P84~87
September 7, 1996
George Lucas Ideas don't come into a story that easily. A lot of the time the characters have to say what you mean, and to do that the characters usually have to have differing opinions about the idea so they can discuss it.
Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan disagree about using what one would call in mythological terms "the guide." One believes in the guide. The other one doesn't. When you are walking down the street and the beggar's on the street, one character takes the beggar along with them on the trip, and the other one says, "Why are you doing this? This is going to slow us down. This is not a wise thing to do. The first one says, "Yes, but this beggar is useful to us." It's a classic mythological motif but at the same time, it's conflict.
The characters have to grow so what happens is that eventually the character that is very much against doing this has the obligation transferred to them.
In this case, we have Qui-Gon, the mentor who takes on Anakin, and the Padawan Obi-Wan who thinks this is a bad idea, so we've got a dynamic between these two Jedi. At the end of the film, Obi-Wan takes on the obligation to train Anakin, one that he can't really fulfill because it's over his head.
His inability to train this kid properly turns Anakin into Darth Vader and drives the rest of the stories. Not only does he let his mentor down, but it plays into the collapse of the Republic. This is why he feels obligated to try to rectify the situation with Luke.
One of the reasons people connect to Star Wars so much is because the psychology of it is very old. Whether it's knights in armor, or Greek warriors, or Western gunslingers, you're always telling the same story where you combine the larger cosmic and spiritual issues with the temporal issues of who you are and what your limitations are. I'm amazed people aren't telling these stories anymore. People have forgotten about the reason you tell a story. They just seem to tell it without any point to it.
October 26, 1996
George Lucas Digital characters have been done before, in Jurassic Park, Jumanji, and Casper, but talking digital characters who are part of the scene and on screen for a long time is a huge challenge.
Jar Jar is the key character but we have about a dozen synthetic characters that will be in the movie. There's a lot of material to make, therefore we have to come up with an innovative way to cut the costs so that we can do as much of it as we plan to do. The current motion capture technology isn't suitable because you have to capture each actor on their own on a special stage then put them into the image later. We need a character that everybody can interact with, so we're trying to figure out how to do that. We want to film an actor on the set, harvest the movement data, then feed the data into software so that the character will be automatically animated, and the actor digitally overpainted. Then we put the detail on and tweak it.
We've come to the conclusion that Jar Jar's face is too complex to try to get a human face to mimic it, so we will have the actor do their part, watch the lip movement for the sync of the words, and the animator will animate that from scratch.
This week we've been testing with mime Michel Courtemanche to figure out how Jar Jar would walk, personality traits that he might have, things that would make him look different when he's the animated character. I want him to have a very distinct look and a very distinct movement pattern, so we've been experi- menting with various possibilities in that arena.
A lot of the movement things though were simply me saying, "Swing your arms around, make your arms really loose, walk this way, walk that way, move your head, move your neck, and move your hips, try to put all those things together," and then say, "Let's make it more relaxed," to try to come up with something that looks right.
Going through the language with Michel was the first time l've heard it so I was able to listen to it objectively. It tends to sound a little bit like an Indian accent, so I have to keep playing around with the words until I come up with a consistent seamless foreign dialogue that is not derivative of any particular current culture. And it still needs to be understandable, because I don't want to have to subtitle it.
November 16, 1996
George Lucas I'm pretty close to finishing my second draft, which is officially called the first draft, which is in reality the 25th draft. I'm up to page 100. I've run into the stumbling block of too much script and I'm trying to figure a way of expediting story so that we can. get from point A to point B faster. In essence, I've run out of room.
I don't have extraneous scenes. In theory I could cut out an action sequence with Obi-Wan and Jar Jar with a sea monster, but it's a pretty good scene and I need something to intercut with the approaching Federation army.
The podrace serves the purpose of establishing Anakin's character, his prowess as a pilot, and his extrasensory abilities with the Force. So there's a lot going on in the podrace besides just an action sequence. It's about 20 minutes now and I'm trying to get it down to about 10 or 12 minutes.
The biggest structural problem is the third act. In Star Wars, they flee the Death Star, go to the Rebel base, have two scenes, and then there's the end battle. In this one they go from Tatooine to Coruscant, Coruscant back to Naboo, make lots of plans, and set up for the battle. Then they have the battle and the film ends. I've got about 15 or 20 scenes where Star Wars is only two, and if each of those is two minutes, that's 30 minutes right there. I have to get that down to about five or six minutes. I'm simplifying and trying to make the story cleaner and faster so I can get to the end.
This is the first really official script that everybody will have which means that it will be harder to change things after this point. This one becomes real.
I have ideal characters in my head, but when I finally get to the actors, they're going to be real people with their own personalities and they're not going to necessarily be exactly what I had in mind. They're going to be something else, but I have to accept the fact that that's now the character. It begins to drive the movie in directions that I didn't anticipate.
Robin Gurland / Casting Director It's always about who's right for the role. If it was someone the public knew, fine. If it wasn't, that was just as well. We never showed them the script, which surprised most of them. They would just come in and chat with George. Rick, and myself about anything and everything- politics, religion, theater. In fact, we talked about everything except Star Wars. George was looking to find out who the person was and how he or she matched the vision he had of a particular character.
George Lucas We cast our very first person. We're trying to make a deal now so hopefully that will happen and fall into place. But we've cast Natalie Portman to be Padmé, which is going to be great. She's perfect for the part. It's hard in those types of situations to find a young girl who has a lot of presence and a lot of strength who can play what is in essence an adult role. She has to play the queen, who is very aloof and distant and wears a lot of makeup and has rather extreme costumes. And then she has to play Padmé, who is much more personable, much more human.
We have a couple of possibilities for each of the other major roles. The most difficult one obviously is the boy Anakin.
January 15, 1997
On January 15, a list of storyboards was made of all the sequences, which totaled 2,018 shots, with some sequences still under development. Lucas held a storyboard/set design meeting at Skywalker Ranch with the production team and the team from ILM.
John Knoll /Visual Effects Supervisor We saw all the storyboards pasted up on sheets of foam core, and George took us through the boards one by one.
George Lucas I broke it down in terms of what parts of the image are going to be real and what parts are not real. Most movies you build a set and shoot it. We can't do that. Here we have to know who are the real characters, and who are the synthetic characters? What is the real set and what is the synthetic set? What are the real props and what are the syn- thetic props? A lot has to do with how much the actors come in contact with it, how much it costs to build in either environ- ment. If a car is built for real then you might as well use it again and again. You don't want to have to build it twice, a real one and a synthetic one.
John Knoll My reaction to just about every board was "That's going to be really hard." And before you have time to think he's on to the next one. "There's 2,000 characters in that shot!" So it was a pretty overwhelming experience.
Rick McCallum It became clear this is going to be unlike any other special effects movie ever done. To put it into perspective, a big film has maybe 250 effects shots, and a monster film like Titanic has 450 to 500. George was thinking about somewhere between 1,700 and 2.000 shots. The thing that I was most afraid of was not "Can ILM do it?" but "Could any effects house do it?!"
96年9月7日
奎刚和欧比旺的分歧是个经典的神话主题/冲突——二人组合中，一个人相信某种指引，另一个人并不。然而角色必须得到成长，所以结果是，原本反对这样做的角色最终不得不承担起这份责任。在这个例子中，就是想要教导安纳金的奎刚，和反对这样做的欧比旺，在电影最后，欧比旺承担起了教导安纳金的责任，但却没能做到。教导安纳金超出了他的能力范围。他没能训练好安纳金，导致他变成了达斯·维达，并有了后来的故事。他不仅让奎刚失望了，还令共和国因此覆灭，这就是为什么他觉得自己有义务让卢克纠正这一状况。
96年11月16日
卢卡斯：我脑子里有理想的角色，但是当我最终接触到演员时，他们将会是真实的人，有自己的个性，不一定会完全符合我的想法。他们会是别的样子，但我不得不接受事实，他们现在就是那个角色了。这让电影朝着我没有预料到的方向发展。
选角导演Robin Gurland：关于谁适合这个角色，如果是知名演员，没问题。如果不是，那也无妨。让他们大多数人感到惊讶的是我们没有给他们看剧本，他们只是进来和乔治，Rick（制片人），还有我聊天，什么都聊——政治，宗教，戏剧。事实上，除了《星球大战》，我们什么都谈了。乔治想了解演员，以及他或她是否符合他对某个特定角色的看法。
……
对于其他几位主角，我们有好几个选择，但最困难的当属安纳金。
