George Lucas' Elements of Style

I'm doing a project on Lucas for my film studies class in high school. I'm at the part where I have to write an essay describing the style of the director. Could you guys help me to identify some of Lucas' elements of style. Any help is very much appreciated.

 

First I suggest you get a copy of The Cinema of George Lucas by Marcus Hearn.

Some elements of George Lucas would be speed. The cars from "American Graffiti, the Death Star trench run from Star Wars, speederbikes from Return of the Jedi, and podracing from The Phantom Menace. Lucas loves speed. It comes from his passion for car racing. Documentary filmmaking is also a style of Lucas, he loves cinema verte where you basical just point the camera and let things happen. On the audio commentary for The Phantom Menace, Lucas say he misframed a shot of Anakin, Jar Jar and R2 on purpose so as to lend it a documentary feel. Color is also important for Lucas. In a series of interviews with Leonard Maltin on the VHS release of the original Star Wars Trilogy he discusses the fact that the good characters are colorful, featuring browns, tans, and greens that reflect nature, the bads guys are black and white and inhuman.

There's a lot more but that's what I've got just off the top of my head.

 

Also the important is the idea of visual "tone poems", such as the portion of the lightsaber fight in Episode II that is fought in the dark, so that the audience gets merley flashes of the fighters in between the red blue flashing blades.

 

Lucas loves his tome poems. Lucas' best tome poem, in my opinion, is in Revenge of the Sith during the rumination scene between Anakin and Padme.
Just the whole way it's constructed. It's simply two people staring out a window, yet it is incredible powerful and one of the best scenes Lucas has ever created. No words are spoken, no sound effects, just the visual imagery and editing. The use of zooms brings

I would say that Bryan Singer, who directed Superman Returns, also use tome poems or "visual poetry" as I like call it. For example the scene where Superman hovers above the earth just listening to all the problems out there. At that moment the imagery, sound and music comes together in beautiful visual poetry. Rhapsody in Blue Tights, you might say. I would say that Singer sometimes sacrifices the film's narrative so he can work in a more poetic way. I think Lucas you into their emotions as they stare out into the Coruscant skylines thinking about each other. John Williams masterful score gives the whole scene such a haunting erieness. It's just breathtaking.can be accused of the same thing but I wouldn't want to change it.

 

Let's not forget his interest in shooting scenes with extremely wide-angle lenses, his obsession with wipes, his interest in sound as a "texture" rather than as a story element (he's more interested in using dialogue in such a way that it doesn't neccessarily develop the plot, he always claims SW actually works as silent movies as does "THX 1138"), his interest in jazz-riffing (e.g. the two SW trilogies mirroring each other, the fact that THX1138 is the same plot told three different times in three different ways etc), the way he uses camera-zooms rather than dolly movements, the fact that prefers tripod and dolly shots over use of steadicam and handheld photography, he claims his philosophy in framing and composing shots comes from Japanese cinema, etc etc etc...

 

Bad dialogue!

Heh heh heh...

How about his use of available/natural light, high-contrast photography & deeply saturated colors? Also, he only shoots features in the 2.35.1 aspect ratio.

 

Has anyone noticed that Lucas never films a close-up? He never gives a nice tight head shot. In that regaurds I'm glad Spielburgh directed all Indy films.

 

I seem to recall a few close-ups in THX 1138. Unless the shots I am thinking of are not technically close-ups.

 

There are some tight CU's in ANH as well.

Unless you count a tight CU like how the Wachowski's frame their CUs on "The Matrix" trilogy (cutting off the frame just above the eyes).