Category: Star Wars

How Star Wars Almost Didn’t Happen “Nobody’s ever going to let anybody just make a movie. You have to go out and do it!”

George, Great Stories, Making of Star Wars, Star Wars

No one is ever going to let you do anything. Don’t ask.

 
original-star-wars-poster
https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/05/how-star-wars-almost-didnt-happen/

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Lucas especially clashed with the film’s cinematographer, Gilbert Taylor (Dr. Strangelove, The Omen), who thought the movie was a joke, and George wanted him fired, but Lucas’ longtime producer, Gary Kurtz, didn’t want to let him go because he was afraid the entire camera crew would leave with him.

Even with an army of great FX artists working on Star Wars, like John Dykstra (Battlestar Galactica) and Dennis Muren (E.T., Terminator 2), Lucas still couldn’t get what he saw in his head and told people he was only getting 40% of his vision. (Lucas had wanted Douglas Trumbull, the FX wizard behind 2001 and Silent Running, to do Star Wars, but he turned it down.)

Then try to imagine showing Star Wars to the Fox executives with less than half the FX finished. Jay Cocks, who was at the screening, recalled the rough cut had temporary footage from World War II movies, and Lucas tried to explain, “Okay, these are World War II fighters, but you’re supposed to think they’re spaceships!”

“This was not a successful screening,” Cocks recalled. “It was a real challenge to the viewer. Two people liked it: Me and Steven Spielberg. Brian DePalma kept giving George terrible grief about the tractor beam!” Yet the next day DePalma and Cocks helped Lucas rewrite the prolog at the beginning of the film. Cocks told him, “George, you gotta make people understand that this is a fairy tale.” (A source close to Lucas would also claim that Cocks came up with the legendary tagline, “A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” but Cocks doesn’t recall this.)

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Lucas felt Spielberg’s sci-fi epic, Close Encounters, which was shooting at the same time as Star Wars, would be a much bigger hit, and he felt terribly dejected that so little on Star Wars was going his way. In fact, the whole Star Wars experience was so demoralizing for Lucas, he swore he’d never direct again, and he didn’t for 20 years.

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also amazing article on the Star Wars posters, so much loving nostalgia.

https://filmschoolrejects.com/star-wars-the-posters-14ad09654325/

The Man who literally built Star Wars, and the Light Saber

Film, George, Making of Star Wars, R2-D2, Star Wars, The Lucasfilm Files

 

 

The Man Who Literally Built ‘Star Wars’
Set decorator Roger Christian tells us what it was like making George Lucas’s dreams out of scrap metal in this esquire article.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a28570/star-wars-roger-christian/

 

How an Antique Camera Flash Became the Most Iconic Star Wars Prop

https://petapixel.com/2017/02/14/antique-camera-flash-became-iconic-star-wars-prop/

 

 

Due in part to Star Wars‘ minuscule budget, Christian had to scour antique dealers and thrift shops for prop ideas, and that shop in London is where he found a 1940s Graflex camera with a 3-cell flash gun attached. The flash gun, with only minor modifications, would become Luke’s iconic lightsaber:

 

 

 

lightsaber_2

Someone remade Star Wars: Podracer… in Unreal Engine 4 (Free Download) – isn’t this freaking Awesome !

**Pick Me Up and Don't Ever Put Me Down, *Seriously, 3D, Simulations, Star Wars

 

this is the most awesome and greatest thing I have seen since bottled water. BTw never buy bottled water, just refill your water bottle at the fountain, ok?

 

You can download the project and the exe and it works ( the download link is on the youtube channel ). Just played it with my student and it was a blast.

How to make $100,000 as a Video Game Artist or Art, Life and Games Lessons from a Former Star Wars Artist – Part 1 – my book is coming out at the end of May !

***Lucasfilm Lessons ( And Silicon Valley in general ), My Books, Star Wars

How to make $100,000 as a Video Game Artist or Art, Life and Games Lessons from a Former Star Wars Artist

 

The computer is like a bicycle for the mind.., ( Thanks, Steve !). It was a lot more for me because the computer gave me a life. Without the computer I would have been stuck in a kitchen somewhere, just kidding.

Just saying and telling girls everywhere – learn how to use it and learn how to use your mind because when you learn to use the computer and well you get to be around smart people and will get smarter yourself.

And because I was able to use the computer and well and I was all around smart people I was able to go and make a living in the Silicon Valley and make hundred thousand dollars and travel the world and expand my mind and learn and grow. I had a wonderful time and a total ball although at first glance you would think I was just sitting in front of a computer all the time but no, the computer was the gate to the magic kingdom.

I remember going into one of the lead engineers at Lucas’ office and I saw him sitting behind a Mac and I was like what is this, I didn’t know Macs were any good at 3D, and he’s like oh I bootcamped it, so this friend of mine taught me how to use the mac basically having both OS X and Windows installed on it. Then and there I was hooked and I’ve used a Mac ever since, of course I’ve always had a bootcamped Mac and that saved the day many times.

Being a video game artist became a part of my DNA as a fine artist and as a thinker and as a philosopher because I do have a stance and I do think a lot when it comes to life and video games and computers and how to do things and how to do things well, and I’m really into old Masters but I’m also crazy about all the new technology.

When I was growing up I grew up with the worlds of Isaac Asimov and I was constantly on some sort of a voyage in outer space on ships and fantastical planets but I see that a lot of what was in these absolutely imaginary spaceships is becoming a reality today with the computer and really fast chips being able to process incredible amounts of data and having incredible magic available at our fingertips.

So I was really excited to finally make a push and put this book together because it was a totally worth the adventure and I learned a whole lot.

I did my first computer rendering  when 3ds Max was called 3d studio and I think it was version 1.23 or something like that and it was running on DOS. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

So it really has been one miracle after another ever since and although I decided at some point to go into Fine Art full time and just remain in computer graphics as a teacher and freelancer I still really am crazy every time about everything 3D.