The prequels’ producer talks about the remaining episodes, his controversial views on digital cinema, and what George Lucas might do after he completes the most successful movie series in history. by Lisa Maccarillo   Rick McCallum remembers waiting in line for four and a half hours to see the original “Star Wars” on its second day of release. To now be consumed with producing a new set of “Star Wars” films has given him “total unequivocal brain damage,” he says. “It’s so weird.” There seems to be no terminal point to creator and mythos gatekeeper George Lucas’s vision. “Star Wars” has plunged its tendrils deep into the psyche of every man, woman and child who has, at some point, watched the twin suns set on the bleak Tatooine desert or Tusken Raiders popping off shots at young Anakin Skywalker in the thick of a hair-trigger pod race. Volumes by such disparate voices as Joseph Campbell and Kevin Smith have been written about it. Parents in whose retinas and imaginations these images burned now watch their own offspring stage plastic lightsaber duels in their backyards. While so much else has drifted into nostalgia, “Star Wars” has remained a living, breathing part of our cultural experience. The film series has likewise helped realign the bones of filmmaking itself. San Rafael, Calif.-based Lucasfilm Ltd. and Industrial Light & Magic have pushed the digital envelope in pioneering not only effects and digital sound, but also ancillary concerns, and now the widening horizon of digital filmmaking and exhibition. As with tales of his earliest efforts to make “Star Wars,” Lucas’s vision persists beyond the roadblocks at his feet. McCallum’s own odyssey into the “Star Wars” universe began while producing “The Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition.” “That was not only making a film, [it was] doing additional sequences for a movie that I had seen 20 years ago when I had literally just started in the business. That was weird. But you get used to it,” recalls the producer, who cut his teeth working with such diverse artists as the late Dennis Potter (“Pennies From Heaven,” “DreamChild”), Nicolas Roeg (“Castaway,” “Track 29”) and David Hare (“Heading Home,” “Strapless”). Fans began lining up outside cinemas months ago in anticipation of the May 16 release of “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones,” but the outflow of information about the two-and-a-half-year production seems to have been kept at a relative minimum. The impression is that the schedule kept the cast and crew too busy to do any talking. “We shoot in a very intense period of 60 days,” says McCallum, pointing out that most films on a comparable scale can sometimes shoot up to 120 days. The key to making this schedule work is to instigate no fewer than “36 set-ups a day,” he explains. “In fact, we will not leave the set until we’ve done that. If we finish at five then we’ll leave at five. But if it takes us to 11 or midnight, we will work until we get the actual film that we need. We have about 2,200 shots in the movie, so we need to do a minimum of 36 set-ups a day to achieve that.” To mount productions on the scale of 1999’s “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” and its sequel, “Attack of the Clones,” McCallum applied the same logic that commanded his experience producing the award-winning “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” TV productions. Filmed over a period of four years in 30 countries, “Chronicles” was treated by everyone involved as one long feature. “We had a really young crew, great people at the heads of departments, and they’ve actually been with us now for over twelve years,” says McCallum. “When you have a schedule like that, you’re delivering an hour or a movie of the week every two and a half weeks. It is absolutely relentless. It hones your skills in an incredible way. So, we were never really daunted, other than the reputation of carrying the mantle of ‘Star Wars.’” With 2,200 effects shots, the filmmakers could not afford to lose any bit of information throughout the production process. McCallum points out that they shoot every inch of every set and store every costume throughout the 18 months of post production and beyond. “We structure our deals with our talent and crew differently,” says McCallum. “Instead of the traditional analog way of making a movie – trying to find a script, raising the money, going into pre-production, shooting, and then nine months later you’re out in release; our pre-production continues throughout the whole making of the film. We shoot the bulk of expensive stuff. We edit for about six weeks, we rewrite, and then we go back and shoot for two or three days, then we edit again. It’s always subject to artist’s availability but we’ll make it work wherever they are. If they’re in London, we’ll go to London to shoot blue screen. If they’re in Paris or Sydney or wherever it is that they are, that’s where we’ll make it work.” This fluid production schedule required the filmmakers to come up with creative ways to bring the actors back into the moment. “Because they live in a terrible blue screen and green screen world anyway, we always have an enormous amount of art work,” he says. “We do animatics on everything, which are really very, very sophisticated, so they always understand the background they’re in. Also, we use temp 3D paintings in the background, especially on the reshoots and additional shooting. Then they’ll see a little bit of an animatic of an action sequence, and they’ll see where their place is in that.” Though much of the key cast from Episode I – including Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Natalie Portman as Padmé Amidala, Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu and Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine – returned for Episode II, the role of Anakin ten years later had to be cast from scratch. The actor would have to provide a visual link between Episode I’s Anakin, Jake Lloyd, and Sebastian Shaw, who played the unmasked Darth Vader in “Return of the Jedi.” He would also need to possess the inner restlessness the role demanded – conflict, vulnerability, rebelliousness. Add to that chemistry with Portman, which was also essential. After an 8-month search in which casting director Robin Gurland saw some 1,400 actors from across the globe, a crucial piece of the puzzle fell into place when young Canadian actor Hayden Christensen walked into the room. “Hayden had never met Natalie,” McCallum explains. “But he was unique in that there were a lot of great actors, but the minute he walked on the set, something happened between the two of them. They did it. He’s such an interesting, nice guy, not innocent, but a totally decent boy and yet there’s something damaged in him – not in Hayden personally, but there’s a look and it was perfect. It was just one of those weird things. Sometimes you have to discover that truth in the film itself, and sometimes you just know it, for right or wrong.” In Episode II, explains McCallum, Anakin has grown into a “Padawan learner” under the tutelage of Obi-Wan, but a tragic incident on his home planet will cast a dark shadow across everything that has come before and after. “We met him when he was 8 years old,” says McCallum. “He is now 19. He’s a grown man. He’s been studying to be a Jedi for 10 years, and this is the beginning of what I would call the downward spiral. We learn how and why Anakin actually does the things that we know he’s about to do, and there are some things that he does in the film that are very disturbing.” Himself a parent of four, McCallum likens witnessing Anakin’s transformation to the fears and frustrations of raising children. “You’re going to do the best for them that you possibly can,” he says. “You’re going to provide the best things in the world for them, all the love in the world, and something may happen to one of them. You don’t know whether it’s genetic, environmental, whether it’s a single event that happens, whether it’s peer pressure, whether it’s ego, status, or whatever it is that drives all of us, or a combination of all those things. That’s one of the things we’re trying to understand – what is happening to Anakin. And then you realize, like anything in life, if you love somebody, you care about them, they’re even heroic, and yet they can’t stop themselves. And that’s what Episode III will be about.” Beyond the nearly Sophoclean dimensions of the story, Episode II encompasses enormous scope, filling out the “Star Wars” universe with scores of new planets and characters. McCallum grows excited when discussing the rich detail that digital filmmaking has allowed them to bring to every frame. Episode II is the first major motion picture created using a high-definition 24-frames-per-second digital video camera and videotape rather than film. “One of the most interesting things is the sheer density of what’s going on in every frame,” he explains. “There’s obviously the action and characters that drive the story, but then there things going on in the background that are not complex but just dense. We were able to load each frame with so much information that it will take two or three times to really get it, to see everything. Speaking strictly from a producer’s point of view, that has to do with design and production. It’s so much fun. Whether it’s vehicles or creatures, there’s something going on that’s also driving the subtext of the movie.” One of McCallum’s favorite sequences in the film – a dramatic chase through a droid factory – was written and executed entirely on the spot. The producer recalls that Lucas felt something was needed in the film at that moment. On the way to the set, “He said, ‘Just get me a conveyor belt and paint it blue,’” McCallum describes. “So, that’s what we did. He started doing little sketches and doodles. When we got there we had our first day of shooting. We got a storyboard artist to come in. I sent our animatic artist to a factory near San Francisco to do some research. And we shot the sequence in four hours. And it’s one of the most beautiful sequences in the movie. Everybody just took a gasp and realized that, hey, if you don’t put too much brain damage into this, if you don’t overthink it, and you make it easy, you can do things like that.” The digital acquisition of images is something Lucas and McCallum both champion passionately. McCallum compares the question of celluloid film versus digital tape to the early-1990s revolution from linear to non-linear motion picture editing. “Technology is only a tool,” he says. “If you’re not talented, it doesn’t matter what format you’re editing or shooting on. And the issue of digital work for us was very apparent. It’s something that we’ve been pushing for seven-and-a-half years. Virtually every one of the 2,200 shots [in Episode II] has a digital effect in it. For us to shoot on film and then spend $2 million scanning that film in before we can even begin to manipulate it is absolutely absurd. Is it right for everybody? That is a total subjective and personal choice. The issue now is that we have a choice. And we’ve never had that opportunity before. There is no way we’d ever go back to film, not for the kind of movies that we make. But much more importantly to us, because we have total and absolute control all the way through the process of the acquisition [and manipulation] of images, is: how can we continue that process for the audience?” McCallum and Lucas believe the final frontier in this digital universe is exhibition – projecting a digital motion picture in the full array of detail of which it is capable. Though only a handful of auditoriums worldwide are currently equipped with digital cinema projectors, McCallum holds out hope that moviegoers themselves will change that. “There’s an audience that actually understands the difference,” he says. “When we opened ‘Star Wars Special Edition,’ instead of opening in 5,000 theaters, we said, ‘No, we will only open in digital sound theaters,’ of which there are about 1,850. No one expected that movie to work on any level whatsoever and it went on to gross $550 million dollars. We did the research as well as Fox. People were willing to get in a car and drive an hour to listen to it in a digital theater. That was a commitment that an average audience has never been given the respect to understand that they will make, especially if they’re young.” McCallum is convinced digital cinema will play a much larger role in exhibition by the time Episode III debuts in 2005. “I think at the end of the day there are going to be watershed events,” he says. “If it’s not us, it’s going to be Jim Cameron. If it’s not Jim Cameron, it’ll be Bob Zemeckis. If it’s not them, it’ll be Francis Coppola. All of them are committed to shooting on digital. Because the issues right now are about paranoia and money. There’s fear, which always leads to the dark side, and this issue of who is ultimately going to pay for it. And those are complicated issues. The studios will kick and scream because they don’t want to pay for it. The theater owners, personally, in my opinion, shouldn’t pay for it. But they will also gain immeasurably from it. People will find the quality, and if they can’t find it in a theater, they’ll find it on their own, but it will never replace the experience of going to the movie.” As Episode II winds down toward release, Lucas and McCallum are already making arrangements for Episode III – where they’re going to shoot it (Fox Studios in Australia), how it’s going to look (through preliminary animatics). The 12-year commitment McCallum made at the start of this saga is in its home stretch. And for Lucas, in many ways the ultimate independent filmmaker, Episode III will mark the end of a tremendous journey. “I think the legacy of ‘Star Wars’ is such a phenomenal achievement that he will always have,” says the producer. “He has been able to set up three companies that have redefined the nature of visual effects, sound and production. And what is really interesting is that I don’t think we’ll begin to see what George Lucas can do until he finishes the ‘Star Wars’ saga. I think people will be blown away because at heart he’s still very much of an experimental, low-budget filmmaker. He’s much more comfortable doing ‘THX-1138’ than he is ‘Star Wars.’ I think that once this is all over we will just begin to see him as an artist. Phenomenal things are going to come out of him. I don’t think they will be very commercial; but I think they’ll be phenomenal.”