PM: The (George) Lucas Effect

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KEYWORDS

• technology
• filmmaking
• Star Wars
• THX

George Lucas always hated making movies the old-fashioned way. He has compared traditional, film-based movie production to wearing handcuffs and waging war. But instead of just complaining, Lucas decided that there had to be a better way--and he has dedicated much of his career to finding it. From the digital cameras that are replacing film cameras on movie sets, to the way movies are edited, to how special effects are created, to the sound we hear in theaters and at home, and even (soon) to the way movies are distributed to theaters, Lucas has led the way in adopting innovative technologies. Perhaps no one since Thomas Edison, who pioneered the essential technologies of celluloid, has had such a profound impact on the art of filmmaking.

"Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge Of The Sith," which opens on May 19, is only the sixth movie Lucas has directed. (Others directed two of his six "Star Wars" movies, though he produced the entire series.) But working as a director is only part of Lucas's career in film. He has been involved in producing and writing movies such as "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" and launching groundbreaking ventures, including his production company Lucasfilm, the special effects pioneer Industrial Light & Magic and THX, an innovator in movie sound. "In order to control the creative vision, to advance the art and to make it easier for me to make movies, I've ended up doing all these other things," Lucas recalled recently. "But it's my fascination with the medium that has driven everything."

Rebuilding hot rods as a teenager in Modesto, Calif., Lucas developed an early love of tinkering--along with a testy attitude toward authority. He arrived in Hollywood as part of the new wave of talent--including his friends Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola--that reinvigorated the movie business in the 1970s. His first movie, the low-budget sci-fi experiment "THX 1138" (1971), received encouraging reviews; his second, the nostalgic drama "American Graffiti" (1973), was a massive hit. But both were made using traditional film techniques, and, in both cases, the director resented how the movie studios forced him to make changes to the final cuts of the films. He has spent the rest of his career fighting such limitations--both technical and creative.