THE PHANTOM MENACE Pee eee eRe RR eee eee ee ee Jo A Sea R eee eee eee eee eee eee eee)FPT $39.95 $56.00 in Canada L 1977, George Lucas brought Star Wars to the big screen—and made science-fiction cinema history. Now, more than twenty years later, the visionary writer-director, his brilliant crew of special-effects wizards, and an exciting cast of talented stars have united to make the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated Episode I of the Star Wars epic. Star Wars: The Making of Episode I is your exclusive entrée to the behind-the-scenes world where the wonders of the newest chapter in the Star Wars saga are brought to life by masters of movie-making magic. Join authors Laurent Bouzereau and Jody Duncan for a tour de Force through every fascinating facet of production on the dream project of the decade: ¢ A series of exclusive interviews with George Lucas as he discusses the genesis of the Star Wars story, from themes to scenes to dialogue The development of such classic characters as young Jedi student Obi-Wan Kenobi and R2- D2— plus intriguing newcomers Anakin Skywalker, Qui-Gon Jinn, Queen Amidala, and Jar Jar Binks * The creation of new state-of-the-art creatures and special effects by the legendary Industrial Light 8 Magic team ¢ Pre-production: from storyboarding, set- building, and model-making to costume design and the casting of pivotal roles + Post-production: including editing, scoring, and combining computer generated effects with live-action footage ¢ Shooting in England, Italy, and Tunisia, with stars Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman Lavishly illustrated throughout with hundreds of drawings and photographs, Star Wars: The Making of Episode I is the ultimate companion volume for fans of the film that launches the thrilling next phase in this exciting saga.STAR. WARSTHE EPISODE | TITLES FROM DEL REY BOOKs STAR Wars: EPIsopE 1 Toe Poantom Menace BY TERRY BROOKS Star Wars: Eptsope 1 THe Paantom Menace ILLUSTAATED SCREENPLAY BY GeorGe LUCAS Star Wars: The Making of Episope 1 THe Paantom Menace BY LAURENT BOUZEREAU AND Jopy DUNCAN Star Wars: The Art of EpIsope 1 THe Paantom Menace TEXT BY JONATHAN BRESMAN=» 1 AR. WARS THE HONING OF ERC ate PHAN | Gam MENAGE LAURENT BOUZEREAU AND JODY DUNCAN BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP GS NEw YORKA Del Rey® Book Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group Copyright © 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™, All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization. All rights reserved under International and Pan: American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. www.starwars.com www.randomhouse.com/delrey/ Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-90347 ISBN 0-345-43111-1 Cover and interior photos by Keith Hamshere, Giles Keyte, and Jonathan Fisher Interior design by Michaelis/Carpelis Design Assoc. Inc, Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition: May 1999 109 8 7AGwse4 3 2. 1TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction xi Sl “I had to develop an entire world.” 3 (i | “I guess I’m back.” 12) : “I could do whatever I wanted.” 105 a Credits 151Acknowledgments We couldn’t have done this book without the generous collaboration of George Lucas, Rick McCallum, and the entire cast and crew of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. Our gratitude to the following who also made this book possible (in alphabetical order): At Lucasfilm: Matthew Azeveda, Jane Bay, Mark Becker, Chris Butler, Scott Carter, Jeanne Cole, Cara Evangelista, Justin Graham, Lynne Hale, Ardees Jundis, Allan Kausch, Halina Krukowski, Gillian Libbert, Anne Merrifield, Tina Mills, Rachel Milstein, Janet Nielsen, Howard Roffman, Karen Rose, Sue Rostoni, Jon Shenk, Janet Talamantes, Blake Tucker, Jim Ward, Patty Weichel, Lucy Wilson. At ILM: Fay David, Christine Owens, Ellen Pasternack, Nagisa Yamamoto. At Ballantine Books: Min Choi, Fred Dodnick, Alexandra Krijgsman, Cathy Repetti, Dave Stevenson; and Sylvain Michaelis of Michaelis/Carpelis Design Associates, Inc. And: Kelly Bush, Kate Campbell, Janey Richardson. In addition, Laurent Bouzereau wishes to thank his parents, Daniel and Micheline; his sisters, Cécile and Géraldine; Valérie Young; Colleen Benn; Marty Cohen; and his agent, Kay McCauley. Jody Duncan extends her love and gratitude to Caitlin Shannon and Larry Deckel.STAR. WARS‘Sixteen years after the welease of the last Star Wars nstallment, writer/director George Lucas delivered the long-promised Episode I The Phantom Menace. Introduction “It's been a long time comin’,” as the song goes. For sixteen years, ever since the release of Return of the Jedi, the final feature in the Star Wars trilogy, the world had waited for the promised prequel episodes that would explain how it all began. Occasionally, rumors would spread among fans and within the media: “Finally, there is a script.” “Casting has begun.” But such rumors would quickly dead-end, and the long, long wait would continue. The audience’s appetite for the new films were only whetted by the release of Star Wars Special Edition in 1997, the twen- tieth anniversary of a film that had become as much a part of American culture as any in history. Writer/director George Lucas’s clas- sic tale of good versus evil, set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” sparked a renaissance of the science fiction movie genre and revolutionized visual effects tech- nology. An unprecedented amount of mer- chandise was generated. Books and maga- zines devoted to Star Wars were published. Acting careers were made. An empire called Lucasfilm was built, as was the venerable Industrial Light & Magic. Skywalker Ranch grew out of the rolling green hills of Marin County. And George Lucas became a bona fide icon before reaching his thirty-fifth birthday. During the development of the original Star Wars, Lucas had realized that the story he had in mind was too broad, too sweeping for a single movie; and so he split the story line into a series of movies, deciding to begin with the fourth episode, Star Wars: A New Hope, and hoping that the film would be successful enough to warrant the making of the following chapters. Smart money said that it would not: Lucas was a young direc- tor, and the movie itself was a throwback to a style and subject matter that had long gone out of fashion. Nobody, not even Lucas himself, suspected that Star Wars would be a phenomenon. But a phenomenon it was. Star Wars fever was only heightened with the extraor- dinarily successful releases of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983. Fourteen years later, the overwhelm- ing response to the Special Editions of all three films by a whole new generation of moviegoers proved that Lucas’s space opera was as timely and relevant in the late nineties as it had been in the seventies and eighties. We wanted more. Finally, we're getting it. For nearly five years, Lucas and producer Rick McCallum worked together to bring the long-awaited xiEpisode I to the screen, along with a dedi- cated crew of artists, designers, actors, cam- era operators, creature creators, visual effects artists, editors, sound designers, cos- ume designers, and others—some of whom had seen Star Wars as small children; a few of whom had started their careers on that film, and were only too happy to return to the saga. Quietly, secretly, Lucas devoted five days each week to writing, while Rick McCallum raveled the world in search of locations. Soon, concept artists were brought on, set- ting up a small art department in the Victorian main house at Skywalker Ranch. As he months rolled on, McCallum attended to other production tasks: securing movie stu- dio space outside London; hiring department heads; getting a casting director on board; initiating research and development at Industrial Light & Magic; budgeting; sched- uling; securing locations. By the time shooting began in the sum- mer of 1997, the word was out—the new Star Wars movie was, at last, in production. A sixty-five-day principal photography effort in England was followed by another two years of postproduction work: editing, sound, scoring, and the completion of nine- teen hundred visual effects shots—by far the greatest number of effects shots ever gener- ated for a film. xii As the postproduction period neared its end, stories about the production began to appear in mainstream media and in fan- based publications such as Star Wars Insider. And when the first trailer for Episode I began to make its appearance, thousands paid full- price admission—only to leave after the two-minute trailer had run. That level of excitement was understandable. This was the new installment of the Star Wars saga, and, in the words of one of its characters, it promised to be “so wizard”! What follows is the story of how Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace made the journey from inside the mind of George Lucas to a local movie theater... Lucas on the set in Tunisia summer 1997,STAR. WARSage: A pre- om painting of the lace at Theed by rector Doug Chiang. le I would mark ucas's first stint camera since he ar Wars more than ago. "T had to develop an entire world." n the morning of November 1, 1994, a father, a family man, took his children to school and drove to his office to begin his day’s work. Thousands of fathers, no doubt, did the same. What made this seem- ingly innocuous event remarkable was that the man was George Lucas, and his day's work was to begin writing the screenplay for Star Wars Episode I, the much anticipated first chapter in the Star Wars saga. Never before had an audience been left waiting so long and so fervently for a film, the promise of which had been in the air ever since Star Wars was released in 1977. Designated as “Episode IV,” and reported to be the first act of a planned trilogy, the phe- nomenally successful Star Wars had hinted at the existence—at least in the filmmaker’s mind—of Episodes I, II, III, V, and VI. The last two chapters of the original trilogy had been delivered: The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983. But then, for more than a decade, there was only the occasional rumor as to when the first three episodes of the saga might go into production; and for the core audience of the original trilogy, there was only the wait- ing. Those who had been children when the Star Wars phenomenon broke grew into adulthood; those who had been young adults eased into middle age. Lucas had known the basic story lines for episodes I, II, and III ever since he’d sat down to pen the original Star Wars screen- play—a script of such epic scale, he’d had to subdivide the story into three movies. Written in outline form only, the first three chapters of that saga were designed to set up the conflicts, the characters, and the dra- matic action of the already produced movies. “The story for the three new films was meant to be the backstory of the other films,” Lucas commented. “That backstory was sketched out in a rudimentary fashion when I wrote the first trilogy, and there were certainthings I knew even then. I knew, for exam- ple, that there was a character named Anakin Skywalker who grew up on a small planet, had special skills, and was found by the Jedi. I knew where everybody came from, who they were, and how they got to be what they were. A lot of the story points were there. But the actual scenes and many of the char- acters were not.” Lucas had multiple companies to run and limited time to devote to writing. It would take him two years to flesh out Episode I’s narrative—the same length of time it had taken for him to produce the screenplay for Star Wars. “It takes me a long time to write screenplays,” Lucas admitted. “In writing Episode I, I spent a lot of the time doing research. I had to develop an entire world. I had to make a lot of decisions about things that would affect the next two movies, as well as this movie. Everything had to be laid out in this script so that the next two scripts would follow as they should. I also had to play this script against the three movies that had already been made, making sure everything was consistent and that I hadn’t forgotten anything. There was a tremendous amount of minutiae in these movies that I had to consider.” Ironically, the man who foresaw, perhaps before anyone else, the importance of com- puter technology in filmmaking, wrote this script—as he had all of his others — in pen- cil, in a notebook binder filled with lined Paper. And slowly, the handwritten story began to take on a definitive shape ... Turmoil has begun to disrupt the once stable Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to the outlying star systems is in dispute, and the powerful and greedy Trade Federation hopes to resolve the matter by sheer force and intimidation. A blockade of battleships has put a stranglehold on the small, peaceful planet of Naboo; yet its ruler —Queen Amidala—refuses to comply with the Trade Federation’s demands. Two dedi, Qui-Gon Jinn and his appren- tice Obi-Wan Kenobi, are sent by the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic to settle this conflict diplomatically before tensions escalate. The Jedi arrive, expecting a simple Lucas would devote five years to the making of Episode I.-some years before ents of Star Wars, Ts story involves teft to right) a young Kenobi (Ewan ), his Jedi Master Jinn (Liam ). and their mission end the planet Naboo young ruler, Queen 2 (Natalie Portman). negotiation with the Trade Federation viceroys. But there are darker motives at work. The Trade Federation is being con- trolled by a shadowy figure, seen only via hologram—Lord Darth Sidious. Upon learn- ing that the Jedi have become involved, Sidious orders Viceroy Nute Gunray to kill the two ambassadors and begin the invasion of Naboo. The Jedi Knights barely escape the Trade Federation battleship, stowing away on landing ships that take them to the plan- et’s surface just as the invasion begins. With enemy forces on their heels, the Jedi make the forced acquaintance of one Jar Jar Binks, a Gungan whose amphibious species lives underwater and in isolation from the land-dwelling people of Naboo. Jar Jar leads the Jedi to the Gungan underwater city of Otoh Gunga, where Qui-Gon intends to solicit help for the people of Naboo. But the Gungans, led by Boss Nass, refuse to lend aid against the invading Trade Federation. With an outcast Jar Jar, the Jedi leave Otoh Gunga by way of submarine, encountering underwater sea monsters as they traverse the planet's watery core. Once in Theed, the seat of Naboo’s gov- ernment, Qui-Gon convinces Queen Amidala to plead her case before the Galactic Senate in Coruscant. The Jedi, Jar Jar, the Queen’s handmaidens, military figure Captain Panaka, and their pilot Ric Olié flee the planet aboard the Queen’s private transport. But damage to the Queen’s ship during the escape necessitates a landing for repairs on Tatooine. There, Qui-Gon meets a young slave boy named Anakin Skywalker—a boy with whom the Force is unusually strong. A bet with the boy’s owner, Watto, and Anakin’s winning of a Podrace provides Qui- Gon with the parts he needs to repair the ship, and earns the boy his freedom. Recognizing the child’s extraordinary gifts, his mother—Shmi—allows Anakin to leave Tatooine with Qui-Gon, who believes the boy is “the chosen one” who will bring balance to the Force. The entourage arrives in the Republiccapital of Coruscant, where Queen Amidala confers with the Naboo senator Palpatine, and then entreats the senate to stop the Trade Federation’s aggressive actions. But due to partisan squabbles among the sena- tors, the Republic does not come to Naboo’s aid, and the young Queen determines that she must return to her planet—now occu- pied by the Trade Federation army—and fight the invaders on her own. Qui-Gon’s case is also lost: having presented Anakin to the Jedi Council and asked permission to train him as a Jedi, Qui-Gon is denied by the council members, who sense a dark, trou- bling side to the boy. Upon their return to Naboo, the Queen and the Jedi enlist the help of the Gungans to fight the Trade Federation’s droid army. Though outnumbered and outgunned, the Gungan resistance engages the army in a massive ground battle. When Anakin pene- trates the nerve center of a Trade Federation battleship in a starfighter, the droids are dis- engaged en masse, and the Trade Federation forces are defeated. But with Qui-Gon killed in a lightsaber Among the characters intro- duced in the new film are (clockwise from top left) the Gungan Jar Jar Binks; Shmi Skywalker (Pernilla August); and her son, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd). Ian McDiarmid, whe had donned age makeup to play the role of the elderly Palpatine in the original saga, returned to portray the character in his younger incarnation. | |Sc lightsaber duel Jedi and the d Darth Maul, duel with Darth Sidious’s evil apprentice, Darth Maul, the victory is a bittersweet one for Obi-Wan. Fulfilling his promise to his slain teacher, Obi-Wan assumes the role of a full-fledged Jedi Master and mentor to Anakin. A victory parade in the streets of Theed brings the first chapter of the new Star Wars epic to a close. The screenplay presented Lucas with a number of dramatic and logistical problems to be solved. Like Star Wars: A New Hope, Episode I would not only have to set up the next two episodes, it would have to be able to stand alone, a complete, resolved story in jts own right. “Whenever you do a trilogy,” Lucas said, “no matter how you do it, the first part is always about the characters. It is like the first act of a play. It says, ‘Here are the players. You have the good guys and the bad guys. The bad guys want to get the good guys, and here are the relationships that exist among each of them: It is not until the second act—or, in this case, the second episode—that the plot really thickens. And it is not until the third act that everything comes to an end and gets resolved.” One of the elements of the story that Lucas wrestled with was what age to make the character of Anakin. In the original out- line, Lucas had conceived him as a twelve- year-old boy; but as Lucas started writing the screenplay and developing the story, he realized that by making Anakin an adoles- cent, he was undercutting some of his most important dramatic points. “There were a lot of things that would have been easier if Anakin had been twelve,” Lucas observed. “The casting would have been easier, for one thing; and it would have been easier to jus- tify things like the Podrace or the way he is able to fly a starfighter at the end of the movie. “But the problem was that a twelve- year-old leaving his mother—as Anakin does—is not nearly as traumatic as a nine- year-old leaving his mother. And there is a key story point that revolves around the fact that he was separated from his mother at an early age, and how that has affected him. So I slid the age down as far as I could—but then I had the problem of him being able to race a Pod and fly the starfighter. Ultimately, it wasn’t that hard to justify the Podrace. I set it up that he had done this kind of thing before; and there are nine-year-old kids who race go-carts, fly planes, and ride motorcy- cles—so it wasn't too farfetched. Having him pilot a spaceship was my main worry, and that was the thing I struggled with to make believable. I set it up that he is very bright, that he learns quickly, that he is already a pilot. I put in little scenes in which he is learning about the ship—a lot of that was interwoven throughout to make the end- ing work. I also had Artoo-Detoo in there with him, helping to fly the ship. All of these things helped; but making that ending cred- ible was definitely one of the tougher issues.”Just as he had done in the original tril- ogy, Lucas constructed Episode I to illustrate a number of themes, subtly woven through a plot-intensive narrative. “Duality is one of the main themes of the film,” Lucas revealed. “There is duality in the character of the Queen, who trades places with one of her handmaidens, Padmé, as a decoy. Duality is also present in the characters of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. In the beginning, Obi-Wan is at odds with Qui-Gon, who rebels against the Jedi rules. But by the end of the film, he has become Qui-Gon by taking on his rebellious personality and his responsibilities.” Another major theme was the notion of symbiotic relationships—tife forms living together for mutual advantage. That theme was most deftly illuminated through the character of Anakin. In the story, it is sug- gested that Anakin was conceived by midi- chlorians—tiving organisms found in cells, through which people are able to communi- cate with the Force. A symbiotic relationship exists between Anakin—or any person with whom the Force is strong—and the midi- chlorians: the former draws strength, wisdom and insight from the midi-chlorians, while the midi-chlorians rely on such beings to sustain life. “The midi-chlorians have brought Anakin into being as ‘the chosen one’ who will bal- ance the universe,” Lucas elaborated. “The mystery around that theory is that we don’t know yet whether the chosen one is a good or a bad person. He is to bring balance to the Force; but at this point, we don't know what side of the Force needs to be balanced out.” Balance would also emerge as a recur- ring theme in the story. “The overriding phi- losophy in Episode I—and in all the Star Wars movies, for that matter—is the balance between good and evil. The Force itself breaks into two sides: the living Force and a greater, cosmic Force. The living Force makes you sensitive to other living things, makes Young actress Natalie Portman took on the dual role of Padmé the hand- maiden and Queen Amidalace is unusually Jp young Anakin you intuitive, and allows you to read other people’s minds, et cetera. But the greater Force has to do with destiny. In working with the Force, you can find your destiny and you can choose to either follow it, or not.” The search for balance was a theme that governed the writing process, as well, as Lucas struggled to orchestrate a story with many characters, plots, and subplots. “Star Wars was a balance of many characters and many stories,” Lucas said. “And each subse- quent Star Wars movie had more characters and stories than the previous one. Writing a story is very practical—in order to con- struct scenes, you need to have interaction, people talking to one another, otherwise you wouldn't have drama. Anakin needed to have a mother, Obi-Wan needed a Master, Darth Sidious needed an apprentice. Everyone has to have somebody who influences them.” Both themes and characters emerged from an overall story that would feature five plots going on simultaneously, one leading to another. The basic story underlying all the others is how Senator Palpatine becomes the chancellor of the Republic. “Everything else revolves around that story line,” Lucas said. “The second plot is about the Trade Federation trying to gain control over an out-of-the-way planet ruled by a young Queen, and how that Queen repulses the invaders. That story line precipitates the third, which is the chancellor sending Jedi Knights to try and negotiate peace, and the way in which those Knights get intertwined in the political arena of this invasion. We are introduced to Qui-Gon, who is very indepen- dent, always testing the rules. And we meet young Obi-Wan, who is constantly frustrated by his Master's refusal to go along with the program. The fourth story line involves young Anakin Skywalker and how he becomes a Jedi. That leads to the fifth story point, which deals with the rise of the Sith Lords, and the Jedi concerns about the fact that they've been resurrected after a thou- sand years.” Before it was completed, Lucas would revise those basic stories and the screenplay as a whole nearly twenty times. But even then, the story was not set in stone. Lucas would continue to revise and rework the nar- rative through production and, most pro- foundly, during the editing stage. As Lucas began to wrestle with the screenplay, Rick McCallum initiated prepara- tions for the production that would continue for two full years before cameras rolled. McCallum had been Lucas’s collaborator ever since 1990, when he produced the feature film Radioland Murders and, later, the criti- cally acclaimed television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. That series—filmed over a period of three years, in thirty coun- tries—had received twenty-five Emmy nomi- nations and had won eleven, as well as a 1993 Golden Globe nomination for best dra- matic series.The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles would have a tremendous impact on Episode I. Not only would the film’s producer and key department heads come from its ranks, the filmmaking methodology developed and refined in the course of the series would be applied to the new Star Wars film. In fact, in many respects, Young Indy served as the template for the making of Episode I. “Young Indy was a testing bed to learn a new way of making films,” McCallum declared. “It had to do with the way we structured it. We wouid do seventeen episodes, but we treated them as one film— a film made all over the world, as jnexpen- sively as possible, but with the highest qual- ity. One of the ways we did that was to standard crew of sixty to one hundred. It meant building sets months beforehand and letting them stand so we could return to them as necessary—which meant shooting in places other than traditional studios, where you have to get your sets in and out very quickly. “Finally, it meant using a great deal of digital technology to provide sets and land- scapes, which saved a fortune in construc- tion and production travel costs. Overall, we started to set the boundaries of nonlinear filmmaking, changing things, and creating new environments like a painter does. And all along, we were learning and figuring out how we could apply this new way of making films to Episode I.” Far left: Producer Rick McCallum and George Luce review Mos Espa set desi realized both in concept drawings and scaled mods Left: Rick McCallum. Below: Production designe vGaninBeqauetanuLbeas~ examine possible camera angles. employ people who were just getting out of film school, and had never worked on a movie before. Another thing we did was to blur the line between production and post- production, so we could go back into pro- duction after the initial shoot, after we'd had a chance to see how the story was evolv- ing. It meant structuring our deals with actors in such a way that they were available when we needed them. It meant shooting with a crew of thirty people, rather than theDoug Chiang. No stranger to the Star Wars saga—as he had produced the Special Edition features— McCallum actually initiated his efforts on behalf of Episode I months before Lucas began writing, in the summer of 1994. For the following six months, McCallum and pro- duction designer Gavin Bocquet went on a series of ‘recces’—reconnaissance missions intended to explore possible locations for the film. Bocquet had started his motion picture career as an art department draftsman on The Elephant Man and Return of the Jedi, and had risen to the rank of art director by the time he worked on Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun. Those assignments were followed by his stint as production designer on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, for which he won an Emmy award. In a series of trips that covered more than four thousand ground miles, Bocquet and McCallum searched for locations that would serve to represent Episode I's various worlds. “Gavin and I went to Tunisia, Portugal, Morocco—basically all over Europe,” McCallum recalled. “Even though George hadn't started writing the script yet, we had an idea of what he was going to need. We knew we were going to have to re-create the planet Tatooine, for example. We also explored locations that might work for Naboo. George wanted gardens and a very lush kind of landscape for Naboo, and I thought we might find such a place in Portugal, where I’d once filmed another movie. Gavin and I went on these exploratory missions off and on for six months before George started writing.” In addition to scouting locations, McCallum’s other concern at this early stage was to find and hire concept artists for a small, core art department. That department would be stationed at Skywalker Ranch, and would, for the next two years, design crea- tures, costumes, ships, vehicles, droids, sets—in fact, the entire world of Episode I. True to his commitment to a Young Indy style of film production, McCallum looked for young talent, just out of art school, to make up the art department. “In April 1994,” McCallum recalled, “I started a huge search for artists—a search that would go on for the next six months. I worked through the Internet, trying to get in touch with just about every person who had just graduated from art school. I spoke to the heads of every architectural and design school in the country, looking for promising students. Through this effort, I wound up getting about twenty-five hundred artwork submis- sions from young artists. It took us months just to sort through them.” Among those submissions were render- ings by Doug Chiang, already a respected art director at Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects company George Lucas had founded for the production of the original three films. Eager to have a shot at design- ing concepts for the new Star Wars trilogy, Chiang rendered drawings on his own time, then submitted the work to McCallum. “Thequality of Doug’s artwork was just phenome- nal,” McCallum admitted. “And yet, I was reluctant, at first, to go with anybody from ILM. I wanted this art department effort to be totally separate from what ILM would be doing on the movie. But as the months went by, I couldn’t find anybody whose work reached the level of Doug’s. I narrowed the field down to four or five people, but Doug was clearly the front-runner. Finally, we hired him as design director. Doug started in November 1994, and then we started bring- ing on the others.” Key among those others were Terryl Whitlatch, who had worked pri- marily as a freelance artist and had a partic- ular aptitude for creature design, and Iain McCaig, who had worked on many feature films, television shows, interactive games, and animated projects as a storyboard artist, concept designer, art director, and animator. For the next two years, these artists col- laborated with Lucas, previsualizing and fleshing out characters, hardware, environ- ments, and action sequences through, liter- ally, thousands of concept drawings. “I’d meet with them once a week at first,” Lucas recalled. “Later on, twice or three times a week. I’d ask them to design certain things for me—a scene, a character—and they'd le begin drawing. Even though I'd just started writing, I already knew certain things that needed to be designed. I knew which planets Thad to go to, for example, and I knew what the look of those planets was going to be. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do for costumes. For the spaceships, I knew I needed fighters, and that I wanted very dif- ferent designs than what I’d had before— more sleek, modern, aesthetically pleasing ships to go with this aesthetically pleasing planet Naboo. I was able to give them a lot of work right away—and I kept them busy for the next two years.” “Early on,” Doug Chiang added, “George wanted to see a wide range of visual styles. He wanted Episode I to be completely differ- ent from the previous films, stylistically— richer and more like a period piece, since this was the history leading up to A New Among the concept art gen- erated for the film were early sketches depicting a variety of spacecraft designs,ad a small art mt at Skywalker ered thousands of Sons and paintings eptualize the film’s ¢ environments, g a Theed cityscape = underwater city | Gunga (middle), and Temple on (bottom), Hope. So we'd do a bunch of drawings for creatures or environments or ships, and at our weekly meetings George would choose the designs he liked best and ask us to expand on them for the next meeting. That was the way we worked. The story kept evolving, the list of design elements kept growing, and George would tell us just enough information to keep us working.” Progress was slow at first; but productiv- jty increased as the artists grew comfortable with each other, Lucas, and the nature of the project itself. “In the beginning,” Iain McCaig recalled, “we wrestled with what makes Star Wars what it is. It is sci-fi, but not exclusively sci-fi, because it has mythic and fantasy aspects to it. That was an important distinction. In coming up with designs for the film, we tried to think in terms of myth- ical archetypes, characters that were based in fantasy rather than in science fiction.” Among the earliest design concerns were the film’s various settings. Alien worlds included the lush planet of Naboo, its capi- tal city of Theed, a swamp, a Gungan sacred place, forests, and the underwater city of Otoh Gunga. Also prominently featured in the movie were the desert planet Tatooine— which had been introduced in the original movie—and Coruscant, the seat of the Republic, first seen in the Star Wars Special Editions. For Naboo, Lucas imagined a paradise with big, fluffy clouds, rolling green hills, and lush vegetation, while the city of Theed would be designed as a monument to an ide- alistic society. “George wanted Theed to look both beautiful and peaceful,” Doug Chiang observed. An architecture buff, Lucas came to the art department proceedings with a very strong sense of what Theed’s buildings should look like. “He wanted the architec-tural style to be eclectic—tike what you would find in Venice, Italy, where many dif- ferent styles merge together on the same street. Going with that idea, I started col- lecting a variety of architectural references of real buildings in Italy, Turkey, and Morocco. In three weeks, we had a whole range of different styles that George liked for Theed. Then, as the city design evolved, heed became primarily Moroccan in terms of influence—although the overall look was timeless, otherworldly, and very beautiful.” No such real-life reference was available, however, for the underwater city of Otoh Gunga, which had to reflect a Gungan cul- ure and society that had evolved outside he influence of the Naboo people. “Otoh Gunga was hard to envision,” Chiang admit- ed, “because it was a totally alien world. But, even so, George always emphasized that he designs, no matter how alien or out- landish, had to be based on reality. In order 1G-ule auulérce uv revate vo tiem, trey naa‘ to have some tie to our culture and history. he danger in designing an alien society— a 14 for which we were inventing a history and culture—was that it would be too fanciful and too unreal.” To base Otoh Gunga in real- ity, Lucas suggested a slightly art nouveau Concept drawings of Otoh Gunga (top left), Theed (top), and the Mos Espa Arena (middle and botto:‘ings show a et scene (top om) and the Watto's shop (top style. “Art nouveau has a very distinctive and organic look; and once I had that idea to lock onto, the city became much simpler to design.” Similarly, Lucas wanted the Gungan swamps to be wild and primitive, as was the Gungan culture itself. “We compiled pho- tographs of swamps and trees,” Chiang said, “and translated them into landscapes that were more extreme. If a tree was a hundred feet tall in reality, for example, we would make it four hundred feet tall. Or we would add weird root structures at the tops. Basically, we exaggerated reality; and through that process, slowly, the swamp started taking shape, until it was a believ- able place within the world of Naboo.” The look of Tatooine—a barren, hot, sand dune-dotted planet—had been estab- lished in the first Star Wars by concept designer Ratpn McQuarrie. But the Tatovine scenes in Episode I would be set in a differ- ent part of the planet, in the city of Mos Espa. To differentiate Mos Espa from Star Wars’ Mos Eisley, the art department designed a more traditional looking city, with old-world touches such as a central marketplace. “We kept the basic architec- tural style that had been created in the first movie,” Chiang noted, “but we made this city a lot bigger.” Specific buildings within Mos Espa based on pictures of old hotels and buildings in Tunisia included Anakin’s slave hovel and the junk shop belonging to his owner, Watto. A key sequence set in Mos Espa was the Podrace, which would feature a huge arena from which spectators would watch the aer- jal race. Lucas envisioned an arena design that was vast, yet not too high-tech. “This was supposed to be a very old racetrack,” Chiang explained, “as if the original inhabi- tants of the planet had simply carved out a large pit and built a stadium into it.” Chiang found inspiration for other Mos Espa buildings in early concept paintings 15done by Ralph McQuarrie for Return of the Jedi, but never used. McQuarrie’s designs were also instrumental in developing the look of Coruscant. “George wanted to push Ralph’s ideas even further for this movie,” Chiang said. “He wanted to show a variety of vistas and different areas of the planet. It was a relatively simple task to come up with the Coruscant designs, since Ralph had already established a style. All I did was take his vision and expand on it a little.” Distinctive styles were developed for the three main buildings featured in the Coruscant sequence: the senate building, Palpatine’s quarters, and the Jedi Council chamber. “When audiences saw any one of those sets, George wanted them to know that the action had moved to an entirely dif- ferent part of the planet. In many ways, it was like designing three different cities in three separate worlds.” sequence. “George was looking for some- thing visually interesting and dynamic for Concept drawings of the Mos Espa Arena (left) and street For the senate building, Chiang expanded on McQuarrie’s original supermetropolis design. “I just pushed the scale, the texture, and the composition of Ralph’s drawings,” Chiang explained. “I opted for a sleek, mod- ern vision, incorporating more steel, glass, and weird plastic materials. The forms also became a little cleaner and more stream- lined.” The senate chamber itself would fea- ture floating platforms—originally conceived as spectator platforms for the Podrace the senate chamber scene, so we pulled the unused idea of the flying platforms from Tatooine, put them on Coruscant, and refined the designs to make them big, bowl- shaped enclosures.” In contrast to the corporate coldness of the senate building, the Jedi Council archi- tecture was designed to suggest a place of worship, a place that was both religious and monumental. For reference, Chiang took pic- tures of monuments from various cultures, scenes (top and bottom)=ty of concepts were considered before ok was established anet Coruscant. then exaggerated their shapes and heights in his drawings. Creatures and species indigenous to each of these cities and planets also had to be designed. Although the entire art depart- ment would have a hand in such designs, Terryl Whitlatch’s background in zoology and anatomy made the artist particularly well suited to the task of designing Episode I’s characters. “I have an understanding of how animals live in their environments, and how they interact with each other,” Whitlatch commented, “and so I was able to come up with new species that seemed plausible within the world of Star Wars.” Whitlatch started by building up a pho- tographic library of real animals, which she reviewed with Lucas. The director would then suggest that a specific feature of one animal be combined with a feature of another, resulting in a hybrid that would form the basis for an entirely new species. One char- acter born in such a manner was Watto, the flying, trunked, pot-bellied junk shop dealer who loses his slave Anakin to Qui-Gon in the Podrace. “I had done a portrait of an ugly, cherub-type thing with tiny wings,” Whitlatch recalled. “George saw it, suggested we give it duck feet, and Watto was born.” In some cases, a creature designed for one environment would be moved into another, per Lucas’s request. The two-legged kaadu, for example, were initially intended for Tatooine, as the creatures used to pull Anakin’s Podracer engines toward the race arena. Eventually, however, the kaadu were drafted for the Otoh Gunga sequence.“Because we took them into an aquatic world,” Whitlatch said, “we had to change the texture of their skin. We also gave them more of a duck bill.” Whitlatch worked close- ly with Doug Chiang in designing all the rid- ing and load-bearing animals. In addition to the kaadu, there were fambaas—a combina- tion of rhinoceros and triceratops, with an elephantine tail—and the camel-like eopies. More complex than the indigenous ani- mals were the movie's alien characters, Such character designs started with Lucas describ- ing the personality of a given character. “He'd say, ‘This character is cowardly and insecure, for example,” Whitlatch recalled, “and from that description, we’d go off and do a whole array of drawings, giving George many choices and many possibilities. It was a wonderful process, because he gave us a lot of creative license.” The first character to be developed was Jar Jar Binks, the bungling, but in the end heroic, Gungan who has been cast out by his own people. Jar Jar would have a major role in the movie, comparable to that of Chewbacca in the original Star Wars. This sidekick, however, would do more than growl and roar. As conceived by Lucas, Jar Jar was a talking, feeling, walking, running, falling, fainting bundle of amphibious comic relief The film is populated by exotic Star Wars-style crea~ tures. Among the load- bearing animals featured on the planet Naboo and depicted here in early con- cept sketches are the kaadu (top left and right, and bot- tom right) and the fambaa (bottom left).pt sketches for Watto ak dealer (above and d the Gungan . Boss Nass (far 2a PATIO sare Denver. HEN 2620 who would, by necessity, be created entirely as a computer-generated character. “We thought of Jar Jar as a comedic character with a lot of personality,” Whitlatch noted. “We worked on his design for a year and a half. In some of the earlier concepts, he looked a bit like a duck. At another point, we tried to make him look friendly and appealing, but he wound up looking too much like a droopy dog. His body shape and gangly long legs were pretty much in place from the start, but his face and neck went through many changes.” To suggest the Gungan’s amphibian characteristics, the designers initially considered giving him a greenish coloration. But when research revealed that few underwater creatures are green, a warmer orange coloration was finally settled on. A variety of other Gungans would be fea- tured in the movie, as well—most promi- nently Boss Nass, the Gungan leader, and Captain Tarpals, a military figure. Unlike the likable Jar Jar, both characters were designed to look pompous and authoritarian. The Gungans would not be the only crea- tures living in the underwater regions of Naboo. In the course of the story, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Jar Jar explore the planet’s watery core in a submarine and are chased by a trio of successively larger sea monsters. The first, the opee sea killer, is a combina- tion crab and lobster. The colo claw fish was designed as a cross between a moray eel and a squid, with crocodile jaws and a lumines- cent glow. The largest of the three, the sando aqua monster, is a mix between an otter, a walrus, and a tiger and was designed to sug- gest a creature of gargantuan scale. Originally conceived as a large-eyed crea- ture, the sando was redesigned with smaller facial features when it was determined that the oversized eyes worked against the illu- sion of massive scale. Bright coloring—another scale buster—was also eventually toned down to the more muted colors of typ- ical large-size animals, such as elephants and whales. One of the most fanciful of the new characters was Sebulba, a champion Podracer of questionable ethics and sportsmanship. “George had the idea of a creature that walks on his hands and uses his feet as arms,” Whitlatch recalled. “Sebulba looks a bit like an arachnid, although his face is something like an arrogant camel. We definitely wanted him to look creepy.” In the story, a species called Neimoidians are in cahoots with the Sith Lord in the plan to invade Naboo. Two Neimoidians, Nute and Rune, would play supporting roles in the film, and were originally envisioned as organic ver- sions of the mechanical droids that make up the Neimoidian army. But that complex, fan- tastic design was ultimately simplified when the decision was made to portray the charac- ters with actors wearing animatronic masks, rather than through computer animation. In addition to such major characters, the movie would feature crowd scenes popu- The most prominent alien character in the film is the outcast Gungan Jar Jar Binks. An entirely comput generated character, Jar Jar has an astounding ninety minutes of screen time. Concepts evolved for a year and a half before a design for Jar Jar was finalized. Other Gungan characters include Captain Tarpals (bottom right).nt champion pilot Sebulba was as a creature who his hands and uses as arms, lated with scores of different aliens from a variety of cultures. Within that mix, how- ever, were aliens designed to distinguish characters from Tatooine, for example, from those that live on Coruscant. “Since Tatooine is the place where people come from all over the galaxy,” Whitlatch said, “we had the widest variety of species in those crowd scenes. But there were still characteristics inherent to the aliens that are native to Tatooine. They all look rough, with weather- beaten, leathery skin to protect them from the harsh desert elements. Naboo is lush and more animal-friendly, so the creatures from that planet are more beautiful. And on Coruscant, you find alien characters that are human-looking—they all tend to walk on two legs.” While introducing a host of new charac- ters, Episode I would also feature younger versions of characters from the original tril- ogy. Making an appearance at the Podrace on Tatooine is Jabba the Hutt and the female Hutt, Gardulla. “Gardulla is not too nice,” Whitlatch commented, “and like most of the Hutts, she’s rather mercenary. Jabba himself is not quite as awful looking as he was in Return of the Jedi. He looks a little more fit, more like he did in the Special Edition of A New Hope.” Another returning figure was Yoda, the Jedi Master. Stuart Freeborn’s original design was modified only slightly to make Yoda appear appropriately younger. The job of visualizing Yoda in his younger days fell to Iain McCaig. “I first created an eight-year- old Yoda,” McCaig said, “just to develop the idea. I imagined a whole childhood story for him—that he had run away from his home planet—and I gave him a very young body with a very old-looking face. That concept eventually became another Jedi in the film, Yaddle.” Once Lucas had approved the drawing of a particular creature or character, Whitlatch would create orthographic drawings—draw- ings of the character in a neutral position, standing up with its arms extended to the side. “It is reminiscent of what da Vinci did with his drawing of a man in a circle,” Whitlatch said. “For the major characters, I'd also draw detailed skeletons. In the case of Jar Jar, I even did a drawing of his facial muscles so that the animators at ILM, where he would be created, ultimately, would understand where his joints and muscles connected.” The orthographic renderings were then translated into three-dimensional sculptures—called maquettes—either by the art department or the crew at ILM. Eventually, those maquettes were scanned élinto ILM’s computers as a first step in build- ing computer models. “It was a long and complicated process. But in the end, we wound up with very believable creatures.” In the course of the conceptual phase, hundreds of creatures were designed— although only a small percentage would be seen in the film—and each creature’s place te in the ecosystem of the particular planet on which it lived had been thoroughly thought out. “It was like Noah’s ark,” Whitlatch com- mented. “The food chain was all there. The biology was all there.” While he would contribute to all aspects of the concept design, Iain McCaig concen- trated much of his efforts on designing cos- This page and opposite: In the course of the story, Jar | Jar leads the Jedi to Naboo’s watery core, where — they are chased by a trio of sea monsters. These concept drawings show designs of the various underwater predators.Tevryl WhiMatel 6 6-45" Jorge Abyss + semetien Fie! © 1995 LUCASFILM LED. tumes for Episode I’s varied cast of human and alien characters. Costume designer Trisha Biggar would collaborate with McCaig as the development phase moved into pre- production, creating a color palette for the inhabitants of each of the three planets fea- tured in the movie. “For Coruscant,” McCaig said, “we chose grays, browns, and blacks. Greens and golds were the main colors for Naboo—although we went in a different direction for the Gungans, making costumes that had a leathery look, like their skin. For Tatooine, we followed the look that had been established in A New Hope, using a lot of sun-bleached sand colors.” Everything from full body armor to long, flowing capes were considered for the Jedi’s costumes—although Lucas eventually went back to the designs from the first trilogy. “George wanted to make sure that when the a304 Danes TRADE 224-15 audience saw these characters for the first time, it would immediately register that these were Jedi Knights,” McCaig explained. “For these characters and for Yoda, we had to establish some familiarity in the costumes with those in the existing films. I looked at the original Star Wars costumes to under- stand the style and influence, and I realized that those designs were very medieval, so we kept to that. Since Obi-Wan is Qui-Gon’s pupil, he dresses like him—although his tunic is a little shorter. For the Jedi boots we tried all kinds of wild and ornate things, but in the end, we went for a slightly military look.” The Neimoidian species—i conspirators with the Sith Lords—was originally envi- sioned as an organic versi of the mechanical droids that make up its army. Designs were later modifi to accommodate actors wes ing animatronic masks,The most striking of all the costumes planet; so we looked at flowers for inspira- designed for the movie are those worn by tion. But because she is a queen, we wanted Queen Amidala. “Creating costumes for the costumes that would also be imposing. We Queen was an incredible experience,” McCaig researched Mongolian and Tibetan costumes, commented. “She lives on a beautiful, lush styles that aggrandize the person—and I “ing Terryl @tch’s precise draw- alptors built a life- st of Jar Jar to be 2 lighting reference = set. Here, sculptor Mil paints details on skin. right: A computer- ed Jar Jar. Se / | i a5found the more outrageous it got, the bet- ter.” Another consideration was the fact that, in the story, the Queen would trade places with a handmaiden, Padmé—a con- ceit that would not be revealed until fairly late in the film. “Because we were going to have one actress playing a dual role in the film, we had to design costumes for her as the Queen that would serve to hide her iden- tity.” For the celebratory parade at the end of the movie, the Queen wears a dress that is both delicate and ceremonial. “For that pur- pose, I designed a parasol-like collar that almost makes her look like an angel.” The Queen would also sport some Upto A a er 06 Top: A costume concept for Obi-Wan Kenobi drawn by Doug Chiang. Bottom: Concept designer Tain McCaig illustrated cos- tumes for Queen Amidala (bottom left) and the han maiden Padmé (bottom right).unique, otherworldly hairstyles—coiffures point, Lucas toyed with the idea of portray- that were far more strange and elaborate ing Obi-Wan with the longish hair sported by than the “cinnamon roll” buns worn by Luke Skywalker in the original films—the Princess Leia in Star Wars. idea being that Obi-Wan’s hair would be cut Although less elaborate, the hairstyles for the Jedi were also well considered. At one drawings suggest a hairstyle designs Amidala. 2]short in Jedi fashion at the very end, signal- ing his rise to full Jedi Knight status. But since the idea would have required the actor portraying Obi-Wan to wear a wig throughout most of the shoot, the idea was rejected. For Qui-Gon, Doug Chiang created a hairstyle design that featured very thin samurai-style pigtails on the side and a ponytail in the back. Another design, sug- gested by Lucas, had the Jedi warrior in a Mohawk. “We eventually lost the Mohawk,” McCaig said, “and ended up with a combina- tion of several wild ideas.” In the end, Qui- Gon would wear his hair long, with a small section pulled back in a ponytail. Obi-Wan’s hair was worn very short, with a short pony- tail and a long thin braid, both to tie in with the style originally worn by Alec Guinness and to distinguish student from master. Ultimately, hundreds of costumes and hairstyles would be designed. “When I first met George,” McCaig recalled, “he described Episode I as being his first costume drama. He always knew what he wanted, and he guided us to match that vision. By the end 24 of it, I felt like the wardrobe had always been in George’s head; and, somehow, just magically, I was able to draw it on paper.” Traditionally, Star Wars-style hardware— droids, spaceships, vehicles, and weapons— have been the design elements that have most strongly identified and characterized the films. Droids would play a particularly crucial role in Episode I, with the Neimoidian army made up of battle and destroyer droids. “Originally,” Doug Chiang recalled, “George said that he wanted the droids to replace the stormtroopers from the first trilogy. So, not knowing how far to deviate from the stormtroopers, I designed human-sized droids and droids that were twelve feet tall. Eventually I arrived at the battle droids by elongating the shape of the original stormtrooper mask and reworking the fea- tures to make them more stylized. I kept the Hairstyles for the Jedi included a number of di ent designs, pieces of were incorporated into final styles.Patina E-3P0 10-30-95" 0442,legs and torso very thin, until the design began to look like a living skeleton.” The even more lethal destroyer droids grew from Lucas’s suggestion to make a droid that rolled, rather than walked or marched. “T took the approved design of the battle droid, turned it into a kind of ball configura- tion, and worked from there. The inspiration for the design came from African sculptures that had very short legs and elongated tor- sos. It’s an interpretation that has never been seen before in a mechanical design.” Other droids featured in the film would be the probe droids—floating constructs sent out to find the Jedi Knights on Tatooine— and pit crew droids seen in the Podrace sequence. Both continuity and public sentiment demanded that the droids R2-D2 and C-3P0 be included in the new movie. However, since the story takes place a generation before A New Hope, the droids would appear in slightly different incarnations. C-3P0 is VOREOSUS CUTER. LEKPOus Deroy FEAT ONRE SDE OF BACKPACK 30 Tp canes c-3Po Top: An early design of C-3P0. Bottom: Concept drawings of battle droids, the foot- soldiers of the Trade Federation army.- A newer, shinier R2- igned for Episode I. and right: Early the pit droids that Podrace mechanics. ‘Lethal destroyer into position ming a battle introduced as a protocol droid being built by Anakin. “He is homemade looking and unfin- ished,” Chiang explained. “George described him as a man of wires—he is basically the underskin of the droid as we know him, with- out the ‘skin’ and finishing touches.” R2-D2, on the other hand, would be reproduced as a newer, shinier version of his former self. Like the droids, at least some of the spaceships in the new film would be reminis- cent of ships already introduced in the origi- nal films. “Except for ships from Naboo—a culture that didn’t exist in the first films— the spaceships had to look similar to the ones featured in the previous trilogy,” Chiang affirmed. “So, for the Neimoidian battleship, I incorporated designs from the Star qDestroyer and worked up a shape that resem- bled a doughnut. George later added a big ball in the center. The Republic ships are also reminiscent of the Star Destroyer and the Blockade Runner from the first trilogy.” Similarly, bits and pieces of the original Imperial shuttle and TIE fighter from the previous films were pulled together for Darth Maul’s spaceship to make it look like a pre- decessor to those now-famous designs. Nubian ships were designed as sleek ves- sels with decorative details. “For the Queen's ship,” Chiang said, “we took a conventional design and added fins to it, then smoothed out the cockpit and made it look like chrome. It is very bold and different from anything we've seen previously in the Star Wars world, but it fits perfectly into the cul- ture of Naboo.” The smallest of the “ships” featured in the film are the Pods raced on Tatooine. At his first meeting with Doug Chiang, Lucas had described the Podracers as “two jet engines tied together, with a cockpit in the back”—an initial concept that remained unchanged as the Podracer was developed. “Taking the engines out of the context of a ae Designed to suggest a look similar to the one estab- lished in the original films. a variety of spaceship and vehicle concepts were pre- sented to Lucas throughout the concept phase, Above: Sketches of the Trade Federation battleship and landing craft. Above left: The Queen’s transport was designed to depart from the look of the original Star Wars trilogy. Left: A more detailed computer-generated render- ing of the Trade Federation battleship.fous styles of ecers, including S (top). To suggest ‘Sfferent alien cultures esented in the Podrace, sgrers strove to create a tive style for each of ehicles. ‘illustrations depict- jet and putting them into the deserts of Tatooine made for a stunning image,” Chiang commented. “To make them a bit more inter- esting, we added fins and details to convey that each Podracer was from a different cul- ture. Sebulba, for example, is a champion and perhaps has the highest budget, so his vehicle is more refined and, at the same time, more menacing. Some of the other vehicles are clumsy looking; others are more elegant. Anakin’s Podracer is very simple and cen Pe acer. homemade. Overall, the Podracers had to be instantly identifiable, since they were mainly going to be seen whizzing by during a very high-speed race.” Belonging to yet another category of 3vehicle were the hovering tanks dispatched by the Neimoidians for the invasion and final battle on Naboo. Tanks were divided into two types: the multi-troop transports (MTTs) that would deliver battle and destroyer droids to the battleground, and AATs, the armored attack tanks. “We felt that the MTT should reflect the fact that the droids had animalis- tic features,” Chiang observed, “and I imme- diately imagined a charging elephant. The cockpit of the vehicle resembles the head of an elephant, the big trunk area is the body, and the side arms with guns are the tusks.” a4 A spade was the inspiration for the attack tanks. “I took that basic shovel shape, put a big turret on it, and made a flying vehicle that looked as if it was made of iron.” The small flying vehicles used by the droid army—called STAPs—were designed as a variation on the speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi. Chiang toyed with the design until he came up with a kind of Jet Ski vehi- cle. “Going back to nature,” Chiang elabo- rated, “I took the idea of the hummingbird and applied it to the STAPs, adding tiny wings down below and making the head itself very sleek.” Streamlined versions of Left: Renderings for t Podrace sequence ind depiction of an explo: Podracer, an eopie pul Podracer engine, and the racers at the starting Below: Orthographic res ings of various Podracers Opposite page: Concept drawings of the Trade Federation multi-troop transports (MTTs),Dai BIRO ATIACE TOR Luke Skywalker’ landspeeder from the first Star Wars would also be seen on Naboo. In the story, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Jar Jar would pilot a submarine through the watery core of Naboo. After exploring every- thing from traditional sub designs to art nouveau influences, Chiang based the sub on a squid. “The propellers are very squidlike and form an elegant tail,” Chiang explained. a5“The overall shape was initially spherical, but George wanted something flatter; so the final shape looked a bit like a stingray.” As in the original trilogy, Episode I would feature an array of interesting weapons—some extremely high-tech in design, others suggesting a more low-tech culture. The Gungans, for example, would carry spears and shields to create the impression of a more primitive society. Equally retro-looking were the Gungan cata- pult devices that would discharge balls of energy toward the enemy. “These weapons made the statement that the organic Gungan society is very different from the mechanical world of the droids,” Chiang noted. Weapons employed by the droid army were based on real guns and rifles, modified with extra bar- rels, handles, and gadgetry to give them an DHA LO —~ Fos De 10-498 0406 For the STAP vehicle—a v2 ation on the speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi— Doug Chiang found inspi: tion in nature and adapte the idea of a hummingbii for its design.ept drawings for an submarine, fea- underwater contrast the sated technology by the droids, the ent designed primitive- e2pons for the Ser ROCE? AA Cehene PEreicets alien look. The Jedi lightsabers would figure prominently in the new movie, as well, and were very slightly modified. Lucas and stunt coordinator Nick Gillard also came up with an idea for a double-ended lightsaber that would be used by Darth Maul in his duel with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. The art department had been designing the film for approximately one year when Lucas asked the team to begin creating sto- ryboards. “George would come up to the art department,” Doug Chiang recalled, “and he’d talk about the images and sequences running through his mind. He’d say, ‘We need a close-up here, then we pan across and move to a wide shot! Sometimes he’d talk in general terms; other times he’d be more spe- cific. He was basically directing us as if we were the cast and crew. And that process 7ens ! ‘ went on for every single scene.” Animatics—rough, low-resolution mov- ing graphics—were particularly vital to Episode I, since nearly 70 percent of the film would feature computer-generated elements or other visual effects. Animatics would greatly improve the communication between Lucas and the effects crew at ILM; and they 48 would establish an understanding of each sequence and how it would work within the film long before the effects were realized. “The only way you can evaluate the effects shots you're going to need is to cut in tem- porary action scenes,” Lucas explained. “On the first film, I used old news footage of dogfights as temporary shots to figure out the choreography and design for the end battle. On The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, we did a rough animated film for certain scenes to get a sense of what the action would look like. With Episode I, it was the first time I was able to use computerized animatics to previsualize the entire film before I even started shooting.” Twenty-four-year-old David Dozoretz was hired by McCallum to create all of the ani- matics for Episode I. Ben Burtt would edit the sequences together. In addition to Dozoretz’s work for the climactic train and helicopter chase sequence in Mission: Impossible—the first time CG animatics had been used to previsualize an entire sequence—he had also created animatics for new stormtrooper shots in the special edi- tion of A New Hope, as well as for the clos- ing celebration in the special edition of Return of the Jedi. While Dozoretz was a relative newcomer, Above: A concept for another Gungan weapon: 2 catapult for hurling lethal energy balls. Left: Thousands of story- boards were generated by the art department as a means of pre-planning vi ally every shot on a frame- by-frame basis.ition to storyboards, ssolution animatics qreated by David 2pproach to visualiz- ‘She action sequences. Rick McCallum and ‘gmer to setting up a etz as a more sophisti- Lucas review animat- Ben Burtt had been associated with Lucasfilm for more than twenty years. He had worked on the original trilogy as the sound designer, creating all of the sound effects and droid and alien voices. Burtt also worked as an editor, writer, and director for one episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and he reconstructed and remixed the sound tracks for all three Special Edition films. Typically, Lucas would provide a story- board and a description of a shot; and from that reference, Dozoretz would create an appropriate animatic. “George would show us the storyboard,” Dozoretz recalled, “and say, ‘We need a shot that looks like this’ We would then build computer models that rep- resented the geometries in the shot—space- ships, characters, terrain. Using three- dimensional animation programs, we'd set up the angles that George requested, as if we were on location with a camera, and we'd begin to shape the different moves with him, revising along the way to get the per- fect timing, composition, and motion of the shots. One of the great things about this job is that it allows you to play cinematogra- pher, editor, and actor. With George, we were able to decide what lenses to use, where the ships or the actors would be in any particu- lar shot, and how the camera would move.” In the summer of 1995, Dozoretz and Burtt began with the Podrace sequence. “It only covered a few pages of script,” Dozoretz commented, “but it was, in fact, a tremen- dously powerful, dynamic twelve minutes of motion picture, heavily based on speed. Five hundred storyboards had been created for the sequence, and they were fantastic—but they could only go so far.” Low-end computer animation was used to previsualize the entire twelve-minute sequence. Ben Burtt’s contribution to the Podrace animatic was to find racing footage of cars, planes, and boats, then transfer that footage to video. “We then assembled all this footage,” Burtt explained, “and put in sound effects and music. From that we began to get a sense of how long the scene would have to play to tell the story, how many stunts would be necessary, what the camera angles would have to be. It was easy to see from the videomatics what worked and what didn’t.” Burtt’s first cut for the Podrace was twenty-five minutes long. Once that cut was edited down and approved, Dozoretz’s com- puter animation team re-created the video sequence in animatic form. “The animatic allowed George to determine the reality of 44the Podrace very early on,” McCallum com- mented. “He could look at the basic concept for the race, then start playing with it—‘T'd like to zoom back here; I want this to be a fifty-millimeter lens; I’d like it to be two frames shorter at the head and six frames longer at the tail/—and boom, it would be there in the animatic. We did that, shot by shot. It was slow at first. For the first cou- ple of weeks, we were only producing maybe three seconds per week. But then David got more sophisticated, we hired another couple of people to work with him, and it really 40 started to go. We were pumping out a minute’s worth of film per week. Eventually, all of those shots were cut into a sequence— and suddenly, we had the Podrace, all there, all worked out. It was a fantastic tool.” In a similar fashion, animatics were cre- ated for virtually every sequence in the film. They were ultimately not only used as a pre- visualization tool, they were also used on the set. Played on a monitor set up next to the director, the animatics provided crucial reference in setting up shots. The animatics continued to prove useful in the editing The animatics provided cial reference on the set, enabling Lucas to see exace ly how each shot needed te be set up, and giving the actors—who would often Be working against bluescreem or with CG characters abse from the live-action scen: a sense of how the action would play out once all the elements were combined im the final film. Above: The Queen’s trans- port on a landing pad on Coruscant. Left: Darth Maul’s Sith infil trator in the Tatooine desert,istics were equally use- tm the editing phase to ‘de temporary visuals could be cut into the as sefinished film, giving le Simmakers a sense of ‘movie's flow and A destroyer droid tic. Battle droids. phase—instead of sterile “scene missing” cards inserted into a rough cut of the film to mark shots that had not yet been completed by the effects team, the animatic for that scene was cut in, creating a sense of conti- nuity in even the roughest cuts of the movie. All the exacting attention paid to writ- ing the screenplay, to designing sets and aliens and costumes, to choreographing dynamic action sequences—all of that would be for naught if the right actors could not be found. Fortunately, there was no dearth of actors willing and even eager to be a part of the first Star Wars movie in sixteen years. Still, the casting of Episode I—initiated in early 1995—was a long and arduous process, complicated considerably by the fact that some key roles would have to be cast to match actors who had been featured in Episodes IV, V, and VI. Lucas didn’t simply need a good. young actor to portray Obi-Wan Kenobi, for example; he needed a good young actor who also bore some resemblance to Alec Guinness, the actor who had por- trayed the older version of the character in 4the first Star Wars. He didn’t simply need a child actor to play Anakin Skywalker; he needed a child actor with enough mystery and complexity to play a boy who would grow up to be Darth Vader, and who could be convincing as a child of extraordinary gifts. The development phase of the movie had been progressing for about a year when Rick McCallum met casting director Robin Gurland. Gurland had worked out of San Francisco and had cast a number of films in the area. Having already decided that he didn’t want to go with one of the large, well- known casting organizations, McCallum felt that, in Gurland, he had found the right casting director for Episode I. A year after their first meeting, he hired her for the job. “IT gave her the opportunity to start very early on,” McCallum recalled, “and to stay on the film throughout the whole process. It was an incredible journey. She was the per- fect person—so full of energy, and so focused and dedicated.” Gurland would see actors in seven dif- ferent countries over a period of two years in her quest to fill the key roles. American 42 actors, British actors, stars, and unknowns all came to the table equally. The only crite- ria was whether the actor was right for the material. “It was always about who was right for the role,” Gurland attested. “If it was someone the public knew, fine. If it wasn’t, that was just as well. As a casting director, it gave me an unbelievable sense of freedom to know that I was not constrained by a stu- dio or public recognition quotients.” Top: A computer-generated view of the Jedi Temple. Above: Casting director Robin Gurland on the set at Leavesden Studios with George Lucas and Rick McCallum,resolution computer- 1ee2 ed animatic of the ate building on scant. Slowly and meticulously, Gurland began to assemble lists of names, accompanied by photographs. “The characters were very well defined,” Gurland commented, “and I could immediately visualize them. There was no ambiguity, which made it very easy to under- stand what George wanted in these charac- ters.” After two years, Gurland had narrowed the list down to a few key candidates, all of whom would be brought in to meet George Lucas. Coming into the casting process with no preconceived notions, Lucas considered the actors with an open mind, sitting and talk- jing to them in a very casual, pressure-free atmosphere. “We would meet with the actors,” Gurland recalled, “but we never showed them the script—which surprised most of them. They would just come in and chat with George, Rick, and myself about anything and everything—politics, religion, theater. In fact, we talked about everything except for Star Wars. George was looking to find out who the person was and how he or ; she matched the vision he had of a particu- lar character.” “I was looking for specific personality traits and charismatic qualities,” Lucas added. “I wanted to get a feeling about their natures by the way they carried themselves. Since I was most interested in the ensemble, and how the characters would play against each other, I was mainly trying to find the right pieces of the overall puzzle.” One piece of the puzzle that fell sub- limely into place was Liam Neeson, cast in the pivotal role of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Because the character had been described as a man in his sixties in the script, Gurland had looked initially for older actors; and yet, inexplicably, Irish-born Liam Neeson—a much younger man—kept appearing on her A-list. Certainly Neeson had the credentials. He had been nominated for an Academy Award for his title role in Schindler's List; and had since become an international motion picture star through his lead performances in films such as Rob Roy, Michael Collins, and 43Les Misérables. But, in addition to the age issue, the filmmakers had envisioned an American actor in the role of Qui-Gon. “I kept putting Liam’s name down,” Gurland said, “even though I was looking for an American actor. He had so many of the right elements for the character. He had that mythic hero quality and a strong physical and spiritual presence.” In addition, the filmmakers began to consider the fact that a man of Neeson’s age, as opposed to an older actor, would be more plausible as a Jedi war- rior. A fortuitous chain of events would lead to Neeson’s casting. True to his usual style when interviewing actors, Lucas avoided the topic of Star Wars altogether. “We actually talked about kids,” Neeson recalled. “George is a family man, and I have two little boys— and that’s what we talked about. The only time Star Wars came up was as I was leaving, when I said to him, ‘For what it’s worth, George, I would love to be a part of this film.” Soon thereafter, Rick McCallum was in negotiations with Neeson, and the actor was 44 cast. “Liam Neeson is a master Jedi,” George Lucas commented, “the center of the movie—just like Alec Guinness was in the first movie. When you start to cast a charac- ter like this, you think, ‘Where are we going to find another Alec Guinness? Where are we going to find someone with that kind of nobility, that kind of strength, and that kind of center?’ Liam was the guy who could do it. There wasn’t anybody else who could do it. And when we saw him in the part, it was like, ‘Of course. It’s a natural’ He had the Presence we needed. He was tall and very strong, with a powerful nature. And like Alec Guinness in the original movies, he was an actor that other members of the cast looked up to.” For his part, Neeson thought of Qui-Gon as a timeless sort of soul. “He is almost like a monk,” Neeson observed, “an old-time warrior who is wise and quite philosophical, yet very skilled in martial arts. He has incredible confidence, as well as a magical quality that enables him to see into the future. He is not really a rebel, but he has his own code.” To prepare for the role, Neeson not only watched all three original Star Wars movies again, he also reviewed The Seven Samurai. “I wanted to get a feel for the depiction of characters with great dignity and courage.” Cast in the role of Qui-Gon’s pupil, Obi- Wan Kenobi, was Ewan McGregor, best known for his performance in Trainspotting. When McGregor first met with Robin Gurland, his wife was pregnant; but their baby daughter would be a year old before the actor was officially cast as Obi-Wan. The challenge of casting the role was to find an actor who would be believable as a young Alec Guinness. Armed with pictures of Guinness as a young man, Gurland selected fifty actors who had potential. “I asked Liam Neeson portrays pivotal role of Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn,McGregor as Qui-Gon’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. Robin to do a composite split screen on tape,” McCallum said, “so that we could run pictures of those fifty actors against those of young Alec Guinness.” Among those who fared well in the comparison was Ewan McGregor. “Ewan had the same kind of physique as Alec,” Gurland commented. “And then, the first time I met him, it was evident that he could play the character. There was no doubt in my mind.” McGregor’s first meeting with George Lucas—like Liam Neeson’s—consisted of easy conversation about children, and then moved to talk of Star Wars. “He mentioned how long it had taken him to shoot the first trilogy,” McGregor said, “and how old his kids would be when he completed the new three films.” Through that conversation, Lucas learned that Denis Lawson, who had played the character of Wedge in all three Star Wars films, was McGregor’s uncle. In a sense, through that familial connection, McGregor had lived with Star Wars his whole life, and had grown up fascinated with the trilogy. By the end of the meeting, Lucas was satisfied that he had found his Obi-Wan. “Ewan McGregor is the young Turk of the European film community,” Lucas observed. “He is an extremely strong actor and he has the energy, the grace, and the enthusiasm to play a young Obi-Wan Kenobi.” While many of the actors would go through physical training to prepare for the filming of Episode I, McGregor, alone, was faced with the additional challenge of train- ing his voice and learning a dialect that would more closely resemble Alec Guinness’s from the previous movies. “There was some- thing very paternal and calming about his voice,” McGregor explained. “I had to under- go a lot of dialogue coaching to get a younger-sounding version of that voice. It was quite tricky.” No role was more difficult to cast than that of nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker—and both Robin Gurland and the filmmakers had known from the beginning that it would be. The child cast in the role would have to be a good actor, obviously, but would also have to possess an intelligence and even a dignity that would make him believable as “the cho- sen one.” “Children’s roles are usually not so complex,” Gurland observed, “because there are very few child actors who have that range of emotion.” Rather than set up open casting calls— as is customary in the casting of young chil- dren—Gurland met with child actors one by one, in part to ensure secrecy. Before it was over, Gurland would meet and/or audition close to three thousand children. Early in the process, she met a five-year-old named Jake Lloyd. “He was too young at the time,” Gurland recalled, “but even then there was something magical about him, a quality that was perfect for Anakin. So I kept him in mind, thinking that by the time we started 45shooting, he might be the right age.” Two years later, the role still had not been cast— and Jake Lloyd, as little boys tend to do, had grown. “Suddenly, he was seven years old; so I sent him for a screen test with two other boys at Skywalker Ranch.” Lloyd tested well, and he was cast as Anakin Skywalker. “Jake Lloyd was a natural,” Lucas said. “He was bouncy, cheerful, everything we wanted. He reminded me of a young Luke Skywalker; and that was good because he had to embody the same presence that Luke had in the first film.” Although Lloyd had already appeared in Unhook the Stars and Jingle All the Way by the time he was cast in Episode I, he was anything but unaffected by the news of his casting. “Robin called my agent and asked, ‘How would Jake and his parents like to spend the summer in London?’” Lloyd recalled. “And when I found out, I screamed, ‘Oooaaah!’ It was very cool. I started bawl- ing, I was so happy! Now everyone will know who is behind the mask of Darth Vader!” Cast in the dual role of fourteen-year-old Queen Amidala and her handmaiden Padmé was sixteen-year-old Natalie Portman. 46 Portman was already a seasoned professional, having played roles in The Professional, Everyone Says I Love You, Mars Attacks!, Beautiful Girls, and Heat. In addition to her film work, Portman was scheduled to make her Broadway debut in the title role of The Diary of Anne Frank. Robin Gurland thought of the wise- beyond-her-years, graceful Portman the moment George Lucas first described the character of the Queen to her. After meeting with Gurland and then Lucas, Portman was offered the role. “Natalie is very strong and mature for her age,” Lucas noted. “And like Carrie Fisher, she had the personality to carry the role of a leader.” The challenge of playing two roles in one film was one that appealed to the young actress. “It was exciting for me because I really had to make the two characters differ- ent so that it wouldn’t spoil the surprise when Padmé’s true identity is revealed,” Portman said. “I did two different voices and tried to move differently, as well. Padmé was more physical than the Queen, for example.” Portman developed two different dialects as well, through the help of dialect coach Joan Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker and Natalie Portman as Padmé.WeDiarmid as Senator ine and Pernilla as Shmi, Anakin’s Washington. “For Padmé, I played with my own voice; but when I was the Queen, we made up an accent that was kind of like the fake British accent people did back in the days of old-school Hollywood.” The only on-screen actor from the first trilogy to reprise his role in Episode I was Ian McDiarmid, who would return—without old-age makeup—as a younger version of Palpatine, the aging Emperor seen in Return of the Jedi. Episode I picks up the story with Palpatine as a senator of the Republic who is already implementing plans that will lead to the formation of his empire. In addition to his work in Return of the Jedi, McDiarmid had enjoyed a career on stage and in feature films such as Dragonslayer, Gorky Park, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Restoration before joining the Episode I cast. McDiarmid also runs the prestigious Almeida Theatre in London. For the role of Shmi, Anakin’s mother, Lucas envisioned a warm but solid woman. “She is caught in a struggle,” Lucas com- mented. “She loves her son, but she wants a better life for him and has to let him go. I wanted to be able to read that struggle on her face.” Pernilla August, the Swedish actress who would ultimately play the role, had starred in two episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and was therefore familiar to both Lucas and Rick McCallum. “We were initially thinking of someone British and older for Shmi,” McCallum stated, “but the moment you looked at Pernilla, you could see that she had the right qualities for the character. We brought her in to meet George and do a screen test, and it all hap- pened from there.” August herself had some concerns, which she expressed in her meeting with Lucas. “I told him that I was worried about my Swedish accent,” August related, “and he said to me, ‘Don’t worry about it; Shmi comes from a Swedish galaxy!” From that point on, I had complete confidence, because I knew George had confidence in me.” One of the film’s most familiar faces is Samuel L. Jackson, who appears as the Jedi Council member Mace Windu. Jackson gained stature as a film actor through his perfor- mances in Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Sphere, and Jungle Fever. The Jedi role in Episode I was more modest than any he’d played in a 4]long time—yet the actor actively petitioned for the role. While on a talk show in London publicizing his new film—and knowing that the production was being filmed nearby— Jackson let it be known that he would do anything to be in the new Star Wars movie. Gurland heard about Jackson’s on-air com- ments the next day, and immediately got in touch with his agent. “Sam’s approach was so genuine,” Gurland remarked. “But he also happened to be right for the character— 44 although the role is definitely different from the other parts he’s played.” “Tm a huge fan of the Star Wars saga,” Jackson said, “and it was an experience I really wanted. When I was on that talk show, I guess I saw an opportunity—so I just said it. ‘T’d really like to be in the new Star Wars! And it was the truth.” Stuntman Ray Park was initially cast as Darth Maul primarily because of his swords- manship and martial arts skills—both of Clockwise from top left: Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu), Ray Park (Darth Maul), Oliver Ford Davies (Sio Bibble), and Terence Stamp (Chancellor Valoise from top left: Brown (Ric Olié), Quarshie (Captain ), Anthony Daniels )), and Kenny Baker 2). which would prove valuable in the long lightsaber battle between Darth Maul, Qui- Gon, and Obi-Wan. But after testing him in makeup and costume, the filmmakers real- ized that the actor embodied all of the qual- ities of the Sith Lord. Gurland assembled an impressive list of talents for other supporting roles, as well. “Tt was thrilling for me to be able to cast excellent actors such as Terence Stamp, who plays Chancellor Valorum, Ralph Brown as the Naboo pilot Ric Olié, Oliver Ford Davies as Sio Bibble, and Hugh Quarshie as Captain Panaka,” Gurland said. “These were smaller roles that, typically, they wouldn’t do. But because they all wanted to work with George, everyone said, ‘Absolutely! No ques- tion!’ We also brought back Anthony Daniels as See-Threepio and Kenny Baker as Artoo- Detoo. And to play Wald, one of Anakin’s friends, George wanted Warwick Davis who, ever since Return of the Jedi and then 49Willow, has become part of the family.” In addition to the on-screen roles, Episode I would boast a number of promi- nent characters realized entirely through computer animation; yet those characters still needed vocal performances to bring them to life. In the case of Jar Jar, who would play a major role in the movie, not only vocal talent was needed. Lucas also wanted an actor on the set who would inter- act with the other actors, develop the char- acter, and provide invaluable reference to the CG team when it came time to animate the Gungan. Tt was a task actor Ahmed Best was eager to take on. Gurland discovered the actor in a performance of Stomp, the percus- sion theater show. “George knew he wanted a bumbling type,” Gurland said, “but there wasn’t any definitive description of Jar Jar, other than he was high energy, comedic, and somewhat improvisational. So when I went to this performance of Stomp and saw Ahmed moving his arms with a kitchen sink wrapped around his neck, I immediately thought, ‘He’s Jar Jar!’” Without explaining her pur- pose, Gurland arranged a meeting with Best, 50 which she videotaped. “I asked him to do a bit of improv for me. I told him to imagine himself as a very gangly being who is eating a clam—and I saw Jar Jar come to life.” Gurland rushed the tape to Lucas and McCallum, who were both similarly impressed. “Originally,” Lucas recalled, “we wanted Ahmed because he was so good at using his body, and we were looking for someone who could perform unique body movements. But then I had him do the dialogue, and I liked Warwick Davis in costume as a Rodian portrays Anakin’s friend Wald. Top right and above: Although Jar Jar would be realized entirely through computer graphics, actor Ahmed Best provided both the character's vocal perfor mance and an on-set charac terization that provided reference for the animators. Best was fitted with a cos- tume to ensure correct eye- lines and give the CG team reference as to how light would play on Jar Jar’s skin and clothing.left: Brian Blessed, ‘provided the voice for Wess, on the set with Best. The vocal per- ees for all the major CG Necters were on-set as fight: Andy Secombe, what he did there, as well. As soon as we started shooting, it became obvious that he believed in his lines and in his character. He found the meaning behind the character.” Jar Jar was perhaps the most risky char- acter of all—not only because he would be entirely computer generated, but because he was the first truly comedic character ever to inhabit a Star Wars movie. “George told me that we were really going out on a limb,” Best recalled. “See-Threepio was funny, but in a very formal, dry way. And Chewbacca got some laughs, but he was basically just a big bouncer for the Millennium Falcon. Jar Jar was the first outright comic character.” Despite the fact that his face and body would not be seen in the final film, Best was hon- ored to create the character. “The original Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw. And, as a kid, I had the Star Wars bed sheets, pil- low cases, curtains, and the action figures!” Other vocal talents were hired on the basis of tapes gathered by Gurland and reviewed by Lucas. “For the voices of the characters,” Lucas said, “I had a rough idea of what they should sound like. But some- times, after listening to one of Robin's tapes, I would change my mind and go ina completely different direction. It was an evolving process.” While, typically, voice talent would not be hired until postproduction, Lucas cast the voices of CG characters such as Watto and the Gungan Boss Nass before cameras rolled, so that those actors could be on the set, relating to other actors in the scenes. In addition, as was the case with Jar Jar, the on-set performances would provide the CG animators with excellent reference when it came time to animate the characters. In looking for the voice of Boss Nass, Gurland took her cues from the character's appearance, as drawn by the art department. “Boss Nass was bigger than life,” Gurland recalled, “and seemed to have a kind of bravado. I had brought in actor Brian Blessed for a general meeting with George, and he blew us away—so I knew I wanted him involved, but I didn’t know yet where. He was so grand and commanding! When Boss Nass had to be cast three or four months later, Brian immediately came to mind.” Another actor who would perform on-set was Andy Secombe, who provided the voice 5]for Watto. Stand-up comedians Greg Proops and Scott Capurro were also pegged for the two-headed Podrace announcer, who would be realized through computer animation. With the cast assembled, George Lucas gathered the actors together for a complete reading of the script shortly before the start of filming. The reading allowed the actors to familiarize themselves with their roles and the overall story line, and also served to break the ice between people who, in most cases, had never met before this day. “Usually when you go through the first read- ing,” Lucas commented, “you expect to have a lot of hurdles to overcome. But that read- ing went great. Everybody sailed right through it. Everything worked. Because we had terrific actors, the dialogue sounded plausible and realistic.” Episode I had been in preproduction for nearly two years as the summer of 1996 rolled around. The screenplay was complet- ed, more or less; thousands of designs had been realized; and a majority of the roles had been cast. Now, with the shoot less than a year away, the filmmakers turned their 52 attention to the actual building of the pro- duction elements. “George had developed every single aspect of the film in his mind and on paper,” Rick McCallum noted, “but now, sets needed to be built, creatures had to be made, costumes needed to be sewn. The time had come to make all those ideas a reality.” In August 1996, Gavin Bocquet and a small art department arrived at Leavesden Studios in London to do just that. Leavesden was not, in fact, a “studio” at all, but rather Above: Stand-up comediz Greg Proops and Scott Capurro performed in el rate makeup as the two- headed Podrace announce providing crucial referes for the CG team that eve ally realized the charac Below: Leavesden Studies outside of London, was leased by the production two and a half years, a ing Lucas and McCallum measure of flexibility in shooting schedule.A total of sixty-some built for the pro- the majority being = erected at em Studios. ‘The entire build was sted by production Gavin Bocquet. an abandoned British aerodrome that had been used for years as an aircraft engine fac- tory by Rolls Royce. The 286-acre site had subsequently been converted into a facility for film use. Leavesden was perfect for the produc- tion of Episode I, for a number of reasons. Not only was there a tradition of shooting Star Wars movies in England—all three in the first trilogy had been shot at Elstree Studios—there was a practical considera- tion. McCallum was able to lease the facility for a full two and a half years, allowing the production company to leave sets up and return to pick up shots well after principal photography had wrapped—an important aspect of the Young Indy-style filmmaking structure McCallum and Lucas intended to implement for Episode I. Bocquet, whose job it would be to transform the cavernous soundstages into movie sets, observed, “Normally studios expect to clear out one group of sets and get the next film right in to pay the rent. It was a great advantage to Lucasfilm to be able to leave sets up, so they could come back and shoot newly written bits and pieces, if necessary.” With a main building, nine independent soundstages, and one of the largest backlots in the world (one-hundred-plus acres), the site was also large enough to accommodate what promised to be a huge production. 53Top left: Rick McCallum George Lucas in the Epi I production offices at Leavesden Studios. Top right, and left: The Naboo palace courtyard set under construction at Leavesden Studios. Bocquet and his art department arrived at the studio first, followed in September by a crew of draftsmen. “Then,” McCallum recalled, “in December, we started building the sets—very slowly. Traditionally, you throw a thousand people on a crew and they build the sets in a very short period of time—but you don’t get to interact with them, and I didn’t want George to have to go through that. So, instead, we’d have eight to twelve people building a set for a month. Throughout this entire period, we had a very 54 small crew over in England—maybe twelve people.” In some respects, production design for Episode I was unconventional, since many of the designs for sets, locations, hardware, spacecraft, droids, and costumes had already been developed by Doug Chiang and his team in the two-year conceptualizing phase of preproduction. Bocquet’s task was to design interiors, flesh out the already-developed designs, and make them, in McCallum’s words, “a reality.”to full practical in Bocquet and his built partial sets by bluescreen to ite the later of computer- set images. Bocquet began by familiarizing himself with the preliminary concepts and translat- ing them into construction blueprints. Though some concessions to the physical world had to be made, Bocquet attempted to only improve the designs as they took shape jn the real world, rather than compromise them. “We took the original drawings,” Bocquet said, “and incorporated them into our designs, without betraying the initial concepts.” For the Naboo spacecraft, for example, Chiang’s team had conceived a sleek-looking exterior; but it was up to Bocquet and his team to design the interior. “We were completely responsible for the interior design of that ship, but we always stayed in line with the spirit of the way it looked on the outside.” Also in line with the original concepts were the real elements Bocquet incorporated into his designs, whenever possible. “All the Star Wars films have been based on real places, generally. So we tried to come up with environments and architectural styles that had some basis in reality, to give the audience something to key into. If you design things that are completely in the abstract, something not of this world, there is less chance that the audience will believe in it. George believes, rightly so, that the more real things you can get into your images, the more believable those images will be.” Another unusual aspect of Episode I's production design was that many of the film’s environments and settings would be created through computer graphics—either in their entirety, or partially, with digital imagery being inserted into bluescreen areas surrounding the practical stage sets. Such a scheme required that Bocquet work in close collaboration with the CG team from Industrial Light & Magic. “We had to deter- mine what portions of the sets should be constructed on the soundstages and what portions should be done on computer back at ILM,” Bocquet explained. “Since we were producing part of the film long before the digital work was under way, we all had to make assumptions about what we should build and what could be better achieved at ILM.” While this “digital backlot” approach would be used more extensively in Episode I 55than in any film in history, Bocquet was not a complete stranger to the technology, nor to the impact it would have on his produc- tion design assignment. “I didn’t see the bluescreens or the effects as intrusions to my work,” Bocquet related, “because those things have always been a part of what we do. Now it is CG that is allowing the director to extend sets and backgrounds; but the process is no different than it was years ago 56 when they were extending sets through matte paintings or foreground miniatures. The idea is the same: here is an environ- ment—how do we produce it in the most visually dynamic, yet economical way?” Upon his arrival at Leavesden, Bocquet initiated the building of sets for the first Above: Reggia Palace in Caserta, Italy, was chosen as the setting for the interiors of Queen Amidala’s palace. Left: Director of photogra- phy David Tattersall and first assistant director Chris Newman.part of the shooting schedule. A break in the middle of that schedule, during which the cast and crew would travel to locations in Italy and Tunisia, would give Bocquet and the construction crews time to strike those sets and erect new ones for the final weeks of filming. All together, Bocquet and his crew would build more than sixty sets—inte- riors on stage at Leavesden, and exteriors in Tunisia. “Even with all the digital sets we were going to be doing,” McCallum noted, “we still had to build sixty to seventy sets. This movie was so plot-driven, every page and an eighth we were in a new set. There would be a minute’s worth of dialogue and, boom, we'd be onto another set. It was con- stant. plot, thrust, and movement. It was insane.” To accomplish the sixty- to seventy- set build, a huge woodworking shop was eventually established at Leavesden, where up to one hundred carpenters labored for many months. Most of the sets were first built in miniature, enabling Lucas to make minor adjustments and to plan camera moves and angles in advance. As is always the case in production, many of those preplanned cam- era angles were changed once Lucas was behind the camera; and so Bocquet attempt- ed to make each set as flexible as possible, to accommodate last-minute changes in camera position and shot design. Among the interior sets built at Leavesden for the first weeks of shooting were Palpatine’s quarters, the Galactic Senate chamber, the Mos Espa arena pit hangar, Watto’s junk shop, and Anakin’s hovel—exteriors of which would be built in Tunisia. Anakin’s home, in fact, was the first set built for the movie. “George wanted Anakin’s hovel to look like Luke Skywalker’s home in the first film,” Bocquet said. “That set had featured sixties-style furniture and an overall soft look, but with techie pieces here and there. Since we knew Anakin worked on things like the Podracer engines and his droid, we made his bedroom into a kind of workshop.” While no full sets would have to be built on location in Italy, rooms within the palace at Caserta—chosen as the setting for interi- ors of Queen Amidala’s palace—did have to be dressed appropriately. Bocquet and Rick McCallum had discovered the palace when, early in preproduction, they had conducted their extensive location scout, driving roughly four thousand miles across Europe over the course of four weeks. Their travels included a week and a half in Portugal and another few weeks in Italy. “We were looking for grand palaces,” Bocquet recalled, “grand corridors, grand rooms. It had to be monu- mental. At first, we weren’t sure if we were going to find all the locations for the palace in one place.” But, at the Reggia Palace in Caserta, they did find such a grand place. “As soon as we walked in, we felt we had found he right location.” McCallum and Bocquet feared, however, that Reggia Palace would not be available for filming, since it was an enormously popular tourist location. In fact, after the Vatican, the palace is one of the most visited sites in Italy. Fortunately, McCallum’s production team was able to negotiate a schedule with the director of the palace that would allow the production to shoot there for four days. ‘Tt was tricky at first,” McCallum admitted, “but we were able to work out a schedule in which we'd start shooting after the palace was closed to the public, from about midday to midnight.” Certain palace interiors would still have to be built at Leavesden to accom- modate scenes that featured explosions orchestrated by special effects coordinator Peter Hutchinson and his crew. ra 57The next location stop on the schedule would be Tunisia, where all the Tatooine exteriors would be filmed—just as they were for the original Star Wars. For the sake of continuity, Lucas had hoped to return to the same Tunisian locations. “George loves the light, the color of the sand, and the atmo- sphere in Tunisia,” Bocquet commented. Surprisingly, because only loose records had been kept, no one was entirely sure, at 58 the start, just where those original sites were located. But then a fortuitous letter was sent to Lucasfilm. “It was from an archaeologist, David West Reynolds,” McCallum said, “who had traveled to Tunesia to research the orig- inal sites of Star Wars. He knew exactly where the locations were! So we brought him on, and he later wound up working here at Skywalker Ranch.” When the original Tunisian locations Scenes on the desert planet of Tatooine were filmed in Tunisia, just as they had been for the first Star Wars. Since the original Tunisian sites had grown too modern- ized, production had to find locations in other regions of the country.department head Ty and set decorator =r Walpole devised hun- is of Star Wars-style s for the film. : The kitchen in the alker hovel. Lightsabers. were scouted, however, McCallum and Bocquet found that they were unsuitably modernized now, twenty years after the mak- ing of Star Wars. Tatooine-like locations were discovered nearby, however, in Tozeur, Medenine, and Hadada. Finding the Tunisian locations was particularly satisfying for Rick McCallum. “We could immediately visualize the town and all the buildings,” McCallum said. “I felt as if Mos Espa was coming alive in front of my very eyes.” Working closely with Bocquet through- out the build were prop department head Ty Teiger and set decorator Peter Walpole, who built an array of Star Wars-style props, both from scratch and by mixing and matching existing pieces. Qui-Gon’s communication device, the comlink, for example, was assem- bled with parts from a lady's electric razor. Hundreds of gadgets were built, as were prop guns, fashioned out of wood and resin, then painted to give them a metallic sheen. The lightsabers were modified only slightly from the ones already familiar to Star Wars fans—although they would see much more use in Episode I. “I wanted to use the lightsaber a lot more in this film,” Lucas noted. “It is a wonderful weapon, because you can do almost anything with it. It is the ultimate weapon, even though it is not very high-tech. For this movie, I wanted some- thing that was lethal, but elegant and sophisticated.” A new lightsaber design would be the double-sided saber used by Darth Maul in his duel with Qui-Gon and Obi- Wan. As in the original films, the visual effects team later would add the actual glowing saber effect. One of the biggest prop assignments was the building of the Podracers, which would ultimately combine elements of the concept art illustrations with Bocquet’s and the prop department's designs. To gather basic build- ing materials for the Podracers, Rick McCallum, Peter Walpole, and Gavin Bocquet went to Arizona, where they purchased $60,000 worth of surplus military aircraft parts. “We wound up with eighteen cockpits and engines—half of which were inspired by 59Doug Chiang’s team and half that were con- ceived by ours,” Bocquet explained. “Because of this mix, there was a richness to the Podracers that you wouldn’t find had all of them come out of the same mind.” A closely related department was wardrobe, headed by costume designer Trisha Biggar, another veteran of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Art director Iain McCaig had designed the costumes as sketches dur- 60 ing the two-year concept art phase, but it was Biggar’s job to translate those drawings into functional costumes. “It is one thing to design and sketch a costume on paper,” George Lucas noted, “and quite another to actually build it. Trisha and I would sit and look at the designs, trying to figure out how they would work in reality. She‘d point to something on the drawing and ask, ‘What's this?” And I'd say, ‘It’s a pencil flare’ Well, a pencil flare looked great in a drawing, but it couldn’t be translated into the real thing. Trisha had a huge job in just translating all of these designs into cloth and fabric and Above: Some of the props and weapons were built fro scratch, others were assem- bled from bits and pieces of existing electronic and mechanical items. Left: Costume designer Trisha Biggar,lus military aircraft ts were purchased by pro- ction as a cost-effective expedient means of jing Podracers. e: One of Anakin’s cer engines. materials that would actually work and not look silly.” Biggar’s assignment was also an organi- zational and logistical challenge, since the show would require the building, from scratch, of over eleven hundred complete costumes. “Just making that many cos- tumes,” Lucas said, “getting them manufac- tured and getting them to the set on time was a huge job. Trisha also had to work out all the colors of the costumes, and how those colors would play against the colors on the sets. We had endless discussions about various shades of colors and what I wanted, color-wise, on each set. She would take fab- rics and stand them on the sets, or do mock- ups of various costumes to see if they would work in those sets. There were a lot of com- plex things that had to be dealt with.” Accessories also fell under Biggar’s 6]domain. “Whether it was a beaded necklace or a holster for a pistol or a helmet, that was her responsibility. The list went on and on. And not only did all of that stuff have to be built, it had to be maintained throughout the making of the movie. Trisha did a fantas- tic job of managing this huge undertaking.” Biggar initiated that undertaking by first studying Iain McCaig’s drawings and making herself familiar with the various cul- tural influences at work. “There was an Asian influence,” Biggar said, “but there was also a mixture of North African and fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe.” Once costume concepts were approved, Biggar set up a huge wardrobe department at Leavesden Studios that included a costume prop depart- be ment—where headdresses and armor were made—a dye room, and an accessory depart- ment responsible for making hats, jewelry, and other wardrobe accoutrements. Two hun- dred fifty costumes were built for principals, while background characters—human and otherwise—required an additional five thou- sand pieces of clothing, all of which were created from scratch. But Biggar had to concern herself with more than sheer volume and the style of cos- tume; she also had to consult with stunt coordinator Nick Gillard, as well as the art and creature departments, to ensure the cos- tumes would accommodate the action sequences. “We had to work very closely with the creature and stunt departments,” Biggar Far left: Queen Amidala a military garb. Left: The costume worn Alec Guinness in the ori nal Star Wars was metice- lously redesigned for E McGregor.SP variety of extraordinary, “rate gowns was designed “ter the character of Queen Sridala.said. “By consulting with them, we learned which fabrics we could use, and which would restrict characters’ movement. We also had to stick to fabrics that wouldn’t wear too heavily on the material used to make the creatures’ skins.” An additional task in building the cos- tumes for Obi-Wan was matching the look established in the costumes worn by Alec Guinness in the original Star Wars. “We had the original costume sent to us from the archives at Skywalker Ranch,” Biggar explained. “The costume was twenty years old, so we had to do quite a bit of testing to see how we could ‘freshen up’ the look. We presented George with a variety of shades until he was satisfied.” 64 The most challenging character to dress, Left: The gown worn by @ however—and the most rewarding—was young Queen in the movie: young Queen Amidala, who would be seen in finale. Above: Trisha Biggar and Lucas examine a costume under construction. a variety of extraordinary gowns in the course of the story. The overall style for the Queen’s wardrobe was reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance period, and the color palette was meant to suggest those shades found in Italian architecture. “The costumes for the Queen were all very large,” Biggar noted. “Each had a very different look, and there was a different style of costume for each part of the film. They were also very heavy, made from a variety of fabrics.” The showstopper of the Queen’s gowns is the one she wears for the ceremonial parade in the film’s finale. Lucas had envisioned a dress that would convey a sense of joy and celebration. “It had to be very light and beautiful,” Biggar said, “with the feeling of a wedding dress. George also liked a drawing Tain McCaig had done that showed a very large, unusual collar at the back of the dress.” With McCaig, Biggar sorted through many possible fabrics and colors for the dress and built several versions until a final design was approved. Just as the costumes and many of there design effects isor Nick Dudman. film’s environments had been predesigned by the art department, most of the alien char- acters that would populate the film had been developed by the time crews arrived at Leavesden to begin building the production. But it was up to creature effects supervisor Nick Dudman to create many of those char- acters, either as animatronic puppets or as masks and suits that would be worn by per- formers. Appropriately, Dudman got his start in films as an apprentice to British makeup artist Stuart Freeborn, working on the char- acter of Yoda for The Empire Strikes Back. Since then, Dudman had worked on several Lucasfilm productions, including Return of the Jedi, Willow, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Dudman was already at Leavesden, working on Mortal Kombat: Annihilation when he received a visit from Rick McCallum. Two days later, he was on board Episode I. “Nick had a very tough job in front of him,” McCallum conceded, “because he had a lot of creatures to design and build in only six months. I'd actually hired him a year ear- lier, but we couldn’t let him get started until January 1997—just six months before the shoot—because we were still waiting to see how far we were going to push CG. We want- ed to do as many characters through CG as possible. For a long time we didn’t know for sure which characters or how many would have to be done with puppets or masks. Eventually, it came down to cost. There were some characters that would be cheaper and easier to do with animatronic puppets and masks—and those were the characters that fell into Nick’s lap just a few months before production.” Dudman started the assignment by visit- ing Skywalker Ranch, where he explored the Ranch archives to determine which of the original creatures might be reused for the new film. While there, he also read the script and did a breakdown of all the scenes that would involve practical creatures. “I would look at a character and ask myself, ‘Can we fit a person in there?’” Dudman explained. “Tf the answer was yes, then it would be done with a suit, or possibly just a prosthetic makeup, if the effect was subtle enough. If it was a character that couldn’t accommo- date a performer inside, then it had to be a puppet.” Some creatures were so out- landish, they could only be done as computer- generated characters. “The creatures involved in the Podrace, for example, are primarily CG. But for the street scenes on Tatooine, we created every possible alien we could come up with.” When he returned to Leavesden, Dudman assembled a team that included Chris Barton, who would handle all the animatron- ics and engineering chores, key sculptor Gary Pollard, and bodysuit fabricator Monique Brown. In total, a team of fifty-five crafts- people was required to create the movie's many creatures. 65Among the first to be featured in the film were the Neimoidians, Nute and Rune, who orchestrate—with the Sith Lords—the invasion of Naboo. The Neimoidians were added to Dudman’s slate rather late in the creature build, however, since they had been designated as CG characters until just twelve weeks before the start of principal photogra- phy. “Again,” McCallum explained, “it was just a matter of economics. For as little screen time as these characters would have, it was faster and cheaper to do them with actors in masks and suits.” Once the decision had been made to do the Neimoidians practically, actors Silas Carson and Jerome Blake were cast in the roles of Nute and Rune. With little time to build the characters, Dudman and his team created animatronic puppet heads that were capable of lip sync, delivering them just one day before they were due to appear on the set. The heads would be worn by Carson and Blake, but were themselves radio controlled. “My key sculptor, Gary Pollard, has an amaz- 66 ing ability to create an entire race of char- acters out of the most simple forms,” Dudman commented. “He was able to sculpt Neimoidians that not only looked interest- ing, but also looked different from one another.” The senators featured in the Senate chamber sequence and the background Jedi Council members were also key characters Lucas toured all of the p duction departments on a daily basis. Above: Lucas checks on the progress of creature designs with Nick Dudman, creature design effects supervisor. Left: Lucas inspects a mask for the alien Gamorrean species.built by Dudman. Several designs had been developed by the art department at Skywalker Ranch, designated simply with numbers: Senator 1, Senator 2, Jedi 1, Jedi 2, and so on. “We had to come up with names for them,” Dudman said. “I decided to call one of the Jedi Plonkoon, because we called my son that during the first year of his life. I wrote down Plonkoon, George crossed out the n and Plo Koon was born! Swokes came from my wife’s name, Sue Oaks, and George went with that.” Although Jar Jar Binks was always going to be a CG character, Dudman’s team was tasked with building a suit and headpiece that would be worn by Jar Jar performer Ahmed Best. The head, worn on top of Best's own, would make the actor the same six- foot-plus height of the character—thus ensuring the eyelines would be correct when other actors interacted with Jar Jar. The mul- ticolored suit would provide ILM with vital lighting reference from the set. Built from a ‘Ser the Neimoidians, monic heads capable sync action were cre- Bere, key sculptor Pollard works on the @ “or the viceroy Rune Actor Jerome Blake with his character's controlled head prior ting. The actors inside eds, Jerome Blake and on, were cooled een takes by air ef through a tube.lifecast of Best, the suit was extraordinarily well fitted. “We were very pleased,” Dudman commented. “It didn’t even look like he was wearing a suit, it fit him so well. It just looked like body painting.” 68 In addition to new characters, Dudman and his team reprised creatures from the original trilogy—most notably, the Jedi Master Yoda. This would be a younger Yoda, however, as well as a new and improved ver- sion. While the original Yoda—designed by Stuart Freeborn—had been made out of foam latex, the Episode I character was fashioned out of silicone, a much more realistic, Above, left and right: The on-set Jar Jar suit under construction, Left: Practical masks, suits. and prosthetic makeup were required for sequences such as those in the senate chamber and the Jedi Council.ght: Silas Carson awaits hours-long makeup lication that will trans- him into the moidian Nute Gunray. left: A younger ver- of Jedi Master Yoda was ezted with assistance from ak Oz, who would return create Yoda's perfor- e. Here, Gary Pollard cs on a key piece of 2's costume, right: Oz and fellow eteer Kathy Smee, fleshier material that would give the puppet greater freedom of movement. Improvements were also made in the puppet’s mecha- nisms—particularly after discussions with Frank Oz, who had originally puppeteered the character and provided the voice, as he would do again for Episode I. Oz recalled that one of the difficulties in puppeteering the original Yoda was that he had to carry the puppet’s weight on his mid- dle finger, also used to operate the charac- ter’s eyebrows. In addition, because of the configuration of the mechanisms, each time Yoda’s brows moved, his mouth would move as well. For the new Yoda, the brow control was taken away from the main puppeteer and radio-controlled by another operator from off camera. A smile mechanism was also added—although the actual lip-syncing would still be performed by Oz, to match what had been done in the previous films. Wookiees would also make a repeat appearance, specifically in the Senate sequence in Coruscant. Rather than make a new Wookiee suit, Dudman pulled the old Chewbacca costume out of the Lucasfilm archives. To create the illusion of three Wookiees, the suit—fitted on a performer— was shot separately, three different times, altered slightly for each individual shot. “We would move the Wookiee into a new position on the set and add more or less white hair to it,” Dudman revealed. “When the shots were put together, we ended up with three differ- ent Wookiees out of one suit.” Dudman and his crew would work for several months on the Episode I project, which became a huge challenge as more creatures were added to their slate. “The 63scale of the movie was colossal,” Dudman offered. “We created over a hundred forty separate aliens in a short period of time. And we couldn’t escape the fact that our work was going to be judged against the work that was done before. There is a very critical audi- ence out there that knows the minutiae of the world George Lucas has created. We knew if we made mistakes, they would pick up on them. Living up to the expectations of the fans was a lot of pressure.” 10 Left: In addition to a such as Samuel L, Ja the Jedi Council was up of humanoid chara played by actors in pi ic makeup—and alien tures realized through matronic puppets. Below left: Wookiee amt Tusken Raider masks. Below right: R2-D2 op: Don Bies.e left: ILM visual 's supervisor John was a constant on-set esence during the shoot. Knoll with producer ck McCallum, 2 right: Mike Lynch, ILM’s model shop, strates the Japanese eteering technique ed to articulate C-3P0 on set. Among those expectations was that the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO would be featured in the new movie—and Lucas did not disap- point. A Leavesden crew under radio-control specialist and chief operator Jolyon Bambridge built over a dozen new R2-D2 units for use in Episode I, in addition to two units that were refitted from the classic trilogy. In addition to the new R2-D2s assembled in England, a crew at ILM devel- oped an upgraded model of its own, powered by wheelchair motors. This unit and its oper- ator, Don Bies, were flown to England and added to the pool of specialized performing robots that could now handle virtually any kind of terrain. Finally, to give R2-D2 a human dimension in certain shots, actor Kenny Baker was hidden inside one of the suits, just as he had been for all three orig- inal Star Wars movies. C-3P0’s design would be modified even more to resemble a skeletal understructure of the droid as he appeared in the first three films. Since the design precluded putting an actor in a suit, the effects crew at ILM took on the assignment of realizing C-3P0. “We knew it would either have to be computer generated or a puppet of some kind,” visual effects supervisor John Knoll explained. Both Knoll and Lucas were familiar with a Japanese puppeteering technique in which the puppeteer dresses in black and stands in front of a black background as he manipu- lates a puppet in front of his body—and both thought the technique might work for C-3P0. Mike Lynch from ILM’s model shop made a crude mock-up puppet, operated by a puppeteer dressed in black, and pho- tographed by John Knoll. The results of the test were promising. “From those tests, we decided that we could shoot scenes with Threepio on the set, and remove the per- former digitally later on.” With the advent of digital technology, removal of puppeteers and operators has become a standard tech- nique in filmmaking. Bits and pieces of imagery are digitally extracted from a “clean plate’—a plate that does not feature the puppeteer or the puppet—and are patched nn into the offending areas, thereby “remov- ing” rigs, wires, or, as in this case, entire human beings. Once on the set, Mike Lynch operated the C-3P0 puppet as actor Anthony Daniels spoke C-3P0's lines from off camera. “Mike had to react to what Anthony was saying,” Knoll C-3P0's operator—who stood directly behind the puppet—was dressed in an easily isolated color to ease the digital removal of the puppeteer in postproduc- tion.said, “and move the puppet accordingly.” In addition to the two “star” droids, ILM’s model shop provided full-scale versions of the battle and destroyer droids, which were used on set for lighting reference and to establish eyelines. All the battle and destroyer droids featured in the film would be computer generated. “We built ten droids,” McCallum said, “but they were for placement only, so they weren't articulated at all. In other cases, we'd have extras dressed in white stand in for the droids on the set, just to give the actors a sense of where they would be in the scene.” While the building of sets, costumes, props, creatures, and droids would continue throughout production, those elements required for the beginning of the shoot were in place by the time George Lucas arrived at Leavesden in June 1997. After three years of preparation, it was time, at last, for cameras to roll on Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. 13osite page: The evil Lord Darth Maul pre- es to confront Qui-Gon in the Tatooine desert. ; George Lucas offi- iy behind the camera for first time in over twenty "IT guess Tm back :" n Thursday, June 26, 1997, JAK Productions—the company formed specifically for the making of Episode I, and named for the first initials of George Lucas’s three children—began principal pho- tography. It was a momentous day, in many respects: a day that had been planned for and worked toward for more than two years; the first day of shooting on a new Star Wars episode in fifteen years; and the first time George Lucas had directed a movie in twenty years. And yet, as is so often the case with momentous occasions, to the people most intimately involved, it felt like just another day. “Before you start shooting,” Lucas observed, “you're in preproduction for months, You go to the studio every day and you look at things and you answer thousands of questions. And when you start filming, you have actors and a camera, but basically you continue to answer thousands of ques- tions—so it feels like a regular day. Sometimes you even forget you're filming a movie, But as soon as Liam Neeson walked on the set, dressed as a Jedi, I said to myself, ‘I guess I’m back: It was as if those twenty years had never elapsed.” Lucas had always intended to direct Episode I. On both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, he had spent as much time on the set as the film directors—so there seemed, in his mind, little reason to turn the reins of Episode I over to someone else. “As much as I wanted to hand over the last two films to other directors,” Lucas noted, “I ended up being there all the time, and I had to work as hard as if I was direct- ing anyway. The other reason I wanted to direct Episode I was that we were going to be attempting new things; and, in truth, I didn’t quite know how we were going to do them—nobody did. So I figured I needed to be there at all times.” In the media, much would be made of Lucas’s return to directing after a twenty- year absence; and yet, for Lucas himself, the transition from producing to directing was of ihlittle consequence. “I've been very involved in my films all along,” Lucas said. “I just haven't been down on the floor, actually doing the directing. In some ways, it is almost easier to direct it yourself, rather than have to tell somebody else to do this or that. But it was not all that different; and it wasn’t a hard thing to get reacquainted with. It was almost as if I'd never stopped direct- ing. In the end, all it meant was that I had to get up early in the morning and go to the set, whether I wanted to or not. And I couldn’t do anything else for those three months—which was kind of fun and liberat- ing. The company had to run itself, and all of my other problems had to go out the win- dow. “The parts of making a movie that I like best are the writing and editing, and I’ve been doing those all along. It’s like building a house. I’ve been involved in doing up the plans and blueprints, and I’ve been in on the process of actually constructing the house. The part I haven't done is actually go out and collect the material. I haven’t cut down 16 the trees and milled the wood and put it on a truck. That’s the way I see my involvement in the filmmaking process for the past twenty years—I’ve skipped the part where you col- lect the material, because it’s not as much fun.” Lucas would be “collecting the material” for Episode I, however; and working along- side him throughout was Rick McCallum. On a typical day, McCallum would get to the stu- dio about two hours before Lucas to confer Above: Lucas, production designer Gavin Bocquet, and director of photography David Tattersall on location. Left: Rick McCallum on the set.