July 19, 2005
Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum (pictured above) loves a challenge. How do you make a two hour and 15 minute Star Wars epic—in this case, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith—look like it cost $200 million for half that amount? "And compete with anything else out there," he tells Digital Cinematography. "That's really the fun part of it, from my point of view."
McCallum has produced all three episodes of the more recent Star Wars trilogy with director/creator George Lucas. "We couldn't make films like these for this amount of money if we didn't have a system that's streamlined," he says. "That's the challenge, and it's something we do well." From concept to production, Lucasfilm has created a system that cuts costs, saves time and still leaves money at end of the process for pickups and marketing for the complicated, self-financed productions.
"Episode III was a remarkably smooth and really enjoyable production," McCallum says. "The initial round of principal photography lasted 55 days, which is standard for a Star Wars movie and far shorter than most major movies. That's a testament to George and the professionalism of our cast and crew. We were very fortunate, because everything went off without a hitch."
The process of creating Episode III began in June 2001—about a year before its predecessor, Episode II—Attack of the Clones, was even in theaters. That's when Lucas met with McCallum and a small group of concept designers for the first time. "George came in and gave us, truly, the barest outline of the story. In this case, [it was] just 'Anakin turns to the dark side,'" says McCallum. "The beginning was my favorite part of the process. Since we started as George was still writing the script, anything the art department drew or imagined could possibly have been in the movie. George was open to everything. Nothing was set in stone."
After only about a month's work on concept design, another very important group was added: a team of four or five animatic designers, led by Previsualization Supervisor Dan Gregoire. The young team ("The minute you turn 17, you can work with us, as long as you have a tent and a sleeping bag," jokes McCallum) met with Lucas three times a week to create individual animatic sequences from which the film was developed. "At lunch, after we'd had our concept design meetings, he'd go up with a tuna fish sandwich and spend about three hours with the sequences, going through all the shots that he wanted," says the producer.
"Based on our concept work, the guys would build, say, a small model of what Anakin's ship would look like. We'd make a little maquette of it, start to color it, and then they would refine it as a wireframe model." The team generated 15 to 20 shots each day, working in two shifts and delivering the completed segments later that day or the next morning. "It was really no different than for live action in terms of production, except that [Lucas] was working with four or five kids instead of sitting there with 150-200 crew members. It's virtual filmmaking."
Once he had his pieces, Lucas went to the basement level of the office to join co-editor (and Academy Award-winning sound designer) Ben Burtt, who edited the segments into individual sequences. "George walked through the sequence with Ben, along with one concept designer and the head of the animatics group. While he was cutting, he'd say, 'Look, I really feel like I need a closeup here, and we need a wide shot here.' Then, either that night or the next day, the guys would work on them and we would get another 20 shots; Ben would cut them together."
The process continued until, about six months prior to start of shooting, Burtt had assembled, essentially, a "locked picture"—a refined cut of the film composed solely of animatics. That edit, and the process in general, was what made the process so streamlined. "It wasn't so much about saving time, because you were putting the work in up front," says McCallum. "But the economic savings—the cost efficiency of being able to walk onto the set the first day with 60 to 70 minutes of film cut together that you could show the actors and the crew—made the whole system incredibly efficient."
A prime example is the film's ambitious opening sequence, a 16-minute space battle. "That sequence is totally visual, with maybe 10 or 20 lines of dialogue. That first 16 minutes is composed of 350 to 400 shots—[close to] the average of a typical feature film. There's probably about 80 ships in the sequence. They all had to be different, they all had to be designed, and they all had to be put into the computer." The sequenced animatics were edited together, shot by shot, with lens focal lengths, camera movements and other aspects already configured into the images by Lucas during the design of each shot.
The advantage in cost savings came once the director and actors reached the set to shoot the sequence. "If we had been shooting using the traditional method, I would have been sitting down to schedule the scene, budgeting it; for a 16-minute sequence with two guys in a plane, figuring two and a half to three pages of dialogue a day, I'd schedule that for five days. Well, we couldn't spend five days on that," says McCallum.
But by having the completed sequence in animatic form, Lucas cut his shooting time dramatically. "Normally you'd be getting coverage from every angle, leaving the decision-making until further down the line when you're editing. In our case, George had already made those decisions and just shot what he knew he needed. From having already edited in the animatic stage, he knew he'd need eight shots looking at the actors from the side, ten shots with both of them together, etc. You don't have to cover yourself. As a result, we shot that whole 16-minute sequence in one day. And we did it with five or six guys, costing us maybe $10,000 a week instead of $250,000 a day."
The planning executed during the animatics stage also enabled great savings in set design and construction. Having arrived at Fox's Sydney, Australia, studios in December 2002, McCallum set up shop for the 55-day shoot that began on June 30, 2003. Production Designer Gavin Bocquet was in charge of designing and constructing the 72 physical sets
. Some were complete unto themselves, while others had to blend seamlessly with digital effects that would be created months later by Industrial Light + Magic artists.
While the sets were being built in Australia, sequences were completed and updated in California and sent to McCallum and crew over the Internet. "George would call us up and say, 'Look, don't build the right side of the hallway, because I'm just going to be shooting a Steadicam shot behind Padmé as she leaves her bedroom, so we don't need to build that other wall.' That was the reason we could make a movie like this for $115 million," he says. "And we made use of the time zones—we got twice as much work done, with George and his staff getting in a full day's work in California, and us in Australia—within each calendar day."
Lucas accomplished as many as 49 setups per day on Episode III, utilizing upwards of 10 sets per stage, with two to three moves per day, according to McCallum. "The great thing about working in HD is that we had 42-inch plasma monitors on set, so George could see immediately if he'd gotten the shot or not. We didn't have to wait a day for film dailies. We had our editor, Roger Barton, at the studio, who would cut the day's sequence together [to] see if it worked. He could say to George, 'You know, I put this together, and I think you need a closeup of her hand coming in.' We would shoot it right then and there. That meant we could strike that set at 2 o'clock and move on to the next setup."
The plasma monitors also enabled the actors, many of whom found it difficult to work on greenscreen stages, to visualize what was to be taking place during the shot. "We showed them the animatic for the scene, and they could see when and where and why they would need to move an arm or react in a particular way. It was incredibly useful."
Revenge of the Sith presented more than a few logistical hurdles for the cinematographer and his team. "What was unusual about Episode III, surprisingly enough, is not that we were shooting high-definition digital photography; it was the colossal number of effects shots that we were dealing with, the number of virtual sets, and stages that were either partially or totally greenscreen or bluescreen. That was very difficult."
On each stage, Lucas kept four Sony HDC-F950 HDCAMs in action, recording to Sony SRW-5000 4:4:4 HD recorders (Lucasfilm has since moved on to Sony's SRW1 recorder)—all of which moved from stage to stage in a matter of only 15 or 20 minutes. The production team and Cinematographer David Tattersall, BSC, used Fujinon E Series digital cinema-style lenses to capture footage. Fujinon HAe3x5 (5-15mm) and HAe10x10 (10-100mm) E Series zooms were used in conjunction with E Series prime lenses (with nine fixed focal length lenses on the set) and C Series HAc13x4.5B-10 (4.5-59mm) lenses.
The lenses, McCallum explains, eliminated back focus and other visual aberrations. "We needed significant focal length range and quality and the wide end of the zoom to bring George's vision to life for Revenge of the Sith. Before these two lenses [HAe3x5 and HA310x10], nothing was available to meet our needs. With them, we reduced lens changes by more than 50 percent, which made the production tremendously more efficient."
McCallum adds, "We're already on our fourth generation of digital lenses. There's been more lens technology development in the last six years than there's been in the last 30. It's amazing."
Revenge of the Sith has more than 2,200 visual effects shots, surpassing the records of the previous Star Wars movies. "There are some shots with 50 or 60 different elements, most of which most people will never even realize are effects," says McCallum.
Lucas called on two of ILM's visual effects supervisors, John Knoll and Roger Guyett, to share the enormous effects load, each taking primary responsibility for specific action sequences and effect types that occur throughout the movie. Rob Coleman returned as animation director, reprising his role from The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.
Among the eye-popping shots supervised by Knoll—who has more than a decade of experience working on visual effects for Star Wars films and who worked closely with Lucas during the preproduction and first unit photography phases—is Revenge of the Sith's epic opening battle sequence. The scene is unique among the numerous battles depicted in the Star Wars movies because it is set not in outer space but in the upper regions of Coruscant's atmosphere. "Setting it there gave us the opportunity to create smoke trails, fires and other pyrotechnics that would not exist in the vacuum of outer space," Knoll says.
Many of Revenge of the Sith's most memorable characters were created entirely by artists at ILM. Coleman supervised 90 minutes of animation, more than any previous Star Wars film. Coleman points to the CG rendering of Jedi Master Yoda as perhaps the animation department's most significant achievement. "We created a digital Yoda for Attack of the Clones, but it was all very new for us at the time," says Coleman. "For this film, Yoda has become a full-fledged supporting character, with more screen time and dialogue. It was a lot of fun to explore the next level of acting with him." Coleman notes that his team also made important physical advances with the character. "This time around, Yoda's skin is much more realistic looking," he explains.
"Also, the rendering of his clothing is more sophisticated."
McCallum says manufacturers know—as do HD pioneers such as Lucas, James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez—that technology has to step forward if filmmakers expect to keep their audiences in theaters. "What we're all going for now is hyper-realism—not only creating effects that are incredibly real for the audience but presenting it in a way, such as with digital cinema, that shows that you respect your audience," he says.
"The average guy knows that 10 weeks after a movie opens, he can go down to Wal-Mart and get a DVD of the film for less than it cost him to take himself and his girlfriend to see it in the theater. If we don't get our act together and use the resources and technology skillfully to make that experience that much better for the average paying person, we'll lose our audience."
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