Many of you are aware of my high regard for filmmaker George Lucas. What many of you may not know is that my appreciation for his work is less about his films than it is about his related accomplishments as an independent movie maker. George Lucas, along with pal Francis Ford Coppola, were some of the original independent filmmakers, snubbing the traditional Hollywood studio system by forming American Zoetrope Studios, Coppola’s personal production company to this day. George Lucas, of course, went on to form Lucasfilm Ltd.
After the success of American Graffiti, Lucas had the funds he needed to launch his own movie studio. His first project? A Buck Rogers-style space opera. Along the way, Lucasfilm was directly responsible for an abundance of major film production advancements; some highlighted below.
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), founded in 1975 to develop special effects for Star Wars, is, to this day, the most successful and highly-regarded visual effects company in the world. With the development of such innovations as the motion control camera system and complex computer generated graphics, ILM is responsible for helping directors realize their visions in films such as E.T., Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Field of Dreams, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, Twister, Men In Black, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, the Star Trek films, the Harry Potter films, the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Iron Man...this list goes on and on. ILM has worked on almost 300 films since inception.
Skywalker Sound, originally known as Sprocket Systems, is the sound design, editing, mixing and effects wheel of Lucasfilm. Like ILM, Skywalker Sound is considered its industry’s premier facility in handling all aspects of movie soundtrack creation. Their credit list is long and can probably be summed up by the fact that the Skywalker Sound audio staff has won or been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound or Best Sound Editing every single year since 1977 when their first project - Star Wars - was released.
Pixar, the computer animation company behind Toy Story, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo, among others, was launched at Lucasfilm. Originally known as the Graphics Group of the Computer Division at Lucasfilm, the small team worked with ILM to develop animation sequences for feature films. Early 3D character animations were developed and the company was sold to Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs. The rest is history. Pixar is now owned by Walt Disney Company.
The Avid Media Composer is the most well-known and oft-used digital video editing system in Hollywood. The first Avid was released in 1990 but its roots go back to the early 80s with the EditDroid at Lucasfilm. The special effects wizards and post-production teams at Lucasfilm wanted to move the flatbed-style of film editing into the digital world and developed a laserdisc-based computer editing system. Too expensive to mass market, the technology was eventually sold to Avid Systems where it was reworked and released as the first non-linear video editing system.
THX, the feature film, home theater and multimedia quality assurance company, named after Lucas’ first film (THX-1138) and the inventor of the original system (Tomlinson Holman’s eXperiment), is now a private company that has expanded into creating quality guidelines for 3D TV, high-end car audio systems and recording studios. You’ve read about THX-certified theaters in the Jan 2010 Newsletter. George Lucas prompted Holman to develop an audio sound system for cinemas that would accurately present the movie soundtrack for Return of the Jedi. The first official system was installed in the AVCO Theater on Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles.
Of course, not everything from Lucas turns to gold. For your consideration, I submit Howard the Duck.
