ILM Presents: “Empire at 40”
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- Опубліковано 8 жов 2024
- A special livestream conversation with effects legends Dennis Muren, Joe Johnston, Phil Tippett, and Lorne Peterson in celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. ILM's VFX Supervisor Bill George will moderate the discussion.
- Фільми й анімація
Thank you for doing this conference call. I really enjoyed it. You're all the reason Star Wars is what it is. Thank you.
Man how I start learning vfx making
Me too .🎬🎞🎥📽👍
These people are the reason that I fell in love with Star wars I loved seeing the world they helped create
Thanks you for bringing and making it happen :)
The best part is all those guys in their old age now physically look like the wizards they always have been.
This is AWESOME watching these LEGENDS talk about their craft. Give us more of this every week !!!!!
This group of wizards and warlocks left a wonderful impression on my formative years and I thank you all so deeply. I could watch these men reminisce like this every day 🙏❤️
When I was at ILM, I was lucky to have one of the original matte paintings from Empire hanging in my office.
Cool!!!
How was that not in an archive somewhere?! Incredible.
Which painting was it?
@@kbadr It was from planet Hoth, likely an extra one, not used in the film.
What can I say, 47 years old and still awe inspired by these fantastic creative geniuses, I blame these for being a perfectionist in my daily carpentry work and painting model kits👍
Thanks Joe for planting the seed for the falcon to go back to a round dish, sequel producers should watch and learn!
LEGENDARY PIONEERS! This team inspired me from the pages of Bantha Tracks, the Star Wars Fan Club newsletter, to pursue a career in computer art back in 1990. These films and the stories behind them continue to inspire. Thank you, gentlemen. You're true pioneers.
These people made a timeless classic! I just wish Disney would stop meddling with it. Give us the theatrical release on Bluray!!!
What a piece of work. This was amazing. Thank you for taking the time to do this. Was so emotional think I could wept in the first few minutes. This film is perfect lighting strikes twice. The effects driven by the story and served with impeccable editing and covered by the secret source of John Williams score. All of it melted together beautifully. Your work is outstanding and still very much the benchmark for modern vfx. Love it. I hope you can come back for Jedi. Remember even legends stay safe and healthy. If nothing else at this point for me as a life long fan... Thank you.
I was the one who wrote John Dykstra a letter asking for a job...I was 12.
Never heard back. 😃
You dudes are legends. Thanx!
I've applied for many jobs at places where I was probably being overly ambitious. ILM always sends a postcard response. Most other places just ignore me.
Andrew Lutes I was 12. Just a kid and probably like the hundreds of other kids that was fascinated by the sfx and wanted to be part of the fun. 😃
John Knoll did the same thing if I'm not mistaken... that worked out OK for him !
Romansson ha, I would have had to have my mom take me out of school and drive me to california. 🚙
That’s hilarious I think I’ve heard John Dykstra tell that story.
Film lives forever and so is the great talent of these men immortalized.
It is a pleasure and honor to hear their memories of the birth of this beloved classic.
These people are the reason of the best Star Wars. They changed many lifes, mine too.
Thank you!
The asteroid scene, the three Star Destroyer purchasing the falcon... One of my favourite moment, the music, the velocity... just perfect.
torghoslo One of the great film sequences.
And the potatos in the backround:-D
Thank you all for enriching our lives!
Awesome hearing these legends wax lyrical about their time on the movie, what a phenomenal time it must have been. A great insight into these pioneers of their craft. Brilliant and inspiring.
13 year old me travelled up to London and met Joe Johnson along with a remote control R2 in a comic shop. Still have his autograph! Can’t believe this was 40 years ago!
Pure Awesomeness.
Thank you everyone who worked on any aspect of the VFX for the original trilogy.
Thank you 'Harmy' for the his despecialized editions, and thank you 'theoriginaltrilogy' for their 4K77 and 4K83 releases.
I got into visual effects because of Dennis Muren.
Such a great 1:25:12! Thanks to the guys for sitting down and reminiscing! ILM Should definitely do more of these as these stories are so inspiring
Thank you ILM for putting this together. These guys are my creative heroes. Lovely to hear from them and the stories of Empire.
Please please please do this again... And then again for Jedi.
Agreed, the 40th anniversary of Jedi would be a great follow-up. And there are stories specific to Jedi that were obviously not within the scope of this video.
These men are living legends. It's great seeing them every now and then. I've grown old with them and can tell who is speaking just by the hearing the voice. Great stuff.
I'd like to see a Joe Johnston directed Star Wars film!
Me, too.
It is a great film. For all the faults of the Wolfman that Universal created, it’s still a great film. I love Captain America: The First Avenger and The Rocketeer so much.
@Writer B.L. Alley JPIII has it flaws, but they mostly reside in the script with (contrary to what most people believe) has less to do with the director. The LOOK of the film, the pacing, etc, was well-executed. The story was lacking, but the execution wasn't the issue. *All opinions are mine, of course, and not meant to be argumentative.
Joe Johnston said the “asteroid field” piece like is written on de CD is his favorite music of all 3 movies! I COULDN’T AGREE MORE!!
It’s been my favorite since I watched the Star Wars trilogy for the first time.
Just randomly clicked on this thinking I've seen it before... Realized what it was... Stopped it, ordered a pizza, then waited for it to arrive and then started watching this.
HA! SAME!! I wish ALL one hour and
25 minute minute videos flew by this fast!!
These guys are the heroes of Star Wars for me, along with Lucas, Ben Burtt and Ralph McQuarrie. Amazing talents.
The first Stars was so exhilirating but I remember sitting in the theatre just shocked, and thinking how Empire was a completely different film that I expected, but proud of how much it moved the story out into a new plane. This is a worthy celebration of a film that showed where sci-fi could really go.
Dennis Murren: " the will to do it." That says it all. These Guys are just incomparable. Cinemas national treasures.
Thank you, everyone, for all the incredible magic you guys created.
Truly awe-inspiring.
This is the best 85 minutes of my COVID isolation. Thank you for doing this! I always wondered - after Luke throws a grenade in the belly of one of the AT-AT's - why does the screen fade to black after his head explodes?
That scene of the falcon outmaneuvering the star destroyers was basically the spaceship equivalent of the chaotic foot chase Han Solo escape scenes on the Death Star in the previous film. It's him moving like crazy in between them all making them scramble - perfect capturing of Solo's personality but with ship movements.
This film still holds to this day. An inspiration for some people on our team
I bet you guys did not think that what you were doing would stick like glue in the imaginations of 10 year olds around the world in 1980, It has, the Magic is still there, 40 years on. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dennis Muren, Ralph McQuarrie, Frank Oz, Ben Burt, and ALMOST George, for a PBS news special in 1998, talking to my childhood heros was a life affirming experience for me, I should have asked for a job. Doh!
You guided my drawing imagination as a child and my film making passions as an adult. Your work Fueled my imagination with hope and joy for a life time. Thank you.
This is like getting George Martin and the engineers of Abbey Road together to talk about how the Beatles created Revolver and Sgt Pepper. Truly a privilege to be watching these souls recount their experiences that have touched and inspired so many.
Amazing and inspirational. So much so, we made our own. Thank you ILM!
My book, "Inside The Star Wars Empire: A Memoir" about my 20 years working for ILM is coming out in paper back from Rowman & Littlefield June 1st. Can be pre-ordered on Amazon or any book store.
Read it last year and enjoyed it - had a laugh at the camera set-up story for the projection booth and the painting workshops... loved all the reminiscences from back in the day and inner working explanations from the Ranch.
I never knew about your book, just bought it now!
Hi, Bill! Nice to see you chime in here. (I'd say there's about a 20% chance you remember me :-) ) (and congrats on the book!)
IS gary Kurtz included in it or omitted as usual
These videos are the best! So much passion.. The movie reflected that! Empire is ageless and a masterpiece. I wouldn't mind seeing more videos in the future with these masters.
Thanks for this! Truly great to listen to these guys talk about their craft. Just a complete joy. And yes I could watch them talk for days. :)
I absolutely loved this presentation! Thanks for doing it.
May the Force be with You!
That Tie Fighter model behind Bill is the most beautifully detailed thing I saw in my time at ILM. And that's what he built in his free time!
Warms my heard to see these comments. When I was in high school, these guys were idols of mine. Absolute legends in their field. I wanted to work for ILM (though as I have gotten older, I realize that what I really wanted was to work at ILM in 1979 :) )
Oh man this give me such chills to see those scenes at the beginning again and so awesome hearing these old space nerds that shaped our lives so deeply. Love it, thank you!!!!!
Just bumped into this video and I'm so thrilled to see some of my movie-making heroes re-united to discuss such an amazing film. Fabulous stories, incredible creativity, real passion for the art, and such a wonderful sense of fun ... I could watch this kind of video for hours. Great stuff, just wonderful :-)
Love you all! Thank you for this livestream! Absolute gold!
Our most favorite Episode of them all. Hands Down. Excellent Zoom like video Interviews. We are definately going to archive this video. Love it.
These guys are like heroes to me! Thank you all so much.
This was such a great conversation! I love hearing all the anecdotes from behind the scenes.
This is great, almost as great as being at a roundtable discussion or at a dinner table together reminiscing of the good ol' days of Cinema. Thank you guys.
This is a total love letter to fans. Thank you.
I love these guys!! I grew up watching they're work. My hats off to you all!! Empire and Jedi are my all time favorites!
Thank you Legends of ILM for making the seemingly impossible images in my childhood into reality..you guys still don't get enough credit for that!! Thank you!!
I saw Phil Tippett one time while getting mexican food to go in Berkeley. I didn't bother him but couldn't believe that was the guy that did Star Wars!!!
It really hits you that these men were as responsible for the Star Wars we know and love as much as Lucas, perhaps more so. Add Dykstra and McQuarrie in there and you have a team of legends. Lucas was so, so lucky to have such talent at his back. I hope they all got a respectable cut of that big financial pie.
Don't forget John Williams!
@@millenniumf1138 Damn, you're right! I'm certain that without the Maestro, Star Wars wouldn't have been as big as it was.
Simply one of the best 1h 25mins of my life! Absolutely wonderful job, thank you.
Was waiting the whole video for someone to say to Lorne: "Can we talk about the elephant in the room?"
I guess you don't mind working blue.
Actually the blue elephant is based on some art from Neil Assenheimer a popular artist from Edmonton the capital of Alberta the place where Lorne lives ..
This was fantastic!, dont let the views fool you, the masses simply didnt know of this event. I ran into it by chance. SO so thrilling to see the masters speak of their past involvement with starwars. And i say masters, but at the time truth is, they were all but young men exploring their crafts, given an opportunity to come together upon a project none of them truly understood heck not even the actors themselves. But when time came for Empire, they banged into second gear and took off in ways never seen put to film, and in many ways not seen since. For all those that frown upon cgi. dont blame the tool, nor the artists as the artists only are made to deliver what the director desires and the directors vision be it good or bad, And even then the director is pigeon held by their budgets. And overall most things today's directors desire is everything but a decent script. Cause without a great script you have nothing no matter the medium used to bring it to fruition. The computer is just a tool. in the bands of brilliance it can used to do great and wonderful things. but int the hands of many novice, its unbounded freedom with little to no constraints enable directors to dig themselves a grave of their own doing. And thats the beauty of practical. the real world is chock full of constraints to ones desires. overall this was a great trip down memory lane with some of the best the biz ever produced. The pioneers who laid their own set of steps that has taken us up thus far.
Amazing livestream! These guys are all legends.
Very enjoyable listening to these legends reminiscing about one of the greatest movies ever!! The host had the 1999 Eagle on his desk, or was it the original Falcon?
I noticed that too. Looked like a Moon Base Eagle with a Falcon cockpit on the front. Also noted his awesome TIE Fighter cockpit ball on a flatbed trailer, have seen that before somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember where.
That’s a cleaned up version of Colin Cantwells original Pirate Ship/Blockade Runner version of the Falcon. It’s in Star Wars McQuarrie pre-production Art.
I know that design and the concept art you speak of, but that does look very much like an Eagle, note the landing gear pods which are pretty much identical to the Eagle’s complete with RCS thrusters and everything. The original long Falcon concept didn’t have those. I wonder if that model is an in-joke and they actually attached a Falcon cockpit to an Eagle model?
Harold Withers I’m going primarily off of the cockpit design. For A video about Empire & Star Wars history, I doubt they’d sneak an Eagle in. Or maybe it’s a shout out to Brian Johnson who worked on Empire too. 😉
@@LynxVGL like I said, it looks a little like an in-joke model, the original pirate ship model was similar to the Eagle design, but it was never as on the nose as that model is, which is why I wonder if some ILMer built that as a gag, and a nod to the story of how the Falcon needed to be redesigned due to the original's similarity to the Space 1999 Eagle. I wouldn't put it passed them. If you look at both the Colin Cantwell model, the McQuarrie concept art, or the original pirate ship model which got converted to the Blockade Runner, none of them were as close to the Eagle as that model. Heh, someone is gonna have to give Bill George a shout and find out what's going on there.
One of the greatest films ever made. I saw this when I was eleven years old in an old cinema back 1980. It blew my mind and changed my life. And the one man who is responsible for it hardly gets any recognition and that man is the Director Irvin Kershner. He made Star wars what it is . Your legacy live on.
Most Definately. For us as well.
One of my high school classmates, and a close friend, Jeff Light, was supervisor of motion capture at ILM during the first two of the Star Wars prequels. He was bright and dynamic. He could act, sing, dance, write, direct, paint backdrops, record and play sound effects--round that time, whilst watching an episode of Star Trek (TOS), I had managed to capture on a tape recorder a few seconds of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) firing his phaser pistol; I shared it with Jeff, and he incorporated it into a segment of our senior skits, during which the world's best hyperbolist in all of human history played Captain Quirk--a true Renaissance man of the first order Jeff was! His only character flaw was that he kept pestering me to tell him my astoundingly brilliant puns . . . .
I long have wished he could find two colleagues, one named Jeff Industrial, and the other Jeff Magic, and they would form their own SFX/CGI production company.
Having just watched Empire at the weekend with my son, this was was a most fascinating talk about one of three films that shaped my own childhood and life to be honest.
This is why I watch the end credits. It is my thank you to people like you. Thanks.
I do love that shot that Dennis mentioned. Such incredible graphic design and movement. Wow.
My first Star Wars movie that is also saw in the Theater and was mind blown. Thank you for making this masterpiece and influenced my (nerd) life.
That opening montage was better than the last six films put together.
You guys are legends. Thank you so much.
The best movie of the saga.... thanks for this great adventure :-)
Amazing insightfull chat between legends in their field. More people should see this, less then 50.000 is way to low! I hope you guys can do this more often for anniversary's of heavy visual effect movies. Perhaps Raiders of the Lost Ark next year?
Thanks for doing this guys, could listen to stuff like this for hours more
These are the people who made star wars endearing to all the real fans. Better than CGI.
You guys are legends, thank you so much for blowing a nine year old's mind in 1977...
These guys are the pioneers of ILM, absoloute legends.
So cool that you mention Mike Pangrazio, I wish we had more interviews or workshops of him
I sense something is seriously amiss with the force powers of the UA-cam algorithm bots for this legendary discussion to only have 45k views as of 6/17.
this talk is a gift wrapped in gold, thank u
This video is AMAZING, thanks for the upload.
This really is totally awesome! Thank you so much to the people that burned amazing images into my mind for life :D
THIS WAS AWESOME!!!! 💯❤️💯❤️. OMIGOD!! So many stories!! I could have listened to this for ten hours!!!
Slave 1 from a dryer ? I was doing the (Sheldon fit) here, since "We" the biggest nerds, knew from years ago that it was designed from a street light. LOL! .P.S. This was a great video, thanks for making it.
Geez, I still can't believe how well the stuff on screen holds up forty years later.
It was so great watching this and meeting Lorne in person in Dec last year in Utrecht the Netherlands. We're going to watch Empire again in the movie theatre next week (July 6th) after '97 and dec. '80.
Wonderful seeing these guys reminiscing! I just wish they could've gone on longer, as in these group discussions, everyone always seems to be getting really warmed up and into it by the time they're due to finish!!
One minor gripe I might have about the video is that (as far as I could tell) no one mentioned Brian Johnson, who oversaw all the VFX alongside Richard Edlund. I was hoping to hear a bit about that, as it was quite an unusual situation. Oh well. Here's to the 40th anniversary video for Jedi!
Hi - great discussion but boring question. Can I ask what service you used for this livestream?
Love this, just what I needed today so thank you - just wish Ralph was still with us to join in the fun!
What a treat to listen to the guys who made our obsessions possible . I found it funny when they were talking about the origins of the Falcon when both models including the original concept and the Eagle were on the shelves behind the host , as well as a few other items i would have liked to hear about their origins too ..
Thanks for doing this!!! It was awesome!
What I love is that the host, Bill George, got his job at ILM by showing a fantastic model of a Y-Wing which he'd built after watching Episodes IV & V. The model makers at the time thought it was even better than the filming models used for the first two films & hired him on the spot!! Bills'Y-Wing was subsequently used in Episode VI Return of The Jedi.....
I think, if I recall, that it was eventually affixed to a plaque & kept as a trophy.....
Fantastic interview. Thank you. ❤️❤️♥️ The Empire Strikes Back.
AWESOME Love these guys
Thanks, Joe! Thanks, Dennis! Thanks, Phil! Thanks, Lorne! Thanks, Bill! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
joe johnston looks like a german filmmaker from the 20s now
For sure; he’s going full G.W. Pabst.
Talking about one of the greatest movies ever made pure joy thank you as long as there are movie's there will always be star wars
That was such a great stream! Let's get Joe Johnston a SW movie!!!-
Hey ILMVFX.... great to see youz guyz... Joe, in the truly odd chance that you read any of the comments... a couple of us are still flying out near Liberty Field... the actual site is no longer used... it’s in ruins. But we’re up in the air every weekend we can... reach out if you want to connect up, see the paramotor gear we’re cloud hopping with! Later.
How cool is that? Thank you so much.
Would be nice to hear from the British crew: Nick Allder. Brian Johnson. etc.
Well done!
Thanks, masters.
Was not expecting this but thoroughly enjoyed it. So interesting to hear about this history
Also “like our president” hahaha
This stuff is epic. Thank you Star Wars for all the inspiration to make awesome films!
That super star destroyer model is incredible. And still one of the best capital ship designs out there.