Star Wars Celebration: Light & Magic Goes Behind Legendary VFX History

On Friday, Star Wars Celebration played host to a Light & Magic presentation. Lawrence Kasdan’s Light & Magic documentary showcasing the history, artistry, and achievements of Industrial Light & Magic is the subject of this presentation. A video starts the presentation with George Lucas highlighting how visual effects in film allow for showing people things they could not see in any other way. Footage from Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Birds, Peter Pan, Back to the Future, Black Panther, The Avengers, and more. Other filmmakers like J.J. Abrams and James Cameron chime in. 

ILM’s Lawrence Kasdan joins the presentation virtually, Janet Lewin, Ron Howard, Joe Johnston, Phil Tippett, Denis Muren, and more take the stage. Kasdan speaks first, opening up about why he wanted to make a documentary about the ILM team and their history in cinema. “What I did know was the ILM is a house of geniuses and somehow George Lucas had the vision to bring these people together and a lot of them didn’t seem qualified particularly, they were all kinds of disciplines,” Kasdan explained. “He was somehow, with John Dykstra, able to bring these people together and create a place that has been unmatched in these 45-50 years. The greatest special effects house in the world.”

“At first, nobody knew exactly how it was gonna work and there was a lot of improvising but that lead to a lot of communication,” Kasdan explains. “When someone needed help, they would go to someone else and they always would try to help. For 40-50 years, it’s been that kind of environment where geniuses help geniuses.”

Tippett binge-watched the documentary in all six of its part. “most of don’t think about this stuff at all,” he said. “It was like this little kind of paleontological bubble of the species that lived for a very…They turn into these mythological tings or entities but are tiny slices of time and they are our mythology.” It made him feel “wistful about that time,” and brought a tear to his eye to look back at what ILM achieved and provided for audiences. 

Lewin, who oversees ILM now, opens up about the documentary and working at ILM. “I think that Larry did a spectacular job,” she said. “It is about the people. Yes, we’ve done spectacular things and the folks that I’m honored to be on the panel with have changed this industry but it’s all about the soul and the people…Honestly, I have the easiest job in the world and I have an amazing team…There is just so many amazing people at iLM and we’re in five countries around the world and the thing that unites us is the DNA.” she details how the team is so collaborative and nobody tries to accomplish anything independently but always together to make things the best they can be.

Footage from the documentary features Howard talking about American Graffiti. George Lucas describes how a lot of the film was from his own experience. Howard and Lucas talked after American Graffiti and, as Howard recalled, Lucas wanted to do a project in space that is not unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey but ultimately had something where “the ships go fast.” On stage, Howard opens up about Lucas “applying technology” for a “mind-blowing leap” while working on Star Wars. He later became a customer of ILM with his first film there being Cocoon. It felt like talking to artists and writers and actors when he talked to the “magicians” at ILM which then lead to Willow. 

Johnston is the focus of the next clip, talking about designing ships for Star Wars which were like “hot rods’ that could move through space. The hero’s traveled in those hot rods because they were able to outrun the enemy forces, having to look like they could be quicker through space. He recalls George Lucas wanting designs for ships and describing them simply in the things they can accomplish and their styles.

Muren speaks on working with George Lucas. “I could look at those things and imagine them in motion,’ he explained. He would have to think about every angle and lighting and execute putting them on screen. “There’s nothing like being given great stuff.’ he could not sculpt models or create the designs but he “knew how to bring those together in front of the camera.” He knew how to create danger and emotion in the sequences. “The last four or five months, it all kind of came together,” he said. “To have it be a success was unbelievable.”

Tippett jokes about designing characters. “I had no idea who Admiral Ackbar was,” he said. ‘We were just coming up with stupid names!” He remembers developing the Jabba’s palace scene. “George said make me a bunch of stuff,” Tippett recalled. “I found it with 2D art, you do like I did, versions of the thing. i was like, ‘That’s done, that’s the Calamari man.’ He’s very much like a documentary filmmaker because he just wanted to go explore.” These moments are featured in the Light & Magic documentary. A clip shows Tippett recalling work on Star Wars movies. “I very rarely read scripts,” he said. “I would just wait. I would wait until I could see the movie, until it got to storyboards.” He recalls designing a “snow lizard,” and Lucas asked for a maquette. Tipett then sculpted a clay maquette and it went through several iterations, a couple of which are shown in the footage, and it became the tauntaun. Footage sees George Lucas and Tippett discussing the look of the tauntaun, with Tippett recalling how Lucas responded to 3D models which he could see. “A form of management I learned in working with George is just get creative people to invest,” he said. “Let creative people run with it.”

Rose Duignan is the subject of the next clip, opening up about her first time interviewing at ILM. She thought it was “a dump.” She did the interview with George Lucas and he only asked two questions. “Do you take shorthand and can you start Monday?” She recalls getting to work with Lucas and take notes on everything he was saying and doing with every department. “Most of the time I was following Dykstra around,” she said. “Then when George got there, it was all business. I sensed a coolness between them. There was nobody organizing it. I don’t know who they decided what to shoot when.” Lucas takes the screen to say, “We needed to just get an adult in the room.” She gets the credit for organizing all of their work and schedules.

Duignan, on the panel, shares when she came into work at ILM. She had to come up with a production management system. “George had just gotten back from filming all of the live-action portion in England,” she explains. They had a lot left to shoot and had 6 months to finish the movie. “One day, this was a very bad day…setting the scene I heard this noise outside so I left my office and came out and there was a group of people in the hot tub laughing hysterically…I stood there and I watched John Dykstra lift an old refrigerator on a forklift as high as it could go and drop it, over and over…” At this point, George Lucas and some executives showed up. “They get out of their limo, they look at what’s happening, and they got back in their limo and left.” She explains that they got dubbed, “The Country Club,” but ultimately worked really hard but had so much fun doing it.

Johnston recalls seeing a design for the Star Wars logo and landing on the final design. The original “was very thin, hairline letters with pointed ends on the W and everything,” Johnston explained.  He declared “I can’t fix it but I can redesign it.” He had until 10 o’clock the next morning. Johnston got to work and designed the Star Wars logo with a pen. “I stacked the Star on top of the Wars and that’s the way it ended up. If I only had one penny for every time that thing has been printed, I don’t think I would be here right now!”

Howard explains how the “advances” have been spectacular, something he experienced while working on Solo and his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard has experienced on The Mandalorian. When the audience cheered for her name, he shared that makes him feel like a “proud dad.”

Kasdan opens up about how George Lucas and his vision instilled confidence and patience in people with these big ideas that he often had. 

Muren then begins speaking about Jurassic Park. He didn’t think they were ready for all of the VFX which went into the film. He was focused on getting the surface and the shape right. “We pulled the test off and it looked amazing,” he recalled. “We had no idea, though, if we were going to get all the shots.” It called for shutting down stop motion to focus on getting all CG locked in.

“George is both a producer and a director,” Duignan said. “He would look in the screening room and he loves organization. He loves efficiency. I would say we ned like 10 CBB’s today…and I need so many elements approved and he would aim for that.” At one point, an editor called for fixing something in the lower left hand corner and George declared, “If they’re looking in the lower lefthand corner than we’ve lost them.” She says that George “set that tone” at ILM and nobody had an ego. Everybody wanted to accomplish. “Children are extremely important to him,” she notes. Tippett adds that everybody was dedicated to giving George what he wanted.

The Light & Magic documentary series will premiere on Disney+ in July.