Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

The New Force at Lucasfilm

Posted by Zonk on Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:24 PM
from the feel-the-money-surround-you dept.
Media Movies Star Wars Prequels Entertainment Games
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interview with the heads of George Lucas' gaming and movie divisions, and discusses with them how they are getting closer and closer to integration. From the article: 'Pre-visualization, which is a big thing that George has been pushing lately. It's a tool that directors would use to quickly mock up the ideas of a story and see what's going to work. It's really like building up a preview of a movie in a video game world. Instead of using static story boards, you can really just get in and create 3D content and camera moves directly. It's the best example of the kind of collaboration we've got going on.'"
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Games: LucasArts Aims for #1 120 comments
The New York Times has an interesting profile of LucasArts, the game development house attached to George Lucas' company. They discuss some challenges with being so closely associated with Star Wars, and detail their role in the Lucasfilm company as a whole. From the article: "[Ward's] most challenging days may be ahead. The videogame industry has been in the doldrums for months; video game sales are lagging as consumers wait to buy the next generation of consoles, including the PlayStation 3. And perhaps most important, Mr. Lucas has no plans to make any more 'Star Wars' movies. That means LucasArts will have to work that much harder to come up with ideas of its own. 'We are not the Star Wars game company,' said Micheline Chau, president of Lucasfilm. 'And Jim knows what he has to do.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

The New Force at Lucasfilm 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Propagandhi (570791) on Monday March 27 2006, @10:27PM (#15008317) Journal
    Definitely seems useful for making movies, but I don't see how George Lucas could use this. Isn't he in the business of shattering childhood memories??

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Gleng (537516) on Tuesday March 28 2006, @03:39AM (#15009165)
      Lucas is like that kid you knew at college, who had all the best guitars, amps, effects pedals, and recording and mixing equipment, but was still having trouble stringing three chords together.

      Still, he's earning more in a second than I do in a month, so he must be doing something right.

  • Yep... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It helps tremendously. Just look at how Episode I, II and III turned out.

  • I could never work at Lucasfilm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2006, @10:27PM (#15008321)
    Everytime they asked me to do something I didn't want to, I'd be unable to resist saying "But I wanted to go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters."
  • I have fond memories of the LucasArt game Full Throttle [amazon.com] , which has one badass protagonist, some hilarious music, and a couple of amusing references to that film franchise Lucas is known for. Anyone know if a sequel is in the works?

    • Re:Full Throttle (Score:4, Informative)

      by Squigley (213068) on Monday March 27 2006, @10:54PM (#15008438) Homepage
      There was a sequel in the works, "Hell on Wheels", but because it didn't have enough Star Wars content, it got axed, nearly 3 years ago.

      There was a press release about it getting axed, but that most not have had enough Star Wars content either, and it's been deleted, and you get redirected to the home page.

      There's a brief article here: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/fullthrottle2 /news_6073105.html [gamespot.com]

      And a bit more here: http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,183 [adventuregamers.com]

      God I wish Lucas would get over the whole Star Wars thing already.
      • Same thing happened to the Sam & Max sequel. The original was a real classic, on the same level as Monkey Island. The idea that the adventure genre has magically become obsolete is such crap.
        • The whole "talkie" line of LucasArts games was sweet. Who can't love something as utterly rediculous as DOTT, or indeed Sam & Max. Heck, I'll still break out Fate of Atlantis on occasion - there's just something appealing about a psychic/supernatural communicator being posessed by a small-horned God-creature shortly after you took control of a Nazi U-boat with a combination of sucker punches and battery acid that keeps you always coming back for more.

          Hmm... digital crack. Uh-oh.

  • You mean, there was actually a vision? With the Star Wars prequels?

    Where?

    Come on, it was bad enough Han Fired Second but to make Yoda into Hong Kong Phooey and Darth Vader into a whiny teen... puhleeze.

    Worst Use of Natalie Portman Eva.

    Some actual visualisation would be nice.
    • I hated Episodes I & II and still haven't seen Episode III.

      But, look at each still shot. They look good. The characterization sucks. The plot sucks. The dialog sucks. The timing sucks. The motivation sucks. None of it has any logical flow behind it.

      But the still pictures are very nice.

      • > The dialog sucks

        Worse than sucks; it's unnecessary. If you eliminate the dialogue entirely, not much changes. It's that visual. The dialogue adds ... not much positive.

        Every word after Obi-Wan cuts off Skywalker's legs is a negative, e.g. "I loved you man!" is something no actor needs to say; it's evident from the acting. The worst lines in all six movies is when the dying Portman (shades of "Love Story") says, "I think I'll spoil one of the plots points of the next movie by telling the audience th

          • According to this [imsdb.com], both lines are in the film.

            OBI-WAN: (continuing) . . . You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would, destroy the Sith, not join them. It was you who would bring balance to the Force, not leave it in Darkness.

            OBI-WAN picks up Anakin's light saber and begins to walk away. He stops and looks back.

            ANAKIN: I hate you!

            OBI-WAN: You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.

            Of course, the very worst dialogue was between Anakin and Padme. Episode II was so painful.

      • But, look at each still shot. They look good.

        Really? I thought it looked like one huge computer game. Is this what passes for special effects these days? 2001 had more realistic looking space ships and that's ancient.

        • Re:Visualisation is the only thing he's good at no (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Nasarius (593729) on Monday March 27 2006, @11:49PM (#15008623)
          I think I speak for the entire Star Wars fan community when I say, with all candor, "quit your fucking bitching already".

          Maybe you do. I used to be a huge Star Wars geek. I read all the novels, bought the "reference books", absolutely loved the X-Wing games, etc. I quit when Episode I came out. I don't see how you can even compare the quality of the prequels with the incredible stories that other authors have written. Not just Zahn, but nearly every writer has come up with far better material than Lucas. The stories suck. The dialogue sucks, and not just the abysmal Anakin/Padme crap.

            • I did say *nearly* every. In defense of Kevin J. Anderson, Darksaber was a sequel of sorts to Barbara Hambly's "Planet of Twilight", which was much worse. On the upside, neither had Jar-Jar or an annoying kid. I think. There were some awful novels with Han and Leia's brats, too. Okay, so not all of it was gold.

              But we're talking about movies where millions of dollars were spent creating the CGI effects. I expect they could have at least hired an editor to clean up the dialogue, you know?

              • I think I read it somewhere in an interview in a Playboy article. "A Star Wars movie wouldn't be a Star Wars movie if it had good dialogue."

                Quit your whining already. I actually enjoyed Episode II and III's stories.
                  • I'd say the people who complain endlessly and needlessly about 1-3 have simply forgotten how to be a child.

                    That's probably closer to the truth than you realise. Most of those people will have first seen (and fallen in love with) 4-6 as a child, and as such they have a special signifigance to them.

                    They've seen 1-3 as adults, with an adult's view of things, and they simply can't compare to their childish recollection of 4-6. Sure, they've seen 4-6 as adults too, but you know the old saying, "first impressions
        • No, the all the characters from the original trilogy (with the possible exception of Luke, at times) were very well characterized, well acted. The prequels, on the other hand, regularly make people visibly cringe--Jar Jar, whiney teen Anakin shouting "it's not fair!", Dax the four-armed alien who swoops and soars over his lines so badly I'm nearly positive the voice actor was stoned out of his head, bad romance, Vader's "Nooooooooooooooooooooooo"--so retarded it puts Luke's "Nooooooooooooo" to shame...

          T
          • As someone else said, I don't think you can speak for all of us--plenty of Star Wars geeks think that the prequels suck... usually it's those of us who have an ounce of objectivity. This isn't just rose-colored glasses.

            With all respect, "Bah!" Objectivity has baptkus to do with it. I claim that all the GLRMC haters out there suffer from "Boba Fett Underoos Syndrome". You all have a preconception of the original films from when you were young, impressionable, easily impressed, and loved playing in your

        • Actually, the charaterization and plot were far beyond what Lucas did in the Original Trilogy.

          That's only because Lucas didn't direct Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi. The reason he did more for the prequels was because he wrote and directed all three of them--the quality of this increased contribution is debatable.

          I love Star Wars, and even if the prequels were complete insults to cinema (which I don't think they are) that's not going to change. However, I do think that JarJar added nothing t
        • Is it also whining when we complain about the suckage known as the matrix sequels, or are you going to defend those turds too.

          All of these sequels should never have been made, because they have the effect of diminishing the original, all for the sake of more money. Lucas is especially culpable in that he rewrites the original. It is not just Jar Jar and badly acted love scenes (I almost said Jar Jar in badly acted love scenes, hopefully Lucas doesn't read this and get ideas for 7).

          It is inconceivable for a
          • It is inconceivable for a writer to rewrite his/her fiction novels

            Three words for you, pal. "Bull fucking shit".

            If you pick up a copy of "The Hobbit", you will find that there are some glaring differences when compared to the first printing of the story. In the original When Gollum lost the riddle game, he was a good sport - showing Bilbo to the door and letting him keep the Ring . Read that again, slowly, and imagine how pointless the Lord of the Rings would have been if Tolkien *hadn't* revised his

        • Thank you! Its about time there was some sense in the Star Wars community. The movies, despite their problems, weren't THAT bad.

          Sure, Anakin Skywalker went to the darkside because he was desperate to prevent his visions of his wife's death from coming true. No one would ever be tempted by the devil to save the woman (or man) they love from death?

          And yeah, that love dialog from Episodes II and III sounded like it came from two socially inept, isolated teenagers who had never been encouraged to explo

  • Mocap suits (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Runesabre (732910) <kirk@familytimeinteractive.com> on Monday March 27 2006, @10:31PM (#15008342) Homepage
    They could (if they haven't already) hook up actors with mocap suits or whatever devices needed to translate live actor movements instantly onto the 3D avatars on the virtual stage to really speed things up.

  • Droidmaker (Score:2, Informative)

    by Doytch (950946)
    For anyone interested in the Lucasarts story, including the kickass games, I heartily suggest the book Droidmaker. I got it and it was an awesome read. Lucas was involved in a helluva lot of stuff.
  • The series on Total War [totalwar.com] on the History Channel, where they use game engines to recreate epic battles. This seems to be a similar idea, except they're turning the mock ups into actual development scenes (before shooting them, redigitizing, and adding super special effects.) and not really using the engine for any sort of finished project.

    I hope ideas like that start becoming more commonplace. I like the idea of using 3-D digital storyboarding in realtime, it sounds pretty awesome. It'll be exciting to see if this turns into more of a production tool that ends up getting used in movie and not just in the development process.

  • Lucas doesn't like human actors (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CrazyJim1 (809850) on Monday March 27 2006, @10:59PM (#15008450) Journal
    I heard somewhere that Lucas doesn't like directing actors because the actors may not act in the way he wants them to, and he prefers CG because the actors do exactly what you want them to do.
    • So what happens when George Lucas gets digital actors to do exactly what he wants? That dinner sequence in Ep1 where Jar Jar sticks his tongue out at Qui Gon Jin. Let George stick to poorly directing actors instead of poorly directing CG actors.
    • I heard somewhere that Lucas doesn't like directing actors because the actors may not act in the way he wants them to, and he prefers CG because the actors do exactly what you want them to do.

      George Lucas is an idiot. He bitched for years that the original trilogy wasn't what he wanted, they weren't his real vision, etc. And they were fantastic. With the prequels, he was promoting how his vision could finally be realized - and it sucked. He got what he wanted, and the movies were terrible. They were

  • Welcome to 1999, George (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dracos (107777) on Monday March 27 2006, @11:04PM (#15008466)

    Peter Jackson and WETA started using pre-vis before production began on LOTR.

    Other firms may have used it even earlier.

  • Plot inspiration (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27 2006, @11:23PM (#15008539)
    Videogames will be a great aid to creating stilted dialog for Lucas' movies. What we can expect in episode VII:

    80-year old Hans Solo: What happen?

    Yoda: The bomb has somebody set up us, hmmm...

    A marketable purple gay alien chipmunk: We get signal!

    Reincarnated Darth Vader: AYBABTU.

    ...

  • Seeing Lucasfilm made me excited, then sad. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SynapseLapse (644398) on Monday March 27 2006, @11:33PM (#15008575)
    I saw that and for a split second I thought I would be seeing more from the old company that brought us Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion. Some of us still fondly remember the old adventure games.

    I'm sick and tired of their recent obsession with 3d, it just doesn't look as good. I would love to see a 2d adventure game from them that would run natively at 1600x1200 and scale down to lower resolutions.

    Can anyone honestly look and tell me that this 3d Sam & Max [samandmax.net] has more artistic style than this 2d Sam & Max [samandmax.net]??

    Or this [samandmax.net] is better than this [samandmax.net]?

    I'm not opposed to 3d games mind you, lord knows I didn't buy this Nvidia board for running OO.org faster and Grim Fandango was utterly phenomenal. I'd just like to see Lucasfilm games, lucasarts, whatever, spend more time in making a well written, well crafted worlds and games, rather than just "Wow, it's an adventure title, but in 3d!"

  • Like Machinima? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Buddy_DoQ (922706) on Monday March 27 2006, @11:38PM (#15008589) Homepage
    Wait Mr. Lucas, you mean you're just now hearing about Machinima [machinima.com]? We've been doing it for 10 years now! Well, with Lucas on board maybe the market for niche pre-vis real time 3D tools will kick up finally. All I can say is, open source Lucas, OPEN SOURCE!
  • The first thought about this is: What happened to imagination?

    The tools we use (like language) influence us in our choices and views. While greater tools can allow greater accomplishments, their purpose is should be to allow a complex process to be addressed simply, not to allow a simple process to be more complex.

    In computers, one of the best ways to get a real understanding of computer programming is to debug a program without a debugger. At most, using a couple of print statements to allow some additional helpful information. The advantage to a lack of information is that it requires A) truly understanding how the mechanism works which leads to B) attempting to keep the code human-readable.

    In places where a debugger is available, I have seen too often that the tool is use to simply find the problem and move on. After all, if I know that the loop is crashing, break the loop before the end of the run and see why it went too far. This is great for catching simple errors, and I do not knock the debugger for helping me realize that I accidentally incremented the wrong variable. What I do like is that people raised on debuggers generally cannot see anything other than simple operations. It will not explain why mutex is not being freed or many systemic problems; however, because he or she was never forced to think through his or her problems, the symptom of the problem (not the problem itself) is coded around at the location where the problem shows up in the debugger.

    I cannot help but think that while this tool will be used to model some nice things, but I think a lot producers fail to realize that most people will happily take some good acting, a reasonable plot line, and intriguing dialog over wiz-bang camera zooms. Thank God for Battlestar Galactic.
    • pre-production isn't about getting wiz-bang camera zooms. It's about getting the whole film from your minds eye to the screen so you can debug problems in story and structure before you encounter them on set, as well as giving everyone a good idea of what the director wants. This is just the digital equivalent of making good storyboards, and storyboards have been around forever. Alfred Hitchcock used to storyboard his movies and cut those boards down to the number of frames a shot should be. This technology

  • writing? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mccoma (64578) on Monday March 27 2006, @11:53PM (#15008632)
    how about you spend some of that money on actual writers.......

  • is this new? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dionysus (12737) on Monday March 27 2006, @11:55PM (#15008640) Homepage
    Hasn't Lucas always done pre-visualization? I remember the making-of documentary of Return of the Jedi, and they used Star Wars action figures to create the speeder chase scene. I would think the only difference between then and now is that they are doing everything in the computers.

  • A good example of integration (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Edmund Blackadder (559735) on Tuesday March 28 2006, @12:35AM (#15008748)
    Let me give you a good example of the "integration" of the movie and gaming divisions of Lucasfilm. I remmeber when I saw phantom menace there was a half an hour part of the movie that had nothing to do with the rest of the plot or the development of the characters.

    It was the pod race. I kept thinking "why is this in the movie" ... "and why in the world do they spend so much time introducing various racer characters which are obviously completely unrelated to the plot" ... "and why are the big jedi who are supposedly on an important mission waiting for this kid to race around" ... but then the pod race started looking familiar to me... it reminded me of a lame PS1 racing game called wipeout (i think). And then I thought wow ... they have this whole thing in the movie only so that they can sell a lame clone of a PS1 game.

    Sure enough a day or so after i saw people playing a wipeout clone which features the phantom menace pod race.

    I guess this is what they call synergy in the movie business.

  • A few things.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by two.oh (721094) on Tuesday March 28 2006, @12:40AM (#15008759) Journal
    I'm worried about a few things that the article discusses. Yes, it sounds exciting that LucasArts and ILM are doing collaborating in the future. What I'm afraid of however, is that in the CG industry, there seems to be a technological 'progression' that trivializes the purpose of the traditional (ie. concept artists, storyboard artists, etc.)

    Sullivan discusses that pre-viz is a good and modern solution, but he doesn't mention that pre-viz can also be slower and less fine tuned than the work of a storyboard artist. Illustrators can offer style, better/faster continuity, and the ability to develop an entire shot rather than developing rough 3D-geometry. If it were up to me, I'd keep both around.

    So sure, the technology and tools get better, but it doesn't necessarily make a better film.

    Disney made that mistake with their cel animation department, and they all got laid off (thank god for Lassater).

    Square did it with Final Fantasy and threw away the storyline.

    ILM seems to be a very traditional studio in the sense that they follow a typical pipeline for production. I just hope they clearly understand the benefits of keeping these illustrators around.
    • Yeah, ILM keeps a sizeable Art Dept. which does illustrations, sketches, concept art and the like. Also people in the Model Shop do sculptures and maquettes of concepts for pre-production.

    • Re:Sounds like a toy for mediocre directors. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't think you really understand what goes in to creating a film. For each scene in a film, there are practically an infinite amount of possibilities for the lighting, movement and position of actors, camera placement and angles, and any combination of the above. A storyboard is usually laid out for to get an idea for the general flow of the film. Then, even the best director will usually whittle down the possibilities to a handful or more...for many, many scenes. For each blocking combination, the type
    • Secondly, is visualization really what Lucas needs help on? The special effect and action sequences were pretty stunning (the story behind RocketD2 and Kung Fu Yoda were lame, but looked cool), but the dialog and actual *acting* scenes were pretty lame. I think what they need a team of voice actors to actually say this stuff while they're writing it down ... maybe early enough in development that they could hear how terrible it is.

    • Re:Sounds like a toy for mediocre directors. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chabil Ha' (875116) on Tuesday March 28 2006, @12:33AM (#15008745)

      Sounds like a toy for mediocre directors.

      If you think that Peter Jackson is a mediocre director, sure. The Lord of the Rings included *numerious* pre-visualization shots. If you watched any of the bonus content on the DVD's, you would see some of the pre-vis stuff on the Mines of Moria scenes where the Fellowship is being chased by the Orcs. I think the movie was fabulous, and if pre-vis made the movie any better (which IMHO it did) then let the mediocre directors continue their work.

      Visualization has at least two benefits that I think of right off the top of my head.

      1. You as the director may be able to visualize what needs to happen, but communicating that to other people can be difficult if you don't have ESP. This allows the artist to communicate an idea to other people via a medium that is easy to conceptualize. Yes, that's what story boards are for (like the article says), but

      2. It allows you to build a set without going through the costly motions of actually having to do it. This goes for virtual sets as well. While this method seems a lot more expensive than hiring a graphic artist to draw it in 2D story board cells, 3D permits you to make changes without having to redraw a whole frame, this in turn allows the crew to explore changes and make iterations very quickly. It also makes a good point of reference for those who are responsible for creating CG add-ins to the movie.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.