Lucas, The Beatles, Porno, and the Video Revolution

For anyone whose life revolves around the latest installment of anything pertaining to the legacy of the Star Wars franchise, I’m sure you’re already heard that Lucas is calling it quits when it comes to movies.

George Lucas has revolutionized film in the same regards as the Beatles set the standards for music forty years ago. Like the Beatles, whenever the technology was inadequate to handle their visions, they simply designed and built it themselves. Nothing sound console could handle the massive overdubs the Beatles had in mind whenever they wrote Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, in the same regards to Lucas, at the time there was nothing that was able to handle what he wanted to do with the original Star Wars.

With the success of Star Wars, the sky seemed like the limit with Lucas. He was able to take the good fortune he had made and began at work on the now legendary Skywalker ranch. He was able to build his production company Lucasfilms, and was able to produce some of the most successful blockbusters of the last twenty years.

One of the most significant moves that Lucas has done of the last decade was his decided use of digital video for the production of the last three installments of the Star Wars series. Digital video was something that was shunned amongst the top Hollywood filmmakers, not to mention the artistic sticklers that felt that video would be the downfall of modern cinema, in the same regards to the switch to video in the early eighties of porn production. They felt it would cheapen the experience of filmmakers who felt they were truly arts man of their craft. The only difference is that in the eighties, video quality had not progressed much beyond the quality of video that was used on seventies television programs like All in the Family or practically any game show. Lucas understood the significant quality that video had been developed, and felt that it was at a production standpoint that was successful enough to carry on the latest installment of his most beloved legacy. Even though to the surprise of many, Lucas only directed the first installment of the original trilogy. Other directors did both the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. An interesting point is that Lucas originally offered Twin Peaks creator David Lynch the opportunity to direct Return of the Jedi after viewing Lynch’s Dune, but David Lynch felt it would be more of Lucas’ vision that his own.

The reason this is significant for the future production of film and video is now not only are amateurs using video as a gateway into the industry, major players are giving thumbs up to video production. As it becomes more of a standard in the field technological advancements will be placed at the forefront for the progression of video media. One of the most recent discussions has been over the standardization of no-format digital media. The idea of carrying endless amounts of DV and videotapes around on location will become a thing of the past. A hard drive will be on board to log and capture all of the production. The only negative thing I can think of here is that it would be a travesty enough to lose sixty minutes worth of tape to shoot over, as opposed to losing an entire days worth of work only to have the hard drive crash. End of day captures would almost seem like a necessity.