life I wanted to be in a swashbuckling adventure movie but no one really makes them anymore.”

Jackson has often equated the Star Wars films to the adventure epics of yesterday, ranking the Jedi warriors alongside such legends as Errol Flynn. It was that derring-do spirit that made Jackson a Star Wars fan way back when he first saw A New Hope during its original release.

“If George Lucas hadn’t offered me the part of Mace Windu,I’d have gladly dressed up as an extra in stormtrooper gear. As long as I was in a Star Wars movie somewhere, even hidden in some kind of costume, I’d have been happy,” he admits.

Episode II has become the key to unlocking the saga, as audiences can clearly see the connections that bind the Star Wars films together. Jackson was impressed at how well prepared director George Lucas was in piecing together the universe. “When there’s something I don’t know, then I’m not afraid to ask. I’ve watched all the movies and read a lot of the background stuff. You could spend hours on the ‘net checking out details, but a lot of the time people embellish Star Wars lore or just plain make stuff up. You have to filter a lot of things. As I say, the only person who really knows how everything fits together is George.”

The unparalleled digital clarity of the DVD is the perfect showcase for Industrial Light & Magic’s work, and even having been part of the filmmaking process doesn’t blunt the impact of the visuals for an actor. Jackson had no problem with the amount of bluescreen shooting, since it appealed to a type of role-playing he had done as a youngster. “It kind of feels like I’ve been doing it all my life. Being an only child and having an active imagination, I did the same sort of thing in my room as a kid. I fought things that weren’t really there and had conversations with people that were just in my head.”

Despite such digital breakthroughs, Jackson isn’t worried about being replaced by a computer-generated simulacrum someday. “You’ll always need real people,” he says. “Audiences like to imagine themselves in these situations, and the only way they can do that is through flesh-and-blood actors. You need a real person to relate to. Plus the public will always need movie stars to admire or gossip about.”

Thursday, October 31, 2002
Issue #72

This weekend marks the debut of the first Star Wars movie presented in IMAX® format. Episode II has undergone the revolutionary IMAX-DMRTM process, which not only results in a clear image up to eight stories tall, but also a colossal 12,000 watts of sound for a truly immersive experience.

To celebrate the debut of the film, many unofficial fan groups across North America are gathering to once again turn the opening night of a Star Wars movie into a party to remember. On October 31 or November 1, fans are planning to show up in their finest fan-made costumes, to hand out the special limited edition Bantha Tracks #0, and much more. Many groups are turning the power of fandom to benefit local charities and not-for-profit organizations.

Here’s some of what we hear is in the works for openingnight:

In Tempe, AZ, on Halloween night, local fan groups will be handing out candy to all trick or treating children at the Arizona Mills Mall IMAX theater. The local NBC affiliate will be sponsoring a Costume Contest as well.

At the Virginia Marine Science Museum IMAX screening in Hampton, Shannon Baksa, the model known for playing the real-life incarnation of Mara Jade, is said to be in attendance on November 1 to meet with fans.

In Atlanta, GA, fan groups will show up in full stormtrooper armor and Rebel gear, to challenge fans with trivia contests.

In Raleigh, NC, Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) is scheduled to attend Halloween night festivities. There will also be costume contests and a stormtrooper parade at the theater.

In Boston, MA, fan groups will include costumed Jedi training young candidates in the Jedi arts and lightsaber skills. Fans will also be raising donations for the New England Aquarium’s Education Program through photo opportunities on

November 1.

In Natick, MA, fan groups will raise donations to benefit the Jimmy Fund, and its support of the fight against cancer in children and adults.

In Tampa, FL at the Museum of Science and Industry, there will be photo opportunities with Star Wars characters for donations to benefit the Museum’s programs for at-risk and disadvantaged children. At the Channelside IMAX theater, fans will be collecting new, unwrapped toys for Toys for Tots.

In Huntsville, AL, fans will be running a toy drive for Toys for Tots, and will be raising donations for the Children’s Miracle Network.

In New York, NY, fan groups are collecting donations for the Oasis Foundation and the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit.

In Charleston, SC, fans will be having a toy drive for Toys for Tots and raising money for the Medical University of South Carolina Children’s Hospital.

All this and much more; some fan groups have events planned all weekend and beyond. Events are subject to change; see individual fan group websites for further details.

Thursday, November 14, 2002
Issue #73

The DVD format has huge amounts of storage space, but producers must carefully balance the quantity of content placed on a disc, since it comes at the cost of image and sound quality. Basically, the more stuff jammed on a disc, the worse it all looks. As a result, some things couldn’t fit on the DVD.

Some of this content is finding its way to dvd.starwars.com. Over the coming months, new material will be added to the site, but to start off, there’s over 20 minutes of video there right now. Users will need a PC DVD-ROM, an Internet connection, and the Episode II DVD to take full advantage of these features.

DVD Trailer. Originally crafted to inform retailers of the Episode II DVD, this four-minute trailer provides an exciting summary of the disc’s multitude of features.

Music featurette. Episode II marks the fifth Star Wars collaboration between George Lucas and composer John Williams. They liken the creation of the distinctive musical themes to the writing of a book, and Episode II adds some important chapters to the musical language of the saga. Find out more in this six-minute video.

ILM featurette. With over 2,000 visual effect shots, Episode II stands as one of Industrial Light & Magic’s most phenomenal achievements. Learn more about the process and the innovators behind the magic in this 11-minute video.

Star Wars Bounty Hunter Cut Scene.Jango Fett has become one of the most popular characters from Episode II, and fans want more. See an exclusive sequence created by Industrial Light & Magic, featuring Jango, from the new Star Wars Bounty Hunter video game.

Depth Commentary. Thanks to software from InterActual, the power of DVD and the Internet are combined to deliver a text-based commentary as viewers watch Episode II on their computers. Color-coded “pop-up” blurbs deliver three types of information: learn behind-the-scenes factoids (“Hey, is that a fake beard?”), bits of lore trivia (“How did Typho lose that eye?”), or hard-to-spot visual treats (“Where exactly is ‘THX-1138’ in this movie?”)

Not all the DVD-ROM extras require an Internet connection. Two of Lucas Online’s most extraordinary website efforts have now been archived on the Episode II DVD.

First up is HoloNet News, a website of dozens of news stories as reported from within the Star Wars galaxy. First launched in the spring of 2002, this site kept track of the major happenings in the Republic in “real time” as the events of Episode II began to encroach. Archived on Disc One, this off-line version of the site allows readers to immerse themselves in the Star Wars galaxy as a citizen of a Republic threatened by Count Dooku’s Separatist movement.

Another Episode II online experience that has been archived on the DVD is the Episode II College Campaign, which can be found by snooping around the walls of Dex’s Diner on Disc Two. Although visible through just a standard DVD player, a DVD-ROM translates the full multimedia experience of these funky little websites — including downloadable wallpapers and messenger icons. These sites launched last April to promote Attack of the Clones to select college audiences across North America.

Thursday, November 27, 2002
Issue #74

Happy Life Day

A central theme to the Star Wars films is family, and this holiday weekend offers several opportunities for fans to celebrate the saga with their families. In select theaters across North America, Episode II continues to be a strong presence in the incomparable IMAX format, with Attack of the Clones – The IMAX Experience. If the scale of a 50-foot tall Yoda is too much (or not enough), the recently released DVD allows you to enjoy Episode II in the comfort of your own home. And finally, on Thanksgiving day, the FOX network will again be airing Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace.

And, of course, you can always spend time with your fellow Star Wars friends in our forums.

• Happy Life Day from starwars.com

Thursday, December 12, 2002
Issue #75

Inside The Hatchery

As Obi-Wan tours the Kaminoancloning facility, he sees an immense hatchery of fetal clones suspended in glassy jars affixed to disc-like pods. This sequence incorporated live action and miniature elements, but the centerpieces of the environment — the hatchery pods — were entirely digital creations.

“Because the hatchery pieces were really comprised of five basic components that are repeated numerous times throughout the shots, computer graphics were a really good solution for creating this scene,” says David Meny, Computer Graphics Supervisor at ILM.

The “real” elements of the shot included bluescreen photography of actor Ewan McGregor, a miniature corridor environment, and a miniature of the far dome interior. The glassy forest of hatchery pods outside the corridor was all digital.

“The main challenge in this sequence was realizing an environment that has so many glass elements with so many reflections and refractions. Also, there’s a large number of models that you have to render, because in each of these jars there’s a fetus with significant detail and motion,” says Meny.

Each hatchery “tree” consisted of five repeated pieces: a fetus, a jar, a pod, a base, and a tube. “Because of the depth of the shot, we needed some pods that would stand-up very close to the camera and some that could be seen way in the background. We created multiple resolutions of the models to put the detail where we needed it, but not incur the expense of rendering that detail when we didn’t expect to see it.”

Within each jar was a fetal clone. ILM crafted two models to suggest different stages of clone development. The animators created one long sequence of motion for the fetus model, which was than offset throughout the jars for the illusion of individual performances.

Once the visual characteristics of the models were finalized, the shot began to be assembled layer by layer. For this shot, this was necessary since the visual and lighting complexity of the environment would be impossible to render in one pass. Some of the most complex layers alone required 12 hours per frame to render.

“We break it down to as many rendering layers as we can manage reasonably,” says Meny. “In this shot, there’s about 120 rendered layers that are then combined in the composite. The main reason indoingthat is it gives you a lot more control to change things. If a certain part of the shot isn’t working, you only have to re-render a subsection of that,” says Meny.

With the outside hatchery assembled complete with lighting and atmospheric haze, one final addition gave the shot an added hint of realism. Since there was no reflective glass on the bluescreen stage during Ewan McGregor’s shoot, ILM had to trick a reflection of Obi-Wan on the inside of the glass corridor. “The compositor had to cheat it using elements from other shots, and slip-sync them to give you a sense there’s a reflection in the glass. The final composite is pretty subtle, and we hide it behind the principal element of Obi-Wan.”

Thursday, January 09, 2003
Issue #76

Inside the Factory

A late addition to the postproduction of Episode II was the elaborate Geonosiandroid factory set piece, which was conceived, scripted, previsualized and shot months after principal photography had wrapped. Visual Effects Supervisor Ben Snow and his unit tackled the eleventh hour action sequence.

“We used a combination of computer graphics and miniature work for the environment,” says Snow. “Since everything in the factory is moving and interacting, we made a lot of it in computer graphics so we can deal with the complexity and the interaction.”

The rust-hued smoke-belching clamor of the factory was a perfect showcase for the signature “used universe” feel of Star Wars. “To get a realistic grime and gritty feel, we enhanced our shots with CG and real smoke, sparks and pyrotechnical elements,” says Snow. “To make the sequence tense and scary, we wanted to push for a realistic feel.”

To that end, Snow took a crew of computer graphic artists and model-makers to a real automobile factory in the San Francisco Bay Area. “We looked at all these machines in action and try to get a good feel for it,” he says. “One of the daunting things is just how much complexity there is in this real factory, and trying to reproduce that in computer graphics and visual effects is a bit overwhelming. But you’re trying to convey an impression of it rather than having to get every bit of grime in there.”

Even the car factory was judged too austere. “We decided we neededtotake the team somewhere a bit nastier,” says Snow. “We visited a foundry in the East Bay, and this was paydirt as far as I was concerned. Dark, and dirty, and old, I think it really defined the look we were going for. It had the texture and the sulfuric industrial smell that we wanted to try to evoke in our work. We took a bunch of photographs that we used as texture reference when painting our CG models and miniatures. It’s really important to have good reference. It keeps us honest, particularly if we’re doing a largely computer graphic scene.”

The final factory environment was created using a combination of computer-generated elements and miniatures, with bluescreen plate photography of the actors properly aligned into the virtual surroundings. Helping add to the realism of the finished shots was a sense of purpose to the enveloping chaos.

“In a lot of the shots the machines could just be whirling around threateningly, but I thought it would make the sequence more exciting to see that the machines were actually building things,” says Snow. “One of the things I did was to sit down and try to work out what each conveyer belt was doing, and made little maps showing the manufacturing process for the animators and artists on the sequence.”

Thursday, January 23, 2003
Issue #77

Geonosis Genesis

Where in the world is the rocky terrain of Geonosis? Some of it can be found in the American southwest. Some of it, in the model shops of Industrial Light & Magic, and much of it as computer-generated imagery and digital information that stitches all these pieces together to make a unique and foreboding alien world.

“We put a lot of thought into the landscape of Geonosis, as to how it might look, with different buttes and rocks,” says Ben Snow, one of ILM’s Visual Effects Supervisors on Episode II. “George Lucas had a very specific look in mind: Monument Valley but much redder and more alien. Because Monument Valley is so distinctive to filmgoers, we tried to take that spirit and look at some real world locations that would be different, yet with the same qualities.”

Snow’s initial plan was to shoot background plates in the American southwest, but Lucas and Producer Rick McCallum challenged the digital artists to provide a solution that wouldn’t require a costly location shoot. Instead, only a trio of effects artists with still cameras — Snow, Effects Director of Photography Martin Rosenberg and Digital Matte Lead Jonathan Harb — voyaged to the Hite Marina in Utah to gather the raw data that would become Geonosis.”We tiled our stills together, and used it as a background, digitally altering it as needed, and removing the vegetation. The other thing we had to do was to create the sky of Geonosis. George wanted a really yellow, different sky, so we painted a large sky panorama,” says Snow.

For much of the Clone War ground battle, the landscape consisted of three distinct parts. The distant horizon was a digitally altered photographic plate. The mid-ground was computer-generated terrain. The immediate foreground consisted of detailed miniatures.

For the swooping approach shots of Padmé’s starship soaring through the canyons, Snow’s crew favored an all-digital method that was nonetheless rooted in real world topography.

“We actually pulled United States Geological Survey data from the USGS website, and we converted that data into our format. We took the data from the area where Ben and his crew shot stills,” says Computer Graphics Supervisor Curt Miyashiro. “It gave Ben and George the flexibility to choose the shots any way they wanted, since they weren’t locked into any particular flight path or plate work”

The online data was fairly low-resolution, but formed the topographical foundation for more detailed work. Procedural shaders added erosion and texture to the canyons and mesas, significantly altering the landscape to make it an alien world. Since the landscape was entirely digital, it was easy to extract the necessary vantage points to create the reflectivity of Padmé’s silvery ship.

When audiences were first given a glimpse of Geonosis in the “Breathing” teaser trailer in November 2001, what they saw was a work in progress. “We were still doing R & D work for a terrain system at that time, so we had to cheat it,” says Miyashiro. “We used what we had developed at the time, as well as some elements leftover from the Podrace in Episode I to create the canyon walls.” The shot was of course finished in time for theatrical release.

Thursday, February 06, 2003
Issue #78

ILM’s Clone War Secrets

The overwhelming final act of Episode II was reason enough for repeat viewings. The chaos of the Clone War battlefield was vividly brought to life by the digital artists at Industrial Light & Magic under the leadership of Ben Snow, Visual Effects Supervisor. With the freeze-frame clarity of DVD, fans can revel in the intricate detail and craftsmanship of these amazing shots. Here are a handful of behind-the-scenes factoids from the epic battle.

The CG models of the Republic attack gunships had to be extremely detailed to withstand viewer scrutiny during closeups. ILM even crafted a version with a fully decked out interior, which was used as the background for new bluescreen elements of the actors aboard the gunships shot during additional photography in London. The real life gunship interior sets were left in Sydney, so these new shots required digital gunship interiors.

To efficiently deliver a realistic explosion for the gunship that gets shot out of the sky, ILM built a mandrill of the vessel. A mandrill is an all-blue practical miniature. It was rigged with pyrotechnics and blown up. The properly shaped explosion was digitally extracted, interacting with the properly shaped wreckage, and digital artists replaced the blue gunship with the computer-generated one.

Many of the explosions of the final ground battle were real ones rather than digital fireballs. They were shot in the backlot at ILM. Explosions were such in demand that the compositors dipped into the library of explosions built for the Naboo plains battle from Episode I to fill out the shots.

Yoda’s command center was a 1/6th scale miniature.

Though the Republic AT-TE walkers were computer-generated, at least one 1/10th scale miniature was constructed for pyrotechnic purposes. The walker that gets blown apart by an armor-busting Hailfire missile was first shot as a miniature against greenscreen. This provided valuable reference for the animators, though the scale of the resulting miniature explosion proved unusable as a final element. Also, the miniature was shot with a static camera while the finished shot had a swooping camera move that followed the rocket: a CG walker was needed to properly move with the perspective of the shot.

A number of subtle visual clues were incorporated into the design of the shots to help audiences keep track of who’s who. The good guys — the Republic clones — always move from screen right to screen left, while the Separatist forces moved from screen left to screen right. The sun is behind the clones, resulting in a gloomier sky behind the Separatists. Finally, the missile contrails were color-coded to denote allegiance: the Republic rockets leave clean white trails, while the villains launch missiles that leave noxious black exhaust.

To efficiently communicate the damage sustained by the Trade Federation core ship blasted out of the sky, two versions of the computer-generated vessel were made. One bore its standard paint job. The other was the “distressed” version, with carbon scoring damage painted across the surface. Both were animated performing the same movement, and the compositors used animated mattes to gradually reveal the damaged ship from “behind” the intact one, covering the transitions with composited fire and explosion effects.

Thursday, March 06, 2003
Issue #80

From Jack to Jedi
Genndy Tartakovsky gets up at seven in the morning, spends some time having breakfast and playing with his boy, and then heads off to work, to tell tales of samurai and Jedi. The acclaimed creator of “Dexter’s Laboratory” and “Samurai Jack” for the Cartoon Network, Tartakovsky is now helming Star Wars: Clone Wars, the series of animated shorts that will air on the network this fall.

“Clone Wars fits in my day here and there, as with everything else,” he says. “Luckily ‘Samurai Jack’ is just ending up. I finished the last storyboard in December. So, slowly, Star Wars just took over. I’ll still be doing post-production on ‘Samurai Jack’ until the very end of Star Wars, and we’ll be done Star Wars by late summer.”

Many of the talents that helped mold “Samurai Jack” into the success that it is will be working on Clone Wars. “We’re a pretty slim crew, because I wanted it to have more of a personal touch, so it doesn’t get too huge,” he says. “We have the Art Director Paul Rudish, who is doing all the main designs. The way he draws is the look of the show. We have Dave Dunnet, who is doing the background designs. Scott Wills, who is the background painter from ‘Samurai Jack.’ He’s doing all the paintings. It’s basically all the same people that did ‘Jack,’ except for a couple of new ones here and there. We have this guy from Oregon, Michel Gagne, and he’s doing all the effects designs. I wanted all the effects to be really stylized and specific, so it feels more nurtured. He’s going to design them all and animate a lot of them himself.”

Genndy Tartakovsky was born in Moscow, and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1977, the same year the first Star Wars film burst onto the silver screen. “I just missed when the first one came out, but I saw it a year after that,” he recalls. “As soon as I saw it, I fell in love. I loved comic books and cartoons when I was a kid, and samurai stuff with lots of action. So, Star Wars filled that niche with everything. It’s got great fights, great characters, a classic hero myth — that was what I was drawn to,thewhole mythology of it.”

It wasn’t long before Star Wars did sneak its way into young Tartakovsky’s sketchbook. “Just a little bit,” he notes. “I couldn’t draw that well when I was younger, so I was drawing more Scooby Doo and stuff like that. But Paul Rudish’s sketchbooks — he’s been drawing droids and stuff since he was 12. It’s been a part of our life ever since they came out”

Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Thursday, May 10, 2002
Issue #61

Episode II Easter Eggs

The Star Wars films are brimming with so much detail, that they require multiple viewings to soak it all in. First time screenings are to watch the main characters and the core story, but with subsequent viewings it’s hard not to let your eye wander and take in some of the extras.

Sometimes, the details are intentional elements meant to remind you how the galaxy fits together. Other times, it’s an unintentional flub that illustrates the complexities of filmmaking (keep track of thecolor of the clothes that Padmé packs on Coruscant in Episode II, for example). And, on occasion, the filmmakers purposely put in a little visual joke to reward sharp-eyed (or in some cases, sharp-eared) movie-goers.

Here’s some of the things to watch for the next time you go to see Attack of the Clones.

Trundling along the streets of Mos Espa as Anakin and Padmé go to meet Watto is none other than R5-D4, the grumpy astromech from Episode IV that blows its stack in front of Luke.

What has become a tradition of sorts is the “Wilhelm,” the affectionate moniker given to a very distinct scream sound effect used in all of the Star Wars films (and quite a few non-Star Wars films too). In A New Hope, it’s the stormtrooper that plummets down the Death Star chasm. In Episode II, it’s a Naboo soldier thrown in the opening explosion of the film.

The very first shot of Episode II has an homage to another sci-fi classic as the camera tilts up to the crowded orbital traffic of Coruscant. “That shot had been executed in 2001: A Space Odyssey,” explains John Knoll, one of Episode II’s Visual Effects Supervisors. “I put an Orion space plane flying in there.”

Star Wars continuity purists will have a hard time explaining just how an X-wing fighter and TIE fighter got into the speeder chase over Coruscant.

By now, many have spotted the familiar Millennium Falcon-style Corellian freighters docked on Naboo. “It was George Lucas’ idea,” says VFX Supervisor Pablo Helman. “He said something like, ‘should we dare go there?’ And we did.” In addition to those saucer-shaped freighters, expanded universe fans might be able to spot a Corellian bulk freighter, the same model as Talon Karrde’s Wild Karrde.

It appears that Fett genes and low headroom don’t mix. In an homage to the classic Star Wars misstep, wherein a stormtrooper bangs his head on a low-hanging door, Jango Fett also takes a wallop on the noggin — complete with sound effect — as he enters the Slave I after tangling with Obi-Wan.

“There’s these big cow-like creatures called shaaks that Anakin rides on Naboo,” explains Knoll. “The shaaks got to be a bit of a joke with the crew. I put one in the asteroid sequence, in a reference to Ken Ralston [visual effects artist in the classic trilogy] having put potatoes and tennis shoes in space battle scenes previously. So there’s a shaak there, but it’s got the asteroid shader on it with craters. You really can’t see it unless you start to look at it and see the legs and snout.”

“There may be a shaak on fire during the Clone War,” hints Ben Snow, another of Episode II’s Visual Effects Supervisors. “It was almost a competition. Can anyone get a shaak in their scene?”

Of course, for every confirmed Easter Egg, there are dozens of imagined ones (Luke’s landspeeder? Sebulba? Darth Maul? Joey Fatone?). Keep a close eye on the screen during your next viewing, but remember: your eyes can deceive you; don’t trust them.

Thursday, June 13, 2002
Issue #62

Making it Count

“He’s fascinating,” says Writer/Director George Lucas. “Christopher plays it so you don’t quite know if Dooku’s disenchantment with the corruption in the Republic is valid — because it is valid. It’s all valid. He plays it like: is he really a villain or is he really just somebody who’s gotten disenchanted and trying to make things right? He was Qui-Gon’s master, and his feeling of loss at Qui-Gon and thinking about him is real. He’s not just a monster that, say, Darth Maul was.”

In addition to the screen presence Lee brings to the charismatic separatist character, he also brings with him decades of martial skills. “He’s a really brilliant swordsman,” says Lucas. “He’s done more sword-fights than anyotheractor. He was doing sword-fights back when the films that we’re trying to mimic were the real films!”

“This is a different kind of sword-fighting, so he had to learn a new kind, and he’s very good at that. And we had a really good stunt double that is a world-class swordsman. Through digital technology, we were able to take Christopher’s likeness and put it on the stuntman, so the stuntman looks exactly like him. We combined the close-ups of Christopher and the stuntman, which is what you normally do in a movie, but now we were able to do it more precisely, so it’s more seamless.”

Thursday, June 27, 2002
Issue #63

On The Dark Side

When landing the role of Anakin, Christensen’s research materials were the four previous films of the Star Wars series. “There’s only so much you can draw from a man behind a mask,” said Christensen. “But I wanted to bring some of the monotone aspect of the way he delivered his lines to my character, to a lesser degree, just so you can see where he was going. Also, there were certain times when I’d move my hands the way he would to indicate certain physical sensibilities that were to come.”

To further school himself in the way of the galaxy, Christensen watched Episode I every weekend during shooting. “It was more to get used to the way people talk in the Star Wars universe,” he explains. “It’s not the way normal people speak, so the delivery and the speech patterns are something that I was trying to have constantly imposed on my own psyche so I could be comfortable with it.”

Christensen also carefully eyed Jake Lloyd’s performance as the boy Anakin, looking for ways to bridge a character pure in heart to one destined for darkness. The scene in which Anakin confesses his first irrevocable step tothe dark side merged both characteristics. “In the telling of it, for me, it was a chance for me to justify Anakin’s younger more immature sensibilities,” says Christensen. “The fact that he can do this horrific act, but in the retelling of it, he would break down the same way a child would … that was something we were consciously aware of when we were filming it.”

As far as Anakin’s ultimate fate, Hayden doesn’t have any insights other than what is commonly known about the rise of Vader. “I can really only extrapolate on what’s been said in the latter part of the saga,” he says. “I murder all the Jedi and there has to be some falling out between Obi-Wan and I that leads to a fight scene. Aside from that, the only thing that I ever nag at George is whether or not I’m going to get to wear Darth Vader’s outfit. And he gives me a ‘wink wink, nudge nudge.’

Thursday, July 11, 2002
Issue #64

Gillian Libbert: Costuming Clones
By Pablo Hidalgo

The last time starwars.com talked to Gillian Libbert, way back in 1999, she worked as Lucasfilm’s Character Appearances Manager, preparing costumed characters for commercials and publicity events. After wrapping up that job, she placed a call into Trisha Biggar, Costume Designer for Episode I who was just starting on Episode II’s early pre-production.

“My background was in production, and I really wanted to get back into it,” says Libbert, who asked Biggar to contact her should she need any help. Given the costume requirements of Episode II, Biggar did just that. “Since Trish lived in Scotland, she needed someone in the U.S., particularly at Skywalker Ranch, to help coordinate things on this end. It was meant to be a two-week job, and ended up turning into two years,” she says.

Over those two years, Libbert was involved throughout all stages of production and beyond, first sourcing fabric and working with the concept artists, and then traveling down to Fox Studios Australia, assisting Biggar during principal photography.

“I can definitely say I’ve mastered the Jedi costume,” she says confidently. “We probably did about 50 Jedi at a time for the end battle, but we made enough costumes for 200 to 250 people.”

Libbert’s previous experience at Lucasfilm afforded her familiarity with a number of different departments. “I think it helped Trish a lot, since I knew the Lucasfilm structure” she says. For instance, for the Licensing division that produces the toys, she oversaw the costumes during reference photography shoots and 3-D laser scanning. For the Publicity Department, she ensured costume continuity during magazine photo shoots. “I have done cover shoots with Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, and I also did one with George Lucas and Jango Fett in the middle of a dry lake bed.”

During postproduction effects shooting, Libbert dressed theextras that would populate many of the digitally enhanced crowd scenes — particularly the Geonosis arena Jedi and the underworld Coruscant citizenry. She would also offer her expertise to the digital cloth simulation artists creating digital wardrobe for computer-generated characters (like Jar Jar) and stunt duplicates (like Obi-Wan).

Libbert had a chance to step in front of the camera for a cameo appearance as a Coruscant extra. “There’s a reason I’m behind the scenes,” she laughs modestly. Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll was gathering bluescreen elements of background extras to populate the Coruscant nightclub and alleys. “I think we probably dressed about 800 to 1,000 extras,” estimates Libbert. At Knoll’s prompting, Libbert donned an outfit cobbled together from various pieces and played a surprised bystander during the foot chase.

“It was a good time; Julie D’Antoni (ILM Production Manager) and I laughed so hard because I had a tendency to overact,” she admits. “John’s reaction was, ‘Um… you need to tone that down.'” After a handful of takes, her screen debut was secured, but she hadn’t realized just how prominent in frame she was to be until ILM screened their dailies for George Lucas.

“I could have just died,” she says. “I was mortified, because there I was on the big screen — at least Julie was there too. John took his laser pointer, circled our faces and said, ‘there’s Gillian and there’s Julie.’ But George finaled the shot so I guess my acting debut was a success!”

Thursday, July 25, 2002
Issue #65

Watto Returns

One alien that benefited from such growth was Watto. Though a professed favorite of Animation Director Rob Coleman, Watto’s return saw a way of improving the already-convincing performance seen in The Phantom Menace.

“I was definitely happy with what ended up being in Episode I, but so much of that process was just sheer panic over being able to pull it all off,” he says. “With Episode I under our belt, we were able to concentrate more on performance, and actually getting the animators to think of themselves as actors, and get inside the characters’ heads.”

Watto may be a shrewd businessman, but he’s not that bright, and he hasn’t learned many lessons in ten years. “His character is pretty well exactly the same,” says Coleman. “What’s lovely in the Watto sequence is you have that moment of realization when he’s staring at Anakin, and it’s a sustained close-up, and he’s thinking. You can see him thinking and his eyes are darting around, and it’s like he can’t believe that his mind is telling him it’s Anakin.”

Aided with a rich voice performance from Andrew Secombe — whom Coleman has, oddly enough, never met despite working so closely with his voice — the animators were able to convey Watto’s one-track mind with subtlety. “When he comes to the realization that it’s Anakin, he has this joyful moment. Then he goes, right in the next shot, into the ‘hey, you can help me with some deadbeats who owe me a lot of money.’ It’s like he’s right back into his old ways, and Anakin has to pull him back. It’s a lovely scene, I loved it how it was scripted and I think it plays really well,” says Coleman.

Superficially, Watto shows the scars of an ailing business, as his gruff appearance is even more gruffer with the addition of a scraggly, unkempt beard. “He originally had a hat for The Phantom Menace, but George [Lucas] didn’t want it and then [Visual Effects Supervisor] John Knoll convinced him to have it in this one. There’s a nice little moment, an interaction with it, so the hat turns out to be a really nice prop for us to work with as animators.”

Another suggestion from Knoll that ended up in the final was a small cloud of pesky digital flies. “When they showed me the first take of that, because it wasn’t my suggestion and didn’t expect it, I thought it was hilarious,” recalls Coleman.

Another interesting challenge came from something as simple as camera angles. Though ugly from any angle, Watto actually has a more photogenic side, which was focused on heavily in Episode I. “I actually wanted him to lose another tooth, because whether people are aware of it or not, the majority of time in Episode I, Watto is right-to-left, so he’s looking to screen left. Most of the time — if not every shot — in Episode II, he’s left-to-right. In the last movie, we chipped off two of his teeth so we could see more of his mouth. This time around, we were on the side with the two big tusks, so I was worried when we first started that we weren’t going to be able to read his facial expressions, but it actually worked out okay.”

Thursday, August 8, 2002
Issue #66

Penciling the Clones

“I was little hesitant to take the part,” she admitted. “I thought, ‘I’m going to know everything about the movie and I don’t want to!'” Her hesitation subsided quickly (“in two seconds,” she noted), and she eagerly entered the world of Attack of the Clones. “It’s more difficult than working on a regular comic book, because that’s in your head. In an adaptation, you’re trying to see into what someone else is going to do with a movie, and trying to recognize how they’re perceiving it.”

Working off of reference photography and concept illustrations, Duursema had to reconstruct the movie panel by panel, transforming the moving widescreen image into compelling sequential art of varying proportions. “You’re trying to figure out what’s the most important thing on a page,” she relates. “Which part of the conversation do you want to give the most weight to? I try to balance out the size of the shots and the intensity of the faces depending on what we needed for the story, or what I felt the emphasis needed to be.”

While the reference imagery and constant contact with LucasBooks editor Chris Cerasi helped fill in a lot of gaps, many times Duursema was left to interpret or create imagery on her own. Much of the reference photography was against featureless bluescreen, and George Lucas and ILM were refining scenes such as the droid factory and the final Clone War sequence right down to the wire.

This left opportunities for Duursema to still be surprised by the finished film. “Even though I knew a lot about it, and seen a lot of images, when I saw the movie I was just so blown away,” she says. “It was amazing.”

Thursday, August 22, 2002
Issue #67

Coleman Talks Coleman

In the case of Trebor, the horn-crested Jedi came about as a replacement to an Episode I Jedi Master removed from the Jedi Council. “If you think back to the original Jedi Council there was a long-necked Jedi on the far side — Yarael Poof — he was a puppet. George was afraid that if we kept that guy in, people might confuse him with the Kaminoans.”

No new footage of the Jedi Council chambers was shot. Archival Episode I footage was reused, digitally modified to fit the appropriate time of day, and the offending Jedi Master was painted out and replaced with Coleman Trebor. To further suggest the progress of time, another Jedi Master got the digital axe. Green little Yaddle was replaced by Shaak Ti, an actress wearing elaborate makeup who was composited into the scene.

Coleman readily notes that the naming of the Jedi wasn’t his idea. It came about during an Art Department meeting at Skywalker Ranch, when concept sculptors Michael Patrick Murnane and Robert E. Barnes displayed the outcome of a rather intense sculpting jam session. From the array of aliens, George Lucas picked his favorites and assigned their roles. “[Visual Effects Supervisor] John Knoll said, ‘Uh, George, you know you haven’t named anything after Rob…'” recalls Coleman.

From that suggestion, Coleman Trebor was named, the maquette was realized as a computer-generated character, the character was painstakingly animated and composited into the temple and arena scenes…

… and then Coleman Trebor was quickly iced by Jango Fett.

“Yeah, but we don’t actually see him hit the ground,” Coleman is quick to point out with a laugh. “I keep telling George it’s only a flesh wound. He was the most heroic, he was the one who went after Dooku!”

Coleman has no qualms about his Jedi counterpart’s screen time. He says he actually shoved all thought of the character’s name out of his mind since he was never certain that the name wouldn’t get changed by the time the film was released. “If there is a toy I’d certainly be sending that up to my dad,” he notes. “Dad look: a Jedi!”

Thursday, September 05, 2002
Issue #68

Everybody in Helmets

Working from concept art devised by Alexander Laurant of ILM’s Art Department, this shot is rooted in reality with a number of live action elements. Firstly, footage of Ewan McGregor as Kenobi was shot on a bluescreen stage. “This element was flopped left-to-right, so that Obi-Wan’s walking direction would be continuous throughout the sequence,” explains Meny. “It was also shrunk significantly in the frame so that the focus would remain in the foreground.”

With the live action element positioned, an animatic was created to determine correct camera lens and framing. That virtual camera data was taken to the motion control stage and miniatures of the glassy skywalk and the background dome interior were photographed in multiple passes. “These were shot with miniatures because they were static elements that could be reused for several shots in the sequence, each filmed from a slightly different angle. They also served as great bookends for the whole sequence and gave us something to match our computer graphics to,” says Meny.

In the foreground are the clones, entirely computer-generated. “Since we are seeing thousands of these characters on the screen at a time, a lot of time was spent making variations in their armor.” Scuffmarks and rank coloring diversify the crowd. Their movement was supplied via motion capture sessions, supplemented with some key-frame animation. The animation was divided into three portions: standing in line, picking up and donning the helmet, and walking back. “We’re using the Maya software application and a particle system in Maya, to drive the performances of the characters. The particle system allows us to script when each of the characters transitions from one cycle into the next. By choreographing the performances with Maya’s particle system, we can render hundreds to thousands of characters in a single shot very efficiently.”

The armory, jokingly called the “bowling ball dispenser” by the artists, was a computer model. “Computer graphics were used because it was a single model that needed to be used only for this shot, and would require a lot of interaction with the digital characters,” says Meny.

Pools of light, reflections, cast-shadows and layers of atmospheric haze help to blend the disparate elements together. These are rendered separately and composited together to allow for efficient tweaks of just one element.

Filling out the backgrounds are dozens of non-armored clones undergoing combat and calisthenics routines. These were less detailed computer models since in the finished film, they would appear only in the background. “Because we were seeing thousands of these models in subsequent shots, we created two different uniform colors to add some variation to the squads,” explains Meny. “Twenty-nine different performances were recorded and motion-captured.”

Since this was the only shot of unhelmeted yet armored clones in the movie, a CG model of a clone bearing the likeness of a young Jango (modeled from actor Bodie Taylor) was specifically designed. However, when it came time to don the helm, it became apparent that the computer artists had to fudge some of the real-world measurements. “The model of the helmet didn’t actually fit on the digital Jango’s head,” says Meny. “His head was too large, so parts of his cheek and nose were actually poking through the helmet. The animators had to enlarge the helmet and shrink down the face slightly to so that they would actually work together and the audience wouldn’t see any artifacts.”

Thursday, September 19, 2002
Issue #69

An Elegant Weapon

The distinctive curved lightsaber first appeared in early sketches of the new Sith enemy, and this direction was later expanded with the help of Art Department Assistant Roel Robles, who brought in some of his own cultural roots to the design table.

“I started bringing in my arsenal of various Filipino swords, spears, and knives to give the Art Department a different feel than what we had before. At one point, we had a room full of artists playing with these deadly balisong (butterfly) knives before ameeting,” he recalls. Robles’ collection included a wide variety of blade types, but his favored weapon was the barong, which featured a curved handle to prevent weapon slippage during combat. “It looks cool, sharp and deadly,” he says.

At one Art Department meeting, Design Director Doug Chiang had Robles lay out his weapons for George Lucas to inspect. “George picked out the barong, which I was really happy about not only because it was my favorite blade, but also since it was a Filipino blade, it had cultural and historical bonds. I am proud to say I was able to put a small part of my Filipino heritage into the film,” says Robles.

As further inspiration to his fellow Art Department members, Robles arranged a demonstration of escrima, a Filipino martial arts employing multiple bladed weapons. He and a friend, Jonathan Soriben (“one of the best Filipino martial arts masters that I know,” he says) reserved the basketball court at the Skywalker Ranch fitness center and went at it with sticks rather than knives. “So as not to scare anyone,” Robles clarifies.

“When Dermot Power came up from London to work with the team, Iain McCaig encouraged me to set up a demonstration. Iain and Dermot were designing the Sith at the time, and were very impressed. They began to do more work on the Sith with escrima in mind,” says Robles.

Thursday, October 03, 2002
Issue #70

Padmé Amidala Speaks
By Pablo Hidalgo

Senator, activist, warrior, secret newlywed — Padmé Amidala keeps a schedule as busy as Natalie Portman does, not that the young actress minds.

“I’m in school during term time, I make movies in the summer, then I do publicity on the weekends,” she explains. “It’s not that difficult. I love going to school and all my school friends are great. They’re not at all jealous or intimidated. A couple of them came to visit me [on set]. I need to be surrounded by friends as well as work people. We had a lot of fun in Sydney.”

“Fun” is Portman’s one-word summary of Episode II, soon to be available on DVD. Freed from the cumbersome makeup and stately wardrobe of Episode I, Portman delights at Padmé’s more aggressive actions in Attack of the Clones. Sure, she got to storm her own palace in Menace, but that’s nothing compared to fighting alongside Jedi warriors and going toe-to-claw against a nasty cat creature. “I got a few small bruises and pulled muscles, but nothing serious,” she says.

Yet through it all, Padmé Amidala remained well coiffed and fully accessorized. “That makes me laugh,” she admits. “A lot of the time, Padmé is running around without her assistants, but she always has amazingly flamboyant hair. She must be very skilled at styling it herself.”

Another perk of Episode II is that for once, Portman gets to play the older woman in a romantic scenario. “It’s about time, isn’t it? After Leon and Beautiful Girls, I kept being made out as this ‘Lolita’ character, and now I get to be the cradle-robber,” she laughs.

She also chuckles at the rumors alleging an off-screen relationship with co-star Hayden Christensen. “I’m now the envy of little girls everywhere, which is better than being perceived as a bad person who robs stores or something,” she says. “There are much worse rumors people could make up about you.”

What is true is that she swiped an Anakin-related memento from the set; she now owns one of the Padawan’s braids used in the film. “There were like 12 of them so I knew one wouldn’t be missed.”

Knowing that young girls around the world are watching Padmé Amidala with a twinkle of heroism in their eyes, Portman switches to a more serious gear when discussing her alter ego as a role model. “I hope she has elements that young girls would aspire to,” she says. “She’s a leader, she’s idealistic and a good human being who has compassion for others. Plus she’s not corrupted by politics; she takes care of herself and she’s vulnerable to love — which everyone is.”

Portman’s commitment to her educational pursuits would make good role model material as well. “It is important for me to be the most rounded human being I can possibly be and to learn as much as I can learn,” she says. “For me, school and college have helped me understand myself better and given me the tools to live a full life and grow as a person”

Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Thursday, January 10, 2002
Issue #51

Episode II International Mixes

“It means we have to have the finished film done a month ahead of what we did for Episode I,” says McCallum. “It means we have to audition and cast 60 to 80 actors to do the parts in each country, and we’re in 30 different countries. All the parts have to be translated. It’s a very intense, complicated and time-consuming period, but awfully fun if we can pull it off.”

International agents in each territory gather a shortlist of local voice talent which are then sent to the production. “We listen to them and approve them, but that can take a long time because there are maybe four to five actors for each part in each country. It takes a good day to really analyze everybody for one country — if you have 30 countries, that’s a month, and the only way you can do it.”

Some of the vocal talents of returning Episode I characters will again return for Episode II. “We were very happy with Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman’s characters in almost every country. We also listened to feedback from every country. Some of it was very intense from dedicated fans who care a lot about the subtleties that no one else sees. It takes a long time.”

Thursday, January 24, 2002
Issue #52

Cloak & Biggar

Now, Episode II promises a showdown involving a huge number of Jedi — more noble Knights than have ever before been assembled on the big screen. That means an awful lot of cloaks, most of them made from scratch as opposed to Phantom Menace hand-me-downs.

“The wool fabric from Episode I, we bought bales of it,” says Trisha Biggar. “We discovered after we bought the fabric that it had been Second World War utility fabric, so it was made very heavy.” Too heavy, it would seem, for Obi-Wan Kenobi’s water-logged fisticuffs with Jango Fett. “On this Episode, we had that fabric recreated at a quarter of the weight. I know [Stunt Coordinator] Nick Gillard had his doubts about how it’s going to be when it’s wet, but I don’t think it was as bad as he thought.”

Light enough for rain-soaked pugilism, but still too heavy for speeder bike use. “There are always little problems,” says Biggar. “One day we had Anakin on his speeder going through the desert, and there’s a wind machine. Because we had bluescreens up, the wind machine couldn’t get close enough to him. We ended up having to wire the end of the cloak so that it would be pulled with the wind’s help.”

Thursday, February 07, 2002
Issue #53

Hairdo

“He’s very clear about his ideas,” says Love, describing her working relationship with director George Lucas. “He explained it very well — it’s more of that old Hollywood glamour. People get confused and think ‘space age and futuristic,’ but it’s not. It’s actually completely the other way around. All the costumes and the hair, there’s a period feel to them. So, I reference old films when I work.”

Concept illustrations and notes start the process, and Love experiments with all manner of coifs and dos. She works mainly with acrylic hair, stretched or wrapped around lightweight templates covered with canvas. “We try to keep it very lightweight,” she explains. The wigs and hairpieces are often built atop casts of the actors face, so that everything can be seen in context. It is these pieces that are approved, and then actually are fitted to the actors.

As a result, very rarely are we looking at the actor’s actual hair — especially if it’s a rather elaborate set-up. Often, the actor’s hair is either completely obscured by a wig, or built upon and incorporated into the piece. “Hayden Christensen had short hair when he first arrived, so we had to just trim it a little bit. We added the braid, which is tied to a little bit of his own hair. We sew the ponytail on the back.”

A particular challenge is maintaining the pieces in the changing climates of location shooting. “It’s a battle,” says Love. “It’s all the different temperatures. When we were at Lake Como, it poured rain, and Natalie Portman had her long curls which don’t go very well in the rain. It was a constant battle to keep curling it up all the time, and to keep it looking the same. Then, the mornings in Tunisia are very, very humid. If I took her hairpiece out, all those lovely curls would just go straight.”

Portman has about 15-20 hairstyles in Episode II, and Love has a favorite. “Nothing’s difficult on Natalie. She’s so beautiful. You can put anything on her,” she says. “I think P-11 [the white jumpsuit look] is my favorite. The original design had huge loop, and I said to [Costume Designer] Trisha Biggar, what if I made that smaller, more compact? We sat in my kitchen at home — it was before I had actually started working on the film properly — wrapping hair around thin foam tubes, making these loops. We made a rough of it and sent it to George at Skywalker Ranch. It came back here with a note saying he loved it. We’ve got four copies of that now, but the original one was the one that works the most — the one made in my kitchen. She just looks so cute in it.”

Thursday, February 21, 2002
Issue #54

Knowing the Score

Overseeing the scoring alongside Director George Lucas was Producer Rick McCallum. “It went very, very well — effortlessly, as it always does with John. Hearing a musical score for the first time is one of the most wonderful events that can happen to you. Obviously, John hears the music when he’s writing it, but no one gets the opportunity to fully experience it until then. Even though you may have heard little melodies on the piano, it never has the same impact unless you can really read music well to understand it.”

The London Symphony Orchestra included 110 players per day, plus a one-day appearance by a full choir. About a dozen people behind the scenes — music editor, music mixers and engineers — were there to capture the music for its addition to the film.

“There’s a massive amount of music, over 125 minutes worth,” says McCallum. “That’s a lot for a film; the average film has probably about 40. George made maybe five or six changes with certain cues that he wanted a little bit more intensity put in, or less. That was very easily done, especially with someone as talented as John is and as well as with music editor Ken Wannberg.”

The Williams Star Wars leitmotif style is present, with key melodies denoting characters and relationships. Certain themes from Episode I will reappear, while others from the original trilogy will begin to be foreshadowed.

“It really is an arc, now, and the music brings in all the films together,” says McCallum. “The major themes that will come in the series start in Episode I, build in Episode II, become more refined in Episode III, and then are there for IV, V and VI. One of the first new things that came up was the love theme, and thematically, it’s beautifully structured, it’s really interesting, and has really wonderful moments that preview what is about to come in terms of character development.”

Thursday, March 07, 2002
Issue #55

The New Trailer

“With this trailer, we start to look at the story and the state of the galaxy in Episode II,” says Lucasfilm’s VP of Marketing, Jim Ward. “It sets the stage for what’s about to happen and how the characters are involved. We find out that the Republic is on the brink of war, and the Jedi are overburdened in trying to hold everything together.”

The two-and-a-half minute trailer culminates with glimpses of some of the largest action sequences ever found in a Star Wars movie. Entitled “Clone War,” this trailer begins to lift the veils of secrecy surrounding the mysterious Clone Wars first mentioned — but never elaborated upon — in the original A New Hope in 1977.

“In Episode II, we’re going to see the Jedi in action like we’ve never seen them before,” says Ward. “We’re going to see hundreds of Jedi, hundreds of lightsabers, thousands of clones, in a huge battle. The trailer gives just a hint of what’s to come.”

The trailer airs on FOX this Sunday between original episodes of “Malcolm in the Middle” (8:30-9:00 PM ET/PT) and “The X-Files” (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT).

The Episode II Previews — By the Numbers:

#1 – “Breathing” Teaser Trailer
Length: 1:07
Release: Nov. 2, theatrically with Monsters Inc.; Nov 5. on starwars.com
No. of Shots: Over 20
Musical Cues: “The Death of Qui-Gon” (Episode I); “End Title” (Episode IV)

#2 – “Mystery” Internet Preview
Length: 1:17
Release: Nov. 9, exclusive to dvd.starwars.com
No. of Shots: Over 50
Musical Cues: “Rescue from Cloud City/ Hyperspace” (Episode V); “Duel of the Fates” (Episode I)

#3 – “Forbidden Love” Teaser Trailer
Length: 2:15
Release: Nov. 15 on starwars.com; Nov. 16, theatrically with Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone
No. of Shots: Over 80
Musical Cues: “Princess Leia’s Theme” (Episode IV); “Duel of the Fates” (Episode I)

#4 – “Clone War” Trailer
Length: 2:30
Release: Mar. 10 on FOX and starwars.com; Mar. 15, theatrically with Ice Age
No. of Shots: Over 100
Musical Cues: “The Pit of Carkoon/Sail Barge Assault” (Episode VI); “The Clash of Lightsabers” (Episode V); “The Forest Battle” (Episode VI)

Thursday, April 04, 2002
Issue #57

“The lightsaber fights in this film I started writing when I was still doing the last film,” explains Gillard. “You have to. You start out with more than you need, and then hone it down. Myself and Hayden Christensen rehearsed it for nearly six weeks, I think. It’s a long process and not just getting the moves, but keeping the character through it.”

Gillard defines a good stunt coordinator as someone who understands the script, the story, the characters and the mood of the film. This translates into the lightsaber fights that he writes, ensuring that each of the dueling characters has a signature style.

“We’re trying to go much more classical for some characters,” says Gillard, “Some of the characters are real master swordsmen, better than anything we’ve seen so far. So we’re using an old, classical European style for a couple of the characters.”

Of course the weapon of choice says a lot of the characters. “I’ve always said before, the Jedi have chosen a sword in a time of laser guns, so they’d better be damned good with it, and they would know every style,” says Gillard.

Aside from skilled masters, Episode II also shows young Jedi hopefuls starting down the path of lightsaber mastery — for which Gillard weathered a few blows. In the film, we see Jedi MasterYoda instruct a clan of “younglings”– helmeted children with practice lightsabers exercising with droid remotes.

“A four year old kid who can’t see and is carrying a lightsaber is a pretty scary thing,” admits the Stunt Coordinator. “Of the 100 kids we saw, we picked about 20. That was a great day, but there was one little girl that took a shine to me. She bit me in the back and hit me on the head with her lightsaber. You know, just being friendly.

Thursday, April 18, 2002
Issue #58

THX and TAP

The mass production of such high quality prints, which TAP is charged with checking, is one benefit that comes with the decision to shoot the movie digitally, because transferring digital footage to film involves fewer duplication steps than the traditional process. “Image quality suffers slightly with each generation in the film duplication process,” explained Ted Costas, Sales and Operations Manager for TAP and the Digital Mastering Program (DMP). “Traditionally, there is one original negative, and from the original negative an interpositive is made, and from that, multiple internegatives are created. These are used to produce the prints that are distributed to theatres. But starting with a digital file — and it’s a pristine digital source master, certified by THX — we can produce multiple original negatives, and then go straight to the final prints. This way, we’re releasing first generation prints to all screens. That’s never been done before.”

To check prints, TAP has personnel at labs in Southern California, Toronto, London, Rome, Mexico City and Sydney, Australia. For the two weeks leading up to the film’s debut, technicians will be checking prints around the clock. What’s more, TAP personnel will accompany every print on its trip from the lab to the various screening facilities to ensure its safe arrival.

While that effort is underway, other TAP personnel will be aligning theatres — setting light levels and making sound system adjustments. TAP will also send each theatre an Episode II information package containing a director’s letter and service instructions to ensure that each theatre has the information needed for optimal playback. There will also be the 1-800-PHONE-THX End Credit Service that gives moviegoers the opportunity to contact THX about any presentation problems.

Keep checking starwars.com in the coming weeks for more release information.

Thursday, May 02, 2002
Issue #59

Must-See C2

Celebration II is this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. Maybe you’re on the road right now. Maybe you’re in a hotel or at an Internet café, checking your email. Or maybe you’re at home, waiting until the last minute to decide to come to the biggest Star Wars party ever.

If you still can’t make it, then be sure to keep checking starwars.com this weekend for extensive coverage of Celebration II. Boiling down an entire weekend of amazing events, guests and panels into a handful of must-see highlights is nearly impossible, but here are some recommendations and a look at some of the things that will be covered at starwars.com:

Rick McCallum. Producer Rick McCallum is as inside a source on the prequel trilogy as you can get, and McCallum has generously donated his time throughout the Celebration weekend. Not only will he be fielding questions, he’ll also present the digital projection presentation that he originally showed to industry professionals at ShoWest earlier this year. Here’s your chance to see Episode II scenes the way they were meant to be seen — projected digitally. Fri. 10:00 am, Tatooine; Fri, 2:00 pm,Tatooine; Sat, 9:00 am, Tatooine; Sat, 2:30 pm, Tatooine.

Hayden Christensen. The chosen one himself will be making his first convention appearance ever. See him in person and on-stage at Celebration II as he recounts his experiences on making Episode II. Hear what it’s like to grow up as a fan of the original trilogy and end up in the most important role of the saga. Fri, 12:30 pm, Coruscant; Fri, 5:45pm, Coruscant; Sat, 11:45 am, Coruscant; Sat, 3:15 pm, Coruscant.

Ben Burtt. He’s been there since the very beginning. Over 25 years ago, Ben Burtt was tasked with gathering sounds and developing alien languages for a visionary film that few thought would ever succeed. Now, he’s still part of Star Wars and the Lucasfilm family. On Episode II, he served as picture editor and sound designer. Burtt will share over a quarter-century of insights and stories about the development of the saga and the nature of filmmaking. Sat, 3:15 pm, Coruscant; Sun, 10:00 am, Coruscant; Sun, 11 am, Dagobah.

Jonathan Hales. This is a rare chance to hear a Star Wars story-crafter talk about his work. Jonathan Hales, co-screenwriter of Attack of the Clones, will be at Celebration II. He worked closely with Star Wars creator George Lucas in honing the final drafts of Episode II into what will appear on screen. Sat, 2:30pm, Naboo; Sun, 1:00pm, Naboo.

Star Wars Fan Film Awards. Celebrate the spirit of fan creativity with Atomfilms and Lucasfilm’s presentation of the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards. The finalists have been pared down to 44 contenders, who are vying for recognition in a number of categories, including the coveted George Lucas Selects award, which is hand-picked by George Lucas himself. Fri, 8:30pm, Coruscant.

25th Anniversary Concert. Occasionally, local orchestras will throw a Star Wars piece into a public concert because they know it’s a sure-fire crowd-pleaser — but this is an opportunity to see a live concert entirely made up of Star Wars music. The Indianapolis Philharmonic Orchestra and the Circle City Chorus join for an incredible night of John Williams music that you won’t forget. Sat, 8:30pm, Coruscant.

Celebration II Costume Contest It wouldn’t be a fan convention without intricately and expertly crafted fan-made Star Wars costumes. See who’s the best of the best, as determined by celebrity judges including Episode II’s Costume Supervisor, Trisha Biggar. Sun, 1:30 pm, Coruscant.

Times and locations are subject to change; be sure to check out posted schedules the day of the event to confirm.

Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Issue #60

Mastering the Master

This week audiences around the world will see why exactly Yoda is referred to as the Master, but getting the tiny green alien to deliver the saber-swinging goods was a long, risky road to travel. It’s easy to write on paper that Yoda is an incredible swordsman, but realizing it on screen called for a yeoman’s effort from Industrial Light & Magic and Animation Director Rob Coleman.

In a movie filled with breakthroughs, Director George Lucas points to the computer-generated Yoda as one of the key ones. When he began work on Episode I, Lucas knew full well that the prequel trilogy would show a different side of Yoda than that seen in previous films.

“That was one of the constraints early on: I can’t do it with a puppet,” he says. “He’s got a big action sequence, and I can’t even get him to walk more than three feet. So, on The Phantom Menace, we started trying to develop digital characters. We had dinosaurs that could run through a real environment, but we’d never really done anything that could actually act as real actors and be believable.”

While Episode I featured a number of brand new digital characters — such as Sebulba, Watto and Jar Jar Binks — mastering the CG Yoda was still elusive. “Making a replica of an existing character we all knew was very hard, and quite frankly, we couldn’t pull it off in that movie. I had to go back to the puppet. I got one shot of him walking along, but basically we couldn’t do it,” says Lucas.

With the advancements in technology and artistry since Episode I, ILM tried again for Episode II. “Obviously, if I couldn’t pull it off, I was dead. I could have done it without Yoda, but the whole point was Yoda. He is in the whole climax of the movie. And fortunately, we got to the point where it looked really good,” says Lucas.

Once cameras began rolling during Episode II’s principal photography, CG Yoda was still in the R&D stage, but Lucas had faith in Coleman’s team. “We were close enough when we shot the movie that I made that commitment. When we shot the movie, we didn’t actually have Yoda accomplished at that point. It wasn’t until after that we saw a Yoda that worked,” he says.

“It was five years of artistry and development. The breakthrough was after we finished shooting. It was about a little over a year ago. Frank Oz was very excited about not having to hold his hand up a heavy puppet and be in a hole in the floor.”

Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Thursday, August 09, 2001
Issue #41

Creating a Performance

Moving throughout the facility from tables covered with concepts on paper, to computer terminal screens, to the seats of ILM’s screening theater, Animation Director Rob Coleman and Visual Effects Supervisors John Knoll and Pablo Helman consult with the director, gathering feedback for their teams comprised of dozens of artists working on hundreds of shots at a time at various stages of completion.

With digital tools created for The Phantom Menace and perfected in subsequent ground-breaking ILM projects, Lucas and the ILM team’s focus is not on technology, but on getting the best possible performance from their creations, be they locations, ships, creatures or characters. Attention to detail beyond the focal point of the action can be key to making the audience believe in the fantasy being presented. The slight skid of a ship turning a corner, the shadows cast by digitally created furniture, the short attention span of a walnut-sized-brained monster and the growing discomfort of a guard as tension builds in the room are all observed through preliminary positioning, refinement of articulation and eventually final rendering critiqued on a theatrical-sized screen.

Coleman, who jokingly claims that he has the longest list of items to review because he “has the most interesting stuff”, delights in finalizing an animated performance and passing it off to the group responsible for the automated simulation of real-world physics including movement of armor, material, wings and floppy ears.

“Excellent. I’ll send that off to the clothing team,” smiles Coleman in what has become a familiar refrain.

Thursday, August 23, 2001
Issue #42

Artoo’s Handiwork

“We do get to see Artoo do a few new things in this movie,” said Bies, describing the astromech’s role in Attack of the Clones. Artoo will also be seen reprising some old favorites from his performance repertoire, including projecting holograms and interfacing with computer ports. “I don’t think he did that in Episode I,” says Bies of the latter. “The props people made up a new computer armlet with a socket that he plugs into on Amidala’s ship. That was fun to do, because we had never done it before. I mean, I had never personally been involved with something like that.”

Someone on set did have experience with the potentially difficult task. “Tony Daniels (C-3PO) was on the set the day we were shooting that, and he mentioned that when they did it way back in 1976 they had such a problem with the arm coming down and constantly missing the socket. Since we knew of that history, we could not let it repeat itself. The machinist from the Prop Department made a system where the arm came right down and registered exactly spot-on. I just puppeteered it from behind, dropping it down, pushing it in and doing the turning. That was fun.”

Though Artoo did do some drink dispensing in Jabba’s sail barge in Return of the Jedi, we haven’t seen him dish out food until now. “We took one of his pincers from The Empire Strikes Back, and modified it so that he can grab some bread in this one. We also needed a holder for the soup bowls that he delivers to Anakin and Padmé. That was a brand new device that we never had before.”

The ever-resourceful droid is also slated to receive a number of computer-generated appendages that allow him to perform complicated tasks that would be too difficult and time-consuming to try to simulate practically.

Thursday, September 06, 2001
Issue #43

Episode II Book Report: Comics

“I’ve really always wanted to work with Obi-Wan, and this project’s giving me the chance to do that,” says Duursema. “I’ve always wanted to draw him in action. He has a lot more depth than I originally thought he did.”

Duursema has drawn several Star Wars titles for Dark Horse Comics, including the “Twilight” and “Darkness” story-arcs in the ongoing Star Wars series, and the Darth Maul four-part limited series.

“When I draw a character like Quinlan Vos, it’s very easy to understand him, since he’s coming out of my head, and [writer] John Ostrander’s head. With someone like Anakin Skywalker, he has to look and act like Hayden Christensen. He’s a character that’s evolving throughout the whole story. You saw him as a little boy in Episode I, and he had a sweetness to him along with a determination. He still has that determination, and he’s pretty stubborn; he knows what he wants, and he goes after it.”

To properly capture the likenesses and elements from Episode II, Lucasfilm provides Duursema with as much reference as possible — these include stills directly from the movie and reference studio photographs of the subject from all angles. “There’s not as much reference as I would like to have, but I know it’s difficult to get certain things. The CGI stuff is not available, so a lot of the stuff I have to make up, as far as the backgrounds on Coruscant or Theed go. Those are things I have to figure out.”

Duursema points to many things in Episode II that she’s excited to work on. “I think going back to Tatooine is really exciting, because I’ve always wanted to go there. That, and the new bounty hunters — you just can’t see enough of them. I love Zam Wesell and I love Jango Fett. He is extremely cool. They picked someone who has a great look – a battle-scarred angry brooding kind of guy. You really believe he’s a bounty hunter. He’s nasty.”

Dark Horse Comics’ adaptation of Episode II will be available around the time of the film’s release next year.

Thursday, September 20, 2001
Issue #44

Zam Wesell Speaks
By Pablo Hidalgo

In many respects, Leeanna Walsman was a typical 21-year old when she visited California earlier this month — catching the sights, the sounds, and a Madonna concert for good measure. Unlike most 21-year olds, though, Walsman was Stateside on bounty hunting business — she plays bounty hunter Zam Wesell in Episode II.

Though Walsman finished principal photography over a year ago down in Fox Studios Australia, she again donned the armor, guns and lycra and stepped into character for pick-up shots supervised by ILM. “It’s been surreal,” she confides. “I was like, ‘Dude… I don’t even know if I look completely different. What’s happening? What do you mean you’ve got to shoot still. It’s been a year!’ But it wasn’t hard, because everyone here is so friendly and so nice. You never feel like you’ve disappeared, even if you haven’t heard from them for ages. You get here, and it’s like you’re back with family.”

Walsman shot a couple of scenes on blue-filled environments. While in Australia, she shared screen time with Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor. This time, she performed solo. “For the pick ups, it was me and Jango’s head-on-a-stick,” she laughs. “That’s the first time I did it without a person. When I was in Sydney, it was always with Hayden, or Ewan and Hayden. I’m a huge fan of Ewan McGregor, so that was a bit nerve-wracking. Hayden’s new on the scene. He’s a great guy; I really like him.”

In Star Wars, bounty hunters are tight-lipped, and Zam is no exception. But despite her laconic nature, Walsman had to stop into Skywalker Sound in Northern California for looping duty. “Maybe some lines may not have been picked up properly in the filming process, so you redo your lines without being shot on camera. It’s purely vocal. You might put in grunts and groans, or your mouth might have moved [on camera] at a certain point and you didn’t hear anything, so you might put in a breath. There’s a lot running and a lot of grunting and a lot of groaning. Which is always a bit funny — me standing in a room with a microphone, and George Lucas saying ‘okay, now sound like you’re in pain.’ Urgghhhh!”

As for what the future holds, the actress said she’s really not prepared for any fallout from her role. After given a peek at artist Jan Duursema’s artwork of Zam Wesell in the upcoming Attack of the Clones comics adaptation, it seemed a bit more real for Walsman. Or at least, a bit more surreal. “That’s so cool. That’s like, you know, the old school cool,” she says.

Thursday, October 04, 2001
Issue #45

Following Father’s Footsteps

It came as a surprise to several crewmembers in Australia when a bright teenager carrying sound equipment would introduce himself as Ben Burtt. This is Benjamin A. Burtt, son of Episode II’s editor and sound designer, Benjamin P. Burtt. (“We refer to my son as ‘Benny’ to distinguish him from me and my father. In fact we are in a line of nine Ben Burtts, all the way from 1602,” says the elder Burtt). When Benjamin returned to high school last fall, he was able to boast about being involved in Episode II during his summer vacation.

“At first, people didn’t know,” recalls the younger Burtt. “When I started to record, people would come up to me and ask what I was doing. I’d say, ‘oh, I’m recording things for my dad.’ They’ll say, ‘oh, who is your dad?’ And I’ll say, ‘He’s editing right now, but he does sound design.’ I met a lot of people this way.”

In between his 10th and 11th year of high school, Benjamin accompanied the production crew to Fox Studios Australia, gathering sounds with his father’s DAT recorder which will later be blended, mixed and tweaked in post-production. “I came across a lot of good things. I recorded all the motors in the R2-D2s and C-3POs. You know when you open doors, and the air pressure is different so it makes this weird little howling? My dad was working on a scene where there’s this city that’s always in a stormy area. That can be used there.”

The rich diversity of the far-away galaxy gave Burtt the freedom to record almost anything. “There’s also an air drill that makes a bzzzt sound, so we can use that. My dad said that we can probably use it for Zam Wesell’s speeder. It’s a lot of fun. When you think about Star Wars, almost any sound can be used because there’s so many different things: droids, aliens, rocketships, engines of all sorts.”

Benjamin also sat in with his father in the editing suite as the senior Ben Burtt began cutting takes and assembling the movie. While gathering sounds was definitely a fun venture, Benjamin isn’t quite as sold on editing. “You have to watch the scenes over and over again — I probably wouldn’t be able to do that because I’ve seen the same thing over and over,” he says. He credits his father for not only having a sound designer’s ear, but an editor’s eye. “I’d probably say, ‘oh, that looks good,’ but he notices things that you wouldn’t notice. There’s one scene where there’s an explosion and these guys go flying. What’s really funny is that one guy is anticipating it — he’s ready for the explosion. He’s halfway through his flip before the actual explosion went off. He notices these things.”

Did the unique job-shadowing opportunity give him insights into his future career path? The young Burtt still has a lot of time to decide. “I might want to do sound design when I grow up; I don’t know… I want to be a professional baseball player.”

Thursday, October 18, 2001
Issue #46

Mighty Artist: Brandon McKinney

“There are anywhere from 120 to 150 illustrations in each book,” says McKinney. “For Episode II, I’ve roughed out 150 or so, and we’re going to use about 130 of them. We had to pull some because of how small the book is going to be. I’m just inking those up right now, so I’m just a couple of weeks from finishing.”

Being based in the Bay Area is a boon for McKinney, who visits Skywalker Ranch on a weekly basis, putting him in the heart of Episode II’s production. “It’s a privilege,” he says. “If I lived out on the east coast, I wouldn’t get to be here and see the new stuff come rolling in, and see it all get put together, and that’s really exciting. And I can brag to my friends that I got to go to the Ranch today.”

McKinney joins the ranks of such notable artist as Dark Horse’s Jan Duursema in adapting the entire story of Episode II into artwork. For a movie still in the making, this calls upon an artist’s flexibility and imagination to manage the often-incomplete information on the evolving subject matter.

“For this book, I started working at the end of July. I first watched a slideshow presentation of a synopsis of the story. I got to read one of the versions of the script, and Lucasfilm gave me access to images for reference,” says McKinney. “It’s tricky, because if a shot is completely computer-generated — like the Gungan battle in Episode I — I just have to make up the final shot in my head. While I’m working on this book, ILM is putting the shots together. It’s basically me reading the script and getting reference for the characters and reference for the background, and putting them in the action that the story calls for. It’s kind of fun, because I feel like I get to do my own version of certain shots in the movie. It will be interesting to actually see the movie and see how close I got them.”

Being able to touch elements from the entire movie, McKinney quickly latched onto favorite characters and scenes. “Jango Fett is awesome,” he says, a sentiment shared by many artists working on adaptations. “I like doing characters with expressions, but Fett’s costume looks so cool, it’s one big expression in and of itself.”

An appreciation for the saga’s momentous events depicted in Episode II made some of the more difficult drawing tasks easier. McKinney points to one particular frame that stood out as a chore. “There’s thousands and thousands of tiny figures in this one picture. That’s a little nerve-wracking. The concept of the sequence is awesome; it’s just the rendering of it that gets a little tough.”

McKinney notes that the size of his illustrations — about two-by-three inches when printed — often presents a challenge when depicting scenes of immense scope. But for one of the largest sequences in Episode II, all the pieces fell into place. “I found it almost the easiest once I got all the reference. The trick was getting a hold of all that stuff. Once I got everything together, it was really fun. It’s an image I’ve always dreamed about seeing.”

Conversely, the printed size works in favor of the film’s more intimate scenes. “I really liked the personal stuff between Anakin Skywalker and Padmé; the beautifully lit scenes with beautiful backgroundsand beautiful settings. I liked going from the cool action stuff to the quieter, more emotional stuff.”

Thursday, November 01, 2001
Issue #47

Captain Typho Speaks

“It was just fabulous,” says Laga’aia of his performance. “There are rumors that George is actually writing a sequel just about my character, but I don’t want to get into that because of my confidentiality clause.”

Kidding aside, Laga’aia will be stepping back into a character he hasn’t played in months, and to get up to speed requires a quick crash-course in Typhoisms. “I had to request some dialogue of myself previously, because I have an American accent for Xena, and an American accent specifically for Captain Typho.”

Typho follows the tradition of his uncle, Captain Panaka, in guarding Padmé Amidala’s safety. “I quite like the character, because he’s this guardian that has Padmé’s ear, and her counsel, and he can say things and decree things that not too many people can get away with as far as her security is involved. Once you get the costume on, it’s a regal feeling, because the costume is so restrictive, you’re forced to pull yourself up and forced to hold yourself with the shoulders back.”

Despite the help the costume provides in performing the character, Laga’aia was looking forward to acting in regular street clothes when re-recording dialogue, especially since it meant he’d have his full vision back. “Because of the eyepatch, depth perception and hitting marks was just a nightmare on set. And you couldn’t actually explain to people asking you to run here and hit a mark that you’re looking out of one eye! So you try to hit a mark, and you realize ‘I have no idea how far that is from me.’ I hope that if my character comes back in Episode III, that just like Geordi in Star Trek, he can get a prosthetic or something.”

Star Wars has long been a family experience for Laga’aia. “I’ve been a fan of the movies since it first came out. I remember as a 13-year-old with my brother growing up in South Aukland, collecting drink bottles and taking them into the store to get refunds, and saving up enough money to catch the bus to see the movie. I sat down with my brother, watching the opening crawl, and I remember turning to him and saying, ‘Can you read quieter?’

“When Episode I came out in Sydney, I took my seven-year-old with his friends to the movies, gave him his popcorn and gave him his drink, sat them down, the opening titles came up, and I turned to my son and said, ‘Would you mind reading quieter?'”

What does Laga’aia think now that children and collectors around the world may someday re-enact scenes from Attack of the Clones with toys of his character? “I asked the licensing guys if it would be possible to get a microchip put into Captain Typho action figures that detects if there are feminine clothes being placed on it, so it explodes in the kid’s hands. Theysaid it could be dangerous.”

Thursday, November 15, 2001
Issue #48

Full Teaser Trailer

This trailer deals with choosing between emotion and duty, obligation and desire. Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala are at a crucial juncture in their lives, each devoted to an institution of greater purpose — for him, the Jedi order; for her, the Republic.

“In this one, we’re really focusing on one of the major themes of the film — the love story between Anakin and Padmé,” says Lucasfilm’s VP of Marketing, Jim Ward. “I think people will be able to see that it is a true love story set against a galaxy that’s in turmoil. It’s also set against the expectations that galaxy has of the roles and responsibilities of a Jedi and a Senator. Now these two are having to confront those realities while falling in love.”

The full teaser trailer follows quickly on the heels of “Mystery” and “Breathing,” two other previews of Episode II. Clocking in at over two minutes with new footage and new dialogue, the trailer represents the first real look at the Attack of the Clones story.

Thursday, November 29, 2001
Issue #49

The Halfway Milestone

“The tendency with other movies is to do the big push at the very end,” says Lucas. “It’s like a term paper — you study, you work, you do your research, and you keep putting off the actual writing until it’s almost too late. What we’ve done is gotten half the term paper already written way early, so we have plenty of time to do rewrites and finish the project and have the opportunity to make changes and improve it. It’s a great thing to be on schedule.”

Even with so much already behind them, Episode II is still months away from completion. “Everybody’s done just a really great job of staying on schedule and keeping their heads down and really working hard to meet these milestones,” says Lucas. Of the effects work specifically, he adds, “Because the most difficult part and the most complicated shots are yet to come.”

Thursday, Decembr, 13, 2001
Issue #50

It’s All in theTiming

In the pre-digital age, films were color timed using filters and photochemical methods. Now, digital color timing happens in real time and is computer-controlled. As Episode II is shot entirely on HD, and so much of the finished image undergoes the addition of visual effects, it seems fitting that Industrial Light & Magic is now taking on the role of a digital lab.

“The process of color timing is using a very extensive color manipulation and level luminance and gamma manipulation device that a colorist operates and manipulates the images in a way that generates a list that is memorized, and corresponds to a custom look for basically each shot or even regions within a shot,” says ILM’s HD Supervisor Fred Meyers. This list of variables, stored in computer memory, can then be applied to frames and assigned to shots, creating a specific palette for specific scenes.

“With this system any one of the millions of hues and levels in an image, including selective areas within an image, can be manipulated on a frame by frame basis. You can go at a very slow or fast speed through the picture and match things together or adjust levels in an iterative process. The changes are committed to memory in the system, and you can apply them to the entire reel or the entire movie, executing those changes in real time. It’s the same type of editing and flexibility that you have with the other post-production tools in editorial and in computer graphics. You see the changes right then and there.”

As testament to the flexibility of the system, outputted images from Episode II can be optimized for the medium it will appear on — whether output to film, digital projection, television broadcast or QuickTime.

“The same system was used to make a version of the trailer for the web that would exploit the qualities of the web delivery,” says Meyers. “The system creates a list of what gets optimized for each screen that it will ultimately appear on, and then it plays it out to that format. So we can work from a master file and create any number of versions.”

Welcome to the Homing Beacon Archives. The Official Newsletter of Star Wars.Com, no longer available. I have salvaged as much as I can but have only concentrated on the main part of the newsletter and not the peripheral stuff. I have used images where possible. Enjoy this blast from the past!

Thursday, March 22, 2001
Issue #31

Episode II Book Report: Incredible Cross Sections
After two weeks of studying the intricacies of Star Wars technology at Skywalker Ranch, artists Hans Jenssen and Richard Chasemore returned to England to begin cutting apart the amazing vehicles and vessels of Episode II. Their astoundingly detailed work showing exploded views of the mechanisms and innards of vehicles and locations has previously been seen in the Incredible Cross-Section series of books published by Dorling Kindersley.

To ensure accuracy, Jenssen and Chasemore went to the source of these designs. In the Episode II Art Department, the artists examined the concept art, concept models and animatics of the new vessels.

We watch the animatics of scenes that directly affect where a missile might be fired from on a ship or where something might blow up from, for example, explains Chasemore. In one scene, some shots tear through the floor of a vessel and bring it down. We need to look at it and see if theres some crucial piece of equipment that was taken out.

Weve had meetings with [Design Director] Doug Chiang, and the Animatics team has been very accessible to us. Theyve shown us a lot, says Jenssen.

Having illustrated designs from the classic trilogy and The Phantom Menace both artists have an appreciation for the evolution of Star Wars technology. The designs have definitely moved on, explains Chasemore. Theyre advanced compared to Episode I and theyre sort of backwardly-compatible with the first films.

Some of the ships are looking very much like those in A New Hope, says Jenssen. There are also some totally alien technologies to look forward to.

Of the new designs, both artists cite one in particular as their favorite. A bold piece of military engineering, this vehicle is well equipped at air and ground support. However, only one of the artists will get to work on it.

“I was the lucky one that got it,” says Jenssen. “Its the coolest looking ship. Its just covered in guns. Everywhere you look, theres a gun. Its just awesomely beweaponed.

Thursday, April 05, 2001
Issue #32

Episode II: Daniels & Ealing Studios
Anthony Daniels is a veteran of all four Star Wars movies, and is now returning to don the metallic (if not quite polished) form of C-3PO once again. He is part of the additional shooting currently underway in Ealing Studios in his native England. Daniels took time out from the busy two-week shoot to share his insights into the process.

“It’s been, all-in-all, deeply confusing,” says Daniels, echoing a sentiment often expressed by his on-screen persona. “I’ve walked so many miles down so many corridors and strange environments. Also, I’m confused as to where I am in the movie. I ask Artoo, but he never speaks.”

Adds Daniels, “Occasionally, I’ll shout at George [Lucas], asking where we are going, and he says, ‘See the movie.’ I said to him yesterday that I was going to have to go to the movie just to figure out what I was doing.”

Though said with a sly grin, such confusion is understandable given how few visual cues surround the actors. Every set-up includes areas of blue that will be replaced with the digital landmarks and environments that will complete the scene. “Blue used to be my favorite color,” says Daniels, “but I think I’ve overdosed on it.”

Ealing studios is a remarkably different environment than Fox Studios Australia. Down under, the studios were brand new, built to accommodate modern movie crews of impressive size. Ealing, in contrast, is the oldest British film studio, home to the Ealing comedies and the golden age of BBC television.

“Ealing is deeply charming in an old-fashioned, British way,” says Daniels. “It has so much history here. In the canteen, there are pictures up of Alec Guinness, and it’s kind of nice to think that the spirit of Obi-Wan is with us. Being here is like being on the set of a WWII movie. The food hasn’t changed much since WWII, unfortunately.”

Thursday, April 18, 2001
Issue #33

Episode II: Hang On!
Speeders earn their name in the Star Wars galaxy; vehicles move very quickly and few offer such common sense items as safety belts. After all, would a blazing chase through the forests of Endor be nearly as thrilling with a voice prompt constantly reminding Luke to buckle up?

Such lackadaisical safety standards, of course, are not true of the mechanized speeder props found on the set of Episode II. During last year’s production at Fox Studios Australia, practical effects supervisor Dave Young oversaw the land-locked but nonetheless mobile speeders in action.

“One particular speeder needed much more extreme movement and needed to move very quickly,” says Young. “It’s gimbal-mounted and has outriggers that come out to stabilize it. It weighs around about two tons and the speeder on top is about half a ton.” The devilishly sleek conveyance has built-in flame effects, and can complete a 180-degree barrel roll if needed.

Though the characters in the film won’t benefit from stunt and effects crews primarily concerned with their safety, at least the actors could. “Hayden Christensen was on it,” says Young. “He was doing all his own stunts on this speeder, which is not extraordinary because we had him up at a safe angle, sliding down to the end of the speeder. Then we’d flip the speeder up the other way and slide him right back down to the other end. He was doing all that stuff himself, which he wanted to do. We had stunt mats all around in case he fell off, but he was hanging on pretty well. It came down to how we drove it. This gimbal is totally controllable.”

Upon seeing its performance, producer Rick McCallum joked that he wanted the rig at the wrap party, so that cast and crew could test their mettle by riding two-and-a-half tons of bucking speeder.

Thursday, May 03, 2001
Issue #34

The worlds of Episode II will be filled with alien beings and creatures realized as computer generated creations by Industrial Light & Magic. Despite such a rich digital menagerie, there is still a place in the saga for animatronic and masked aliens. This is the domain of Jason Baird, Live Action Creature Effects Supervisor and his crew.

Though Baird would oversee the construction of several new exciting designs, the alien faces crafted for The Phantom Menace were essential for filling out crowded scenes. For large throngs of aliens — as well as for returning alien characters — Baird and his crew benefited from Episode I masks that were carefully archived by Lucasfilm.

“I don’t think the job would have been do-able if all of the stuff from Episode I hadn’t come down,” says Baird. “It was all in fantastic condition. That’s what we’ve been using for most of those big days with all the background creatures.”

For some of the returning prosthetic and mask effects specifically made for Episode I, Baird and his crew had to carefully cast new performers for the extra creature roles.

“We’d get different people in. If we see someone that we think will suit a character, we get them in and either run the prosthetics and fit the pieces on them. Or we get the creature head and try it on, mixing and matching to see who fits what. If we get a good match then we run with it.”

The appropriate fit can come from anywhere, often those already on the crew. “Zac Jensen is actually one of the guards of construction in Australia. We thought he was going to fit the Saesee Tiin prosthetic makeup. Once we tried the pieces on him, we realized he didn’t fit them that well. So we actually cast his brother Jesse as Saesee Tiin because he actually fits the makeup really well.”

Zac didn’t miss out, though, on his chance to be a Jedi. He was instead cast as a fearsome looking alien Jedi new to the Star Wars saga.

May 17, 2001
Issue #35

Taun We Speaks
By Pablo Hidalgo

The audio layers of Episode II are currently under construction as the film continues its post-production phase. This includes the re-recording of dialogue in a process commonly known as “looping.” Last week, actress Rena Owen stopped by Skywalker Ranch in Northern California to perform her character of Taun We once again, picking up where she left off when principal photography wrapped last year in Australia.

“It’s the first time I’ve been to Skywalker Ranch,” says Owen. “It was very exciting for me to be able to come out and visit. Here is where these things are birthed. I had a lot of fun. George Lucas was so easy to work with. You instantly feel very relaxed, and you just want to do your best for him.”

Owen has done plenty of voice-work in the past. Her distinctive timbre has been used to voice-over many documentaries. “It’s a blessing and a curse,” explains Owen. “Sometimes when I do accents, people still hear the distinctive voice. So, it can go against you. Most times it goes for you.”

Owen affected a soothing, mellow tone for her role as the alien Taun We, a character who will be brought to life as a computer-generated creation by Industrial Light & Magic. “I’m not sure how to describe it. She kind of flows, and talks the same way. The two operative words that George uses — he used them on set as well as in looping — was flowing and kind. They’re creatures of love and light. It’s good, as a person, to play that because you tap into that part of yourself. As an actor, when you’re playing those characters that are angst-ridden, it’s not much fun. Taun We’s a free-flowing creature. I’m kind of the opposite side. I’m out of my head all the time! I live in Los Angeles! I work in the film industry! I think that says it all,” laughs Owen.

To tap into an unrushed mindset, Owen turned to her upbringing. “Outside of work and professional situations, that’s very much me, because I’m a farm girl,” she says. “I grew up on a farm, and it’s very laid back, with an ordinary country family. When I’m not working, I’m very good at chilling out. You’ve got to balance the introvert and extrovert.”

Owen was not deterred by the fact that her face will not appear in Episode II. Only her voice and the energy of her performance will stay intact in her scenes. “There are a million actors in the world who’d love the opportunity to be in Star Wars,” says Owen. “It’s knowing that you’re part of history, part of the Star Wars phenomena, and the opportunity and the privilege of working with someone like George Lucas, to be able to sit there and watch how they work, watch them do their thing. That’s what it’s all about.”

Adds Owen, “I’ve always based my choices on not whether it’s one scene, three scenes, five scenes, voice, face or whatever. It’s the talent you’re working with.”

Thursday, May 31, 2001
Issue #36

When the task of creating a costume for Episode II’s teenaged Anakin Skywalker fell to Costume Designer Trisha Biggar (with the help of Concept Artists Iain McCaig and Dermot Power), there was already considerable precedent in the Star Wars universe to draw upon.

Their initial thought was to give him a costume that would mirror the one worn by Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan) in The Phantom Menace. “But we wanted to have a feel ofthe future to become, so we looked to aspects of Darth Vader’s costume,” recalled Biggar.

“He’s still a young man who’s just at the beginning of that journey,” Biggar explained. “George [Lucas] said ‘yes’ to using leather, just to give him a bit of an edge. We really took the shape of Darth Vader’s cloak and tried to steer that back to a Jedi style to create a simpler outline than the traditional Jedi cloak.”

“We ended up with something that could still definitely be Jedi with the hood,” she said, “but just with that vaguely familiar outline.”

Thursday, June 14, 2001
Issue #37

George Lucas is spending an increasing amount of time at Industrial Light & Magic as effects work for Episode II continues at full speed.

The decisions being made on a regular basis are iterations of scrutiny of greater and greater detail. What was a two-dimensional concept drawing must be given a third dimension. What was a background building must be given a floor plan. What was a standing crowd is now dozens of animated individuals each needing unique movements. What was just a sneering face now needs some of their computer generated hair swept in a different direction as they move.

These thousands of decisions must be made quickly in order to keep the film on schedule. One ILM artist, whose printed renderings were given a final approval, quietly wished to see them adorned withthered “OK” seen on many completed concept sketches.

“We’re moving too fast for stamps now,” smiled Lucas as he left the room for the next batch of creative consultations.

Thursday, June 28, 2001
Issue #38

Enthusiastic Star Wars fans were abuzz last week with the announcement of The Phantom Menace coming to DVD. (If this is the first you’re hearing about it, head here now.) Episode I Producer Rick McCallum is among those anticipating the release.

“People forget that the greatest thing about DVD is the quality,” says McCallum. “You have the ability to experience a quality presentation that most accurately reflects what we’ve made, much more so than the person who sees and hears the film in an average cinema, which is a tragedy. We don’t want to cut into that theater experience. All of us are working on getting theaters to give everyone the kind of quality picture and sound you can get on a DVD.”

Adds McCallum, “The average person just wants to see the movie, and other people want to go further, but that’s what makes DVD fantastic.” The Episode I DVD has over sixhours of additional material, including seven deleted scenes that had their visual effects work completed just for this release. “It’s painful to cut something out; it’s not done lightly,” says McCallum. “Now, you can see it in a different light. You have to make the decisions at the moment. Years later, you still think about if you should have left certainthings in.”

An all-new hour-long documentary entitled “The Beginning” promises an unblinking look into the making of The Phantom Menace, with unprecedented access into the inner workings of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic. “For too many years people have mythologized what they do, and the whole industry is shrouded in secrecy. You could only know what happened if you knew somebody. We want to get all the stories, all the pain — not the ‘oh it’s so nice to work with George and Rick’-syndrome. We want to show the pain we had in getting the picture out there, the problems we had, the challenges we faced, where we succeeded, where we didn’t succeed, and some of the things we had to cut out. I think that’s what I’m really excited about people seeing.”

Thursday, July 12, 2001
Issue #39

Laying Out Coruscant
Coruscant: the whole planet is one big city. That doesn’t mean, however, that the world is uniform in its design. In Episode II, moviegoers will get a whirlwind tour of several Coruscant locales, each of which requires careful planning and plotting.

Helping the Animatics Department piece together this exciting sequence is concept artist Robert Barnes. Though the bulk of Barnes’ work for Episode II has been sculpting conceptual models for aliens and creatures, he has contributed illustrations for key animatic scenes.

“There are different parts of the sequences that feature different architecture or obstacles, with different things that are going on,” explains Barnes. “It helps the animatics guys to have a sense of where these things happen spatially, particularly on Coruscant, where major design atmosphere changes happen.”

The work begins with Barnes examining the rough cut of the sequence, and from there, generating a map of locales. “I did the same sort of thing for Episode I,” explains Barnes. “I did the Podrace map and a schematic of the end battle.”

For Coruscant, Barnes broke down the sequence into distinct design zones. “These are where things change character, to give the idea that we’re really moving through a vast city. One of the zones is kind of an industrial warehouse zone that I did the environmental designs for, determining the look of the buildings and the color and lighting palette of a specific part of the city. It was a combination of drawings that were digitized and colorized. Once George [Lucas] agreed to the basic zones and general feel of each, Erik Tiemens and Ryan Church took over, doing full-blown color, architecture and atmospheric designs to be used both as matte paintnigs for animatics, and as the guide for final work done at ILM.”

Thursday, July 26, 2001
Issue #40

“I think we have less quantity, in terms of uniforms,” says Costume Designer Trish Biggar, describing the wardrobe of Episode II. “We don’t have groups or soldiers; in Episode I, we had big groups of Naboo soldiers and Royal Palace Guards. This episode, the costumes are very much more individual.”

Biggar describes Episode II as a more ‘civilian’ movie, with a closer look at the galaxy’s working class. “We’re going from different planets, so we have Coruscant street people, and it’s interesting because they come from all over. On Naboo, we’re seeing mostly people who were in and around the palace, and who are a very well dressed middle class: just regular people who live and work on Naboo.”

Padmé Amidala, who is no longer the elected queen of Naboo in Episode II, is also seeing a less institutionalized wardrobe. “She has many, many more costumes this time,” says Biggar. “Hard to believe, but yes. We’ll see her as more of a person, this time, and less as a figurehead of a nation. She has softer clothes, which are less formal. She’s also a little bit older, so she has some sexier clothes. It’s nice. I think she likes them.”