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Light & Magic | Official Trailer | Six-Part ILM Documentary Directed by Lawrence Kasdan - July 27th

Aggelos

Member
This one is gonna be really interesting. They did one for Starz called "ILM Creating the Impossible" back in 2010, but now this time around we've got ourselves a 6-part series.








 
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AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23


July 27 6 part series


This is stuff that I enjoy, how they made the effects. I will watch this one.
 

ManaByte

Member
Thinking it'll probably be broken up like this:
Founding/Star Wars/Indy
Post-Star Wars (first CG in Young Sherlock Holmes, first morph in Willow)
Advent of CG
etc...
 

Aggelos

Member
Thinking it'll probably be broken up like this:
Founding/Star Wars/Indy
Post-Star Wars (first CG in Young Sherlock Holmes, first morph in Willow)
Advent of CG
etc...

I'd expect it to be like this one below, although more fleshed-out and elaborated. Plus the addition of the 2010-2020 decade of ILM's handiwork.
Ever since the founding of ILM, we've got ourselves 5 decades to cover (thus, 5 episodes). So, my bet is that the 6th episode will cover the current decade and the future of ILM.


 
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AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
Thinking it'll probably be broken up like this:
Founding/Star Wars/Indy
Post-Star Wars (first CG in Young Sherlock Holmes, first morph in Willow)
Advent of CG
etc...
They could do:
Lucas
Spielberg
Cameron
Pixar
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Please just be footage from the film and period footage, maybe cut with some interviews of those artists today. Show me how the effects were done.

I'm worried this will be full of random vignettes by f-tier pop culture celebs, poorly done reenactments, or the TERRIBLE forced drama "The XXX that made us" series has devolved into when they don't think the subject matter alone is interesting enough.
 

ManaByte

Member
I'm worried this will be full of random vignettes by f-tier pop culture celebs, poorly done reenactments, or the TERRIBLE forced drama "The XXX that made us" series has devolved into when they don't think the subject matter alone is interesting enough.

...It's directed by Lawrence Kasdan...
 

ManaByte

Member
Watched the first half last night. Fucking amazing. Kasdan was obviously given FULL access to the archives as there's stuff here that has never seen the light of day before, including a lot of fully restored raw shooting footage from ANH. There's even clips from the "Lost Cut" rough cut of ANH that Lucas showed to Spielberg and Coppola before ILM had anything done.

Lucas even confirmed the legendary Hamburger Hamlet story about opening day of Star Wars!

(The story goes that Spielberg and Lucas had a bet over how the movie would be received. Lucas didn't think it'd do well, but Spielberg was sure it'd be a hit. The two were eating at Hamburger Hamlet across from the Chinese on opening day and when they saw the crowds, Lucas lost his bet.)

He doesn't tell the bet side of the story in this, but he talks about how they were at Hamburger Hamlet and saw the crowds across the street not realizing they were for Star Wars at first.
 

Aggelos

Member
Haven't watched anything yet. I do hope Spaz is in it, though.








Edit: Spaz is in there, talking about computers, CGI effects, and stuff.
 
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sol_bad

Member
Wife and I watched the first 2 eps which have been amazing and eye opening. Do the later episodes move away from Star Wars though?
 

ManaByte

Member
Wife and I watched the first 2 eps which have been amazing and eye opening. Do the later episodes move away from Star Wars though?

Yes, it basically goes in historical order so at the end of Episode 3 when they're done with Empire they talk about how they then worked on Raiders, Dragonslayer, Poltergiest, E.T., and Wrath of Khan. There's a cool moment where Ken Ralston mentions how they moved on to Raiders and he gestures to the person interviewing him, which obviously was Kasdan who wrote Raiders. Those movies are given time in Episode 4.
 

ManaByte

Member
I would love if they went over everything from when the SFX Studio was formed to 2022. Still a disappointing to hear but I'm gonna to give this a watch

It does, but the first 3 episodes are more deep dives. Gets more general in Episode 4, and then 5 is a quick rush through Cameron and Jurassic Park and the Prequels, and then the Volume is dealt with in Episode 6.
 
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sol_bad

Member
It does, but the first 3 episodes are more deep dives. Gets more general in Episode 4, and then 5 is a quick rush through Cameron and Jurassic Park and the Prequels, and then the Volume is dealt with in Episode 6.

Hopefully they can do a season 2 with more deep dives.
 

Aggelos

Member
I also watched it. That was pretty dope.
It seems like Lawrence Kasdan and his associates covered the backstory of the founder(s), ILM's inception, the key people of ILM, and the ground-breaking moments of ILM over the span of the decades. That's why people might feel that there's stuff/films that was/were left out.
Thus, the monumental moments of ILM are the first Star Wars Trilogy films, the '80s when they started tinkering with the digital world and the computers, the Star Wars Prequels Trilogy, and of course ground-breaking films the likes of The Abyss, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park that shook the film industry with their mind-blowing effects.
 

Tieno

Member
I'm on episode 4. This is so inspiring. Not a big Star Wars fan, but the older I get, the more respect I get for how a unique mind George Lucas is. You gotta respect how he went about this, hiring creative people, with the movie rights, with founding ILM, just all in service of trying the match the idea he had in his head with the movie on the screen. And everytime he also made a shitton of money for a lot of people. That Disney didn't just trust this guy's ideas and input to further develop Star Wars is just foolish.
 

Tieno

Member
George Lucas: "I know you're in pain, I recognize you're in pain, I appreciate your pain. But lets do it."
jesus christ :messenger_tears_of_joy::messenger_grinning_sweat:, I would have loved working for George Lucas. I'm going to use that at my work.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member

ManaByte

Member
The devil is in the details. The concept of a broken Luke is fine, but virtually every aspect of the execution of VIII was dogshit. It ignored what little momentum VII had and then led to the dumpster fire of plot continuity of IX.

Nah pretty much the entire Luke/Rey plot of TLJ was right from George's outline. It was Michael Arndt who had them shift that and combine Lucas' first and second movies to be Episode VIII (Luke died in Lucas' second movie, which would've been VIII). Arndt then made VII be the "Search for Luke", which JJ retained with his ANH remake (and why Arndt got story credit).

The big differences with the Lucas outline and what we got were:
The whole trilogy was about the midichorlians and how the Whills communicated with them through The Force.
No X-Wings or TIE Fighters. Just like the Prequels, all the ships were new and not nostalgia bait like JJ did.
There was no Snoke. Ben Solo was seduced to the dark side by Darth Talon (from the SW Legacy comics).
Finn had a different name, but was always a former Stormtrooper.
Poe is a combination of two different characters from Lucas and the Arndt draft (which was basically Kira and Skylar/Finn hiring mercenaries to find Luke).
Kira came from a snow planet, not a Tatooine clone. She was referred to as "snow girl" in a lot of the early concept stuff.
The sunken Death Star II wreckage is a Lucas idea.
Palpatine returning in the third was Lucas' idea from the beginning.
 

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
Palatines return could not have been Lucas original idea. I mean maybe because he had Death Star 1 and 2.
 

ManaByte

Member
Palatines return could not have been Lucas original idea. I mean maybe because he had Death Star 1 and 2.

His return was Lucas' idea. Making Rey a Palpatine was JJ's stupid idea.

Kira was a nobody in Lucas' outlines. He was making a trilogy about a young girl who became a Jedi and in the process finds an adoptive family (the Skywalkers), because he spent twenty years raising two daughters that he adopted. His whole point for the ST was that families were stronger than blood due to his family that he raised, but JJ was to stupid to understand that.
 

Aggelos

Member
Apparently, the Jurassic Park footage in the documentary is from a fan-made scan of a print. It seems like Universal did not want to give permission to use their assets.



Well, I’m watching the final episode now and I can tell you they are 100% for sure using the fan-made Jurassic.Park.1993.35mm.1080p.Cinema.DTS.v2.0 release - I compared it and it’s pixel-for-pixel exactly the same, except they graded it a tiny bit more towards teal.

 

Chiggs

Gold Member
Wife and I watched the first 2 eps which have been amazing and eye opening. Do the later episodes move away from Star Wars though?

They do...thankfully.

Personally, I think they spent too much time on the Star Wars stuff, which has been covered to death in other documentaries. I found the episodes involving The Abyss and T2 to be really entertaining, and I appreciated them showing how Phil Tippet got outshined on Jurassic Park by Dippe and Spaz. Must have been brutal.

In fact, I got inspired to watch Jurassic Park again and did so, but couldn't make it past the Brachiosaurus scene in the beginning. I'm sorry, but some of this has just not aged as well as people would like to pretend it has. That said, I skipped ahead to the Trex scene...it's still got the goods. :messenger_sunglasses:
 
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sol_bad

Member
They do...thankfully.

Personally, I think they spent too much time on the Star Wars stuff, which has been covered to death in other documentaries. I found the episodes involving The Abyss and T2 to be really entertaining, and I appreciated them showing how Phil Tippet got outshined on Jurassic Park by Dippe and Spaz. Must have been brutal.

In fact, I got inspired to watch Jurassic Park again and did so, but couldn't make it past the Brachiosaurus scene in the beginning. I'm sorry, but some of this has just not aged as well as people would like to pretend it has. That said, I skipped ahead to the Trex scene...it's still got the goods. :messenger_sunglasses:

I'm up to episode 4 now. I'm ok that they spend so much time on Star Wars, I just wish they spent more in depth time on other films as well. Like episode 4 has focused on Star Trek 2, Indiana Jones and ET so far but it's like 10 minutes per movie. They are glossing over things too fast.
 

sinnergy

Member
Watched it al, ILM is one of my inspirations since they started, I even did 3D offline stuff and modeling , sadly I needed to go to the USA. If I ever wanted to make a living , I now mostly do digital design, UI and UX, and occasionally 3D.

This documentary was very insightful and inspiring, and shows that George Lucas was a misunderstood visionary and a perfectionist, I recognize myself , I as creative can get frustrated that things don’t go as fast as what is in my head. He was very far in front with all the digital stuff I recon 25 - 30 years of the rest.

After seeing this all and the director he was I think the StarWars fans where to hard on him .. they eventually made him sell the company.. and now look what Disney does with the Story .. only the mandelorian is on par , but that director is half a George Lucas . Must watch if you are into CGI.
 

sinnergy

Member
They do...thankfully.

Personally, I think they spent too much time on the Star Wars stuff, which has been covered to death in other documentaries. I found the episodes involving The Abyss and T2 to be really entertaining, and I appreciated them showing how Phil Tippet got outshined on Jurassic Park by Dippe and Spaz. Must have been brutal.

In fact, I got inspired to watch Jurassic Park again and did so, but couldn't make it past the Brachiosaurus scene in the beginning. I'm sorry, but some of this has just not aged as well as people would like to pretend it has. That said, I skipped ahead to the Trex scene...it's still got the goods. :messenger_sunglasses:
Some scenes past the test of time , and this was 91 -92, if you look how they did it back then it’s mind boggling .. they basically invented how we work and model today . With bones/muscles/skinning . But I agree that scene is a bit of, the darker scenes work beter because in the dark you can take short cuts .
 
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wondermega

Member
Finished this the other night, very well done. I always dig Star Wars but dropped off immediately after episode 1, and actually never had seen any of their "making of" material, so this was a treat. I do wish they went in harder at looking at more people/technology/productions beyond Star Wars (meaning, break it out into a longer series) but what we got was quite well presented.

Some thoughts, I'm a major Tron fan and it was noticeable how they didn't give that film any mention (ok, they briefly showed a clip quickly). Obviously that film wasn't made by ILM, but in hindsight I'm curious if that was a sore point at the time (1982). Supposed to be Disney's answer to a Star Wars type effects fest, and though it bombed at the time, it changed filmmaking - and in a way they kind of lapped ILM, who I'd imagine were otherwise considered to be the absolute cream of the crop in the VFX world at that point. Surely Disney had their own clout to some degree (I haven't paid any attention to what that was, I'm sure there are people much better informed about it than I) and the guys who did all the actual CG stuff were basically outsiders to filmmaking, at least in the mainstream/big stage. I wonder if it caused some issues - and has anything to do with the visionary director of Tron essentially completely falling off the radar after this film. He directed one more film years later, I believe, and then that was the end of it..
 

ManaByte

Member
Some thoughts, I'm a major Tron fan and it was noticeable how they didn't give that film any mention (ok, they briefly showed a clip quickly). Obviously that film wasn't made by ILM, but in hindsight I'm curious if that was a sore point at the time (1982). Supposed to be Disney's answer to a Star Wars type effects fest, and though it bombed at the time, it changed filmmaking - and in a way they kind of lapped ILM, who I'd imagine were otherwise considered to be the absolute cream of the crop in the VFX world at that point. Surely Disney had their own clout to some degree (I haven't paid any attention to what that was, I'm sure there are people much better informed about it than I) and the guys who did all the actual CG stuff were basically outsiders to filmmaking, at least in the mainstream/big stage. I wonder if it caused some issues - and has anything to do with the visionary director of Tron essentially completely falling off the radar after this film. He directed one more film years later, I believe, and then that was the end of it..

Disney used ILM back then. They used them on Dragonslayer, which came out the year before Tron and was ILM's first non-Lucasfilm movie.
 
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