Millimeter interviews GL

Great, great interview -- a must-read for anyone interested in what's going on with ILM or Lucas' push for digital filmmaking

Thought there'd be some folks who might want to discuss said article, so here's a thread for it.

Discuss.



Rick McCallum loves you!

 

I couldn't agree with you more Adam. Awesome Interview.

I read the interview and all I can say is thank you George Lucas! Thank you for championing and pushing this new technology. An independent filmmaker like myself has a much better chance of getting their project made due to the financial benefits, which is where HD helps out enormously.

Thank God for HD. I am prepping to shoot an HD feature film and I did a cost/benefit analysis of shooting on 35mm film vs. High Definition Video and the savings of HD were enormous. And in many ways it simplifies the production process.

I was also able to demonstrate to my investors the technical and production advantages. I was able to point to the fact that major HD features are now being made by people of the stature of Lucas and Rodriguez, giving HD a new status in the marketplace, which helped me legitimize my decision to go HD.

All of the forward pushes in the technical areas that Lucas has been behind have had a beneficial, trickle down effect to indie filmmakers everywhere. The AVID editing suites, which I believe started out as Editdroid, digital special effects, and of course the ability to capture your movie images with High Def are allowing people to tell their stories cheaper, faster and without a loss of quality. It's a new day dawning in storytelling, much more democratic and less likely to be dominated by the major studios.

There are various moments in my story involving water and blood requiring images that would be almost impossible to do effectively without digital technology to manipulate the images captured on the set. It's a fantastic tool which allows me to create great visuals without a multi-million dollar budget. I can trace that back to Lucas, who's always been pushing the envelope.

Lucas has always been an advanced thinker. He was putting the idea of holograms in his first feature THX1138 way back in 1971!

 

It's a new day dawning in storytelling, much more democratic and less likely to be dominated by the major studios.

I wouldn't bet on that. In the end, the one with more money will always have more power/control over projects, and "digital" won't change that. Just think about Lucas himself. He is "independent", but he does what he does because he is rich beyond belief. He IS studio system. There's always been independent films around, digital won't change that either. Maybe there will be more independent films because of digital, that will be distributed through the net or go direct to DVD. But the studios will always have more power, technology and money.

 

I'm already betting on it, and I'm already doing it.

I never allow myself to think negatively because
getting a film made requires enormous determination
and optimism and it requires help from a lot of people.
People are not likely to be attracted to negativity
because it conveys a lack of strength and leadership.

My point is that an independent can, with a much
smaller amount of money, create a movie and get
it seen without having to go to Los Angeles and
have someone tell you who to cast, how to write
your script and how to shoot the film.

Lucas didn't start out rich beyond belief.
In fact he was dead broke until AMERICAN GRAFFITI.

Stanley Kubrick didn't make a dime from his film
career until he was 30. It's not unusual for people
establishing themselves in the industry to take awhile to make a living. When he began doing his first cheap features in the early fifties, there was virtually no such thing as an indie film.

The Sundance festival annually is filled with
films every year that are made totally outside
of the studio system. And the new technology
plays a role in that for sure.

True, there will always be rich, powerful movie studios. But thanks to technology, it takes less
money to make a movie, it's easier to get it seen,
and it's extended the possibilities and the freedom to make movies and tell stories. That opportunity is now available to everyone. People just have to get up off their butts and use it.

 

I agree more or less with J-Solo. It's not only that studios dominate the production of movies, but literally they also dominate the major global distribution channels (and since many are owned by big media conglomerates in the end also online and other sorts of distribution).

Certainly the barrier to make films is much lower, and stuff like AtomFilms and Sundance has allowed more stuff to be seen, though it's still dwarfed by what the studios can accomplish. Besides the majority of the public will only see or be aware of the majors, it's the film lovers that drive the indies, but they are a very small number compared to the potential global audience.

But at least there are choices now.