Light & Magic "Morfing." "No more pretending you're dinosaurs."
Parts Five and Six of Lawrence Kasdan's docuseries about ILM
This completes my responses to Lawrence Kasdan’s docuseries about ILM. The first and second responses are here and here.
In the first two responses, I plucked out individual moments from the docuseries that stuck out for me. This time, instead of responding in that way (you’re very capable of watching them yourself, and I’m sure you will, and if you haven’t, you should, they’re great), I’m going to use this time to think about the push-and-pull between the digital and the actual that Star Wars embodies.
The final two installments of Light & Magic move us mostly away from Star Wars and cover the transition from analog to computer-centric moviemaking. “Morfin” (not ‘morphing,’ according to Dennis Muren) and “No more pretending you’re dinosaurs” take us through the early days of digital technology being used in Willow, to the T-1000 of Terminator 2, all the way to Jurassic Park.
The model makers and puppeteers and stop motion artisans are finally (mostly) replaced by the culture of code. It feels like not only a difference in approach, but a generational shift. The late 70s Slip ‘N’ Slide energy replaced by the college dorm keg party energy of the early 90s. (They both have a whole lot of ‘bro’ energy, regardless.)
The documentary doesn’t shy away from how hard this was for many in the model shop, but it ultimately treats the moment like a triumph. Not a triumph of technology over human beings, really, but a triumph over limitations. Once the pixel proves its mettle, freedom is achieved. What once took months can be done in seconds. What required rubber is now done with numbers. Every director interviewed, from Spielberg to Joe Johnston, talks about how they would never go back to the pre-digital era. Software has made their work easier. Which is true in every field, from my job as a writer (hello MacBook and big yellow Publish Button); to the increasing presence of electric cars; to remote work and school.
As a fan of exactly these kind of movies I know this huge leap forward (which is decades behind us now) made everything from the Matrix to the MCU possible. Some of my favorite films, even beyond Star Wars, were not just made better by digital effects, they were made possible.
So why did I feel ambivalent as I watched this transition take place over these last two episodes. Why did this feel, sometimes, like something was lost?
I think part of the reaction is just the nature of watching a story unfold. This documentary has characters, and we root for characters in stories like they’re heroes, even if they’re just people at work. The Jurassic Park section of the Light & Magic might as well be called Phil Tippett versus The Computers. The computers more or less win, which put me in the “not computers” camp as the story played out. Phil Tippett is easily the person in the documentary that seemed most soulful, honest and vulnerable to me. Watching his test footage of the velociraptors scene made me wish we could see both versions of the movie. It also made me wonder what Episode I would have looked like if Lucas had decided to make it in 1986. What would the podrace have looked like if it was shot like the Endor speeder bike sequence? What would Jar Jar have looked like made by the team that made Ludo in Labyrinth?
Phil Tippett aside (and it pains me to write that, no one puts Phil Tippett in the corner), I think there’s something about the physical that we root for. We live in the physical world. Stop-motion looks like all you need is a clay, a camera, and patience. To create a CGI Dinosaur, one needs software that looks like it was designed to send people to the moon, and a degree in trigonometry. Computers feel inaccessible. I’m sitting at one right now. I couldn’t fix it. I barely know how it works. I don’t even know how this website works. Give me a pencil and a piece of paper, I could write something down and essentially know how it’s happening. (If you don’t quiz me on how paper and pencils are made.)
My feeling that ILM’s early creature shop work was more accessible is, of course, untrue. These were tinkers and engineers and experts in how light moves through lenses. It’s not so much that what they were doing was actually possible for anyone, it just feels that way compared to learning whatever a Polygonal Data Set is. (I think it’s got something to do with polygons! Polygons and pixels. P’s abound.)
In the end, it’s about a feeling, isn’t it?
Star Wars, as a series, is in a constant argument about the value of the real versus the virtual. Which feels better? Which makes us feel like what we’re watching is real? Which illusion is more convincing? There’s no actual answer for this. We all experience the world differently. What seems convincing to you may not feel the same way to me. I may like the art hand drawn style of the Clone Wars microseries and you may prefer the expansiveness of the fully rendered series. Neither of us would be right.
George Lucas had his own feelings, about what he could do, and about what he wanted to do; what he imagined and what he could put on screen. Lucas invested in ILM to free himself, first from old methods of visual effects, then from the very models and puppetry that made his vision initially possible. The original trilogy was cutting edge, full of invention, but even then, he felt constrained.
His prequels were made achievable by the transition to digital. As a pioneer, he pushed up against the boundaries of the newest technology, sometimes showing the seams. He played with it in ways that almost felt heretical, mixing and matching actors takes within the frame. The blue and green screen environs of the prequel trilogy have aged well in places and less well in others, just like any other technology being used to its limits. But he moved the industry forward, kicking and screaming, inspiring not only digital effects, but digital projection, new kinds of cameras. From the moment he created ILM to the day he retired, Lucas invested in overcoming what probably seemed to the rest of the film industry like the laws of gravity.
What the documentary doesn’t cover (because it’s about progress) is that the post-prequel era has been defined by a desire to return to the handmade, a rejection of the blue and green screen aesthetic. The sequel trilogy signaled to audiences that it was an embrace of the Star Wars shot on film film and made with fiber, bringing back locations and guys wearing rubber alien heads. The very techniques that were once the ahead of their time were employed to take us back from the future.
Now, series like The Mandalorian have taken things a step further, using of The Volume to balance out these two competing forces, fully immersing actors in a digital set - no more saying things in a vacuum or acting at the bottom of a swimming pool, talking to nothing- and still capturing as much as possible in camera. The Volume was meant to bring cinematic-level visual effects and environments into the budget and efficiency of television. It splits the difference between the blue-screen and the need for something that feels present.
But even as I write this, Andor is being sold as a more authentic, more ‘real’ Star Wars story. It eschews even the Volume. (Of course, real is a style. It reminds me of when my wife and I went to Turkey and we’d go on tours to rebuilt ruins, meant to look like they were just discovered. The ruins were jokingly called “genuine fakes.”) Andor is going back on location.
And so, the debate continues. It’s a matter of taste? A matter of soul? A matter of expense? A matter of speed? The beauty is now filmmakers have a complete set of tools available to them. As much as it can feel like the computer has replaced stop-motion, for example, stop-motion still exists and its spirit lives on, much like black-and-white film is now a option, even if the vast majority of movies are in color. In the end, these creations enable more creation. That’s something to celebrate.
Light & Magic is one of the most bingeable and fun Star Wars adjacent documentaries I’ve seen, it goes deep and has a buoyancy that makes it very watchable at its length. It’s a great jumping-on point for new viewers who don’t know the history of what they’re watching, and a lively refresher for those of us that just like spending time thinking about Star Wars.
I hope it inspires, most of all, an appreciation for the amount of effort, expertise and time it’s taken to make many of our favorite movies possible. I’m a big believer in appreciating the work put into the things we watch. It’s easy to forget how much effort it takes to put even one frame of Deadpool II or Rings of Power or Game of Thrones or Willow or The Book of Boba Fett on screen. It took years and risks and heartbreaks and stubbornness.
It took spreadsheets and beer.
It took The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
It even took a Slip ‘N’ Slide in Van Nuys.