George

Article ©2008, Stanley N. Lozowski                                                                               Photos ©2007, American Film Institute. All rights reserved

At the dawn of the twentieth century

a new form of entertainment and communication emerged; a medium based on new technology that enabled everyone to watch moving images on screens in darkened rooms.

Projecting short motion pictures to large audiences sitting in front of a massive white screen in hotel dining areas and ballrooms became extremely lucrative. The earliest moving images amazed spectators by displaying people and scenery in strange settings and far off places, but when a locomotive came rushing down the tracks aimed straight at the audience, people actually leaped out of their chairs to run for safety. The reality and the power of motion picture images were indisputable.

Over the next few years, this new innovation was dubbed "movies" and the stories they portrayed grew more life-like and convincing. They amused and captivated a growing audience that sought to escape the boredom of its daily life in enormous darkened theaters that resembled palaces. A new industry had been born and those who controlled it became extremely wealthy.

Movie moguls could literally do whatever they wanted and during the middle of the last century, Cecil B. DeMille, the famed Hollywood producer and director, purchased two locomotives and two entire railroad trains and he arranged to crash them head on for one scene in his Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus motion picture epic, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

            In an interview, Mr. DeMille stated that he had experimented with crashing model trains, but the results were poor and the effect did not look real. He constructed larger model trains, but the results were still not what he wanted; they didn’t look convincing when they crashed, even though they were filmed at higher speeds and the film was subsequently slowed down.

            Mr. DeMille stressed the fact that above all else, he wanted realism in bringing his vision to the big screen and he was prepared to pay for it, no matter what the cost. He claimed that his audience deserved the best but many people viewed this as an extravagant Hollywood publicity stunt and an enormous waste of money. I was about ten years old when the day came but I remember that on the following day, the New York Daily News carried a photo of the two locomotives crashing head on.

During the late 1970’s, realizing that you could only do so much with models and props, George Lucas was light years ahead of everyone else when he foresaw and pioneered the development of digital special effects for his film, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Thanks to his successful STAR WARS, he was also one of the very few people alive who could afford to push the envelope.

His demands led to the creation of Sony’s Cine Alta camera; a 24p video camera that recorded digital images electronically. Instead of shooting on film, George’s dream was to obtain images made up of individual pixels that could  easily and immediately be manipulated for enhancement and effects.

While his Industrial Light and Magic Company developed the computer program Renderman that gave birth to Pixar, it also led to competing technologies including 3D Studio Max, Maya, Lightwave, Houdini, Poser, Cinema 4D and the many other “virtual” 3D world programs that have since evolved. Like wildfire, this new digital technology was quickly integrated into video game devices and later, the Internet.

It has been said that while flat 2D photographs and animations define the twentieth century, three dimensional electronic images will herald the twenty-first and we are well on our way.

One cannot dispute the fact that George was responsible for the development and digital implementation of all “new” media. Digital video cameras provided the electronic signals that were easily stored on analog tapes and the technology eventually allowed filmmakers to make movies and games with virtual digital images that could easily be stored and manipulated on computers and later, hand-held devices.

All the lower priced high-definition digital still and movie cameras and camcorders that have flooded the market in recent years (as well as all the gaming devices) can be traced back to George’s insistence on using digital technology to provide more realistic special effects.

3D programs made digital video cameras a necessity since it was time consuming and expensive to create special effects in a computer and then try to merge them in Hollywood film labs with live-action strips of 35mm filmed images. The entire process demanded a simpler and faster solution and that solution was to get rid of the noisy motion picture cameras, film, developing chemicals, cine printers, the darkroom, television and even Hollywood itself. When he realized he didn’t need any of them anymore, George moved far away and established Skywalker Ranch as a "filmmaker's retreat" and as the “new” Hollywood. George lives nearby and not on the ranch which was never intended to be the headquarters for his business operations.

The new technologies and programs that were created to accomplish digital special effects have simultaneously fueled the growth of electronic video games to the point where the electronic gaming industry is now larger than Hollywood. While LucasArts is heavily involved in gaming, the gaming industry has become a force in its own right. In addition, the Internet was spawned from this process and it, in turn, is revolutionizing the video industry with the way television programs are being instantly delivered.

The world will change more and more as we implement the promise and full potential of digital video on electronic gaming units, i-pods, cell phone cameras, PDAs and the many new and innovative hand-held devices that are still on the drawing boards.

Last week, my dentist took digital x-rays of my teeth. I drove with my friend in his car listening to a computer voice give us GPS directions while viewing a digital map of our location as we listened to music downloaded from i-Tunes on his i-Pod. He took my digital photo with his i-Phone and instantly e-mailed it to me. We viewed the latest stock prices on the device and he cursed the fact that his Apple stock had lost a few points and was down.

Thank you, Mr. Lucas. Your first STAR WARS film represents the end of an era and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, the birth of another. With the computer revolution you fostered and the development of the Internet and digital technologies, our lives and the world of the future are forever changed.                                                                        (continued below)

            By the 1920's, Willis H. O'Brien had pioneered the art of stop-motion model building in his film, THE LOST WORLD. A decade later, he used his single frame animation skills to captivate audiences with an impressive gorilla model. Utilizing recorded sound and intercutting live actors with his scaled down creations, KING KONG shocked and frightened viewers of the day with a new realism.

O'Brien's protege (and successor), Ray Harryhausen, perfected and brought the art of stop-motion to its height in the 1958 film, THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD, which featured a magnificent sword fight against seven skeleton warriors.

In contrast to creating miniatures that looked real and worked successfully, it appeared easy for Hollywood to fabricate convincing life-size costumes and monsters with make up. The fact that everyone did this gave rise to the magazine, FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and a bevy of prolific knock-offs.

Every special effects team had to weave enough magic so you really thought their small creations were life size. Gordon Jennings rightfully took an Academy Award for his wonderful models and special effects in George Pal’s THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, a 1953 theatrical film that capitalized on the UFO craze. His 42-inch models suspended by 15 wires and the eight foot exploding model of Los Angeles City Hall are still convincing today.

By the middle of the century, new technology was bringing moving pictures into our homes and my friends and I were watching the FLASH GORDON serials from the 1930’s with Buster Crabbe on TV. After viewing an episode, I explained to my classmates that the size of the flames coming out of the rocket ship’s exhaust indicated that it was a very small model less than a foot in length. Looking carefully, I also noted that in certain scenes the model space ships dangled from a single wire. These were certainly clumsy special effects, but when you’re young, no one cares. The films were fun to watch.

Also fun to watch a decade later was Gene Roddenberry’s STAR TREK TV series. Since his passing, Gene has been called a "visionary" because he accurately predicted and showed many scientific things about the future, but few people gave notice to the most common ordinary things that never appeared in the series; nowhere did anyone ever use paper or a pencil. This Desilu show added color and a new and different realism to the science fiction world of the future. O.K. to watch on our new color television, the special effects would not have succeeded as well on a big screen. Many still see this as a reason why Paramount delayed in making a feature film from the series but the argument over paying TV stars higher Hollywood salaries was absolutely a major stumbling point.

Eventually, Paramount had no choice. Mesmerized by the enormous success of STAR WARS, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE was rushed into production. The studio with the greatest science fiction franchise had been upstaged by a more resourceful independent and arrogant young director named George Lucas. Inspired by serials (and the original Flash Gordon), George gave the fans what they wanted: a big screen sci-fi fantasy vision of the future they could believe in with all its wonders and intricacies. His fans gave him resounding support by purchasing every STAR WARS toy and licensed item imaginable creating the first large modern "branding" and merchandising franchise. Having access to far greater profits than anyone could imagine, George used the money to give his fans even more of what they wanted  

Taking a lesson from Ray Harryhausen, George favored precision models and his newly formed company, Industrial Light and Magic, constructed and made use of stop motion animation in STAR WARS. With the art of model making and special effects pushed to the limit, George realized he needed more in his encore, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. With the enormous earnings from his first STAR WARS film, George’s investment  and quest for realism became possible-but only because it coincided with the other necessary ingredient, the computer revolution.

For the making of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, George created a separate innovative division of ILM called the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project. That division used early RenderMan software to create rigid geometric shaped virtual models. When the cost of pioneering and developing this virtual photo realistic 3D program exceeded 40 million dollars and threatened to eat into funds reserved for producing the next Star Wars films, George sold the division to Steve Jobs in 1986. Steve, as CEO of Apple and Macintosh computers, had to invest even more to complete the program and it took many additional years for Pixar to animate and deliver TOY STORY.

When viewers in a dark theater become convinced that what they see on the screen is real and when they can empathize suspending their beliefs, it becomes much easier for a director to win their hearts and minds and play with their emotions. This is the premise of all great acting. If the actors on the screen look incompetent or if the effects look faked, no one will ever take the film seriously, although you can still enjoy it for what it is.

George probably never realized the full potential of what he was doing when he financed the creation of digital film special effects and shooting techniques. All he knew was that he was building models in a virtual world and when he crashed them, there were no casualties and no mess to clean up. Pyrotechnics in filmmaking could soon be a thing of the past if virtual explosions and virtual fire can be added to a film in post.

While he never meant to destroy the Hollywood era, the days of big Hollywood films and lavish productions are soon to be a thing of the past. George Lucas sadly admitted his own culpability in this several years ago.

Anyone, anywhere can make digital movies today without the mammoth laboratory expenses of film, developing, work printing, duplicate negatives, release prints, delivery, splicing and storage. And, as the cost of making exact models increased dramatically, this would normally be the end of our story.

But in 1997, James Cameron made a model of an "unsinkable" ocean liner in order to best recreate the terrifying final hours and make filmgoers believe they were actually there at the time of the tragedy. The model was called an "exact" replica, but it wasn't really a replica since replicas are copies that are relatively indistinguishable from the original when placed side by side.

 Twentieth Century Fox purchased 40 acres of oceanfront property in Baha, Mexico to build a huge water tank 90 foot deep and over 800 foot wide in which a 90% scale replica of the Titanic could slowly sink into 17 million gallons of water fed direct from the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps, this was the ultimate model and swansong to herald the end of a magnificent and fascinating era.

It took a century, but sound, color and 3D stereopsis (depth perception) became commonplace as filmmakers achieved greater and greater realism. Today, thanks to George, everyone is producing high definition new media digital movies and with the new software they can easily and inexpensively include scenes with crashing locomotives, giant gorillas, flying robots and exploding Death Stars for almost nothing. With the new virtual programs if you can imagine it, you can create it.

Everyone who can pick up a digital camcorder is already making short films (18 million of them are already on youTube); the features are not far behind. Hollywood will never die and some of their films will always make hundreds of millions of dollars (if not billions of dollars each), but with a glut of new media films on the market, the handwriting is on the wall.

In a world where anyone can soon build models of anything (including people), I'm reminded of how Steven Spielberg toyed with the idea of using Marilyn Monroe in one of his films by using a 1990's program called "Virtual Marilyn". Back then, the quality simply wasn't good enough, but it's a whole new ball game today as technology and computers continue to improve. The only remaining problem is that for most indie filmmakers, NM = NM (New Media equals No Money) but where there is a will, there is also a way. Add to that the concept that indie filmmakers would only have a loud voice and strength if they unite and exist in large numbers.

I've worked in licensing and deceased celebrities are represented by their estates who sell and license their images. Investors, independent filmmakers and Hollywood producers might soon be lining up to buy up the rights to use likenesses of deceased movie stars in their new films. Done properly, computer animators can change history. Imagine placing Walt Disney's face on Adolph Hitler and vice versa. Plastered all over the Internet, a new generation could blame Disney for WWII and applaud Hitler for Mickey Mouse.

A brand new film starring Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne and Bruce Lee or another titled The Three Stooges Meet the Beatles? Don't bet against it.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century a new form of entertainment and communication emerged; a medium based on new technology which enabled everyone to create and share moving images on large or small screens with everyone else anywhere in the world.

Addendum: It is now almost three years since I wrote the above article and I am enthralled by the fact that James Cameron, the man who made the last great old media Hollywood epic with hard copy models has created the first great multi-billion dollar grossing new media Hollywood epic depicting a most believable digital virtual world in AVATAR. We cannot comprehend the brave new world that awaits us.

And today, many 1080p camcorders are available for a few hundred dollars and even less. No, they will not do what the models costing a few thousand dollars will do, but they will enable almost anyone to make films at very little to no cost. - Stanley N. Lozowski, October 2010

"The more I listen to the grapevine, the more I hear the gaming industry is getting harder and harder to get into and make a living off of." These words were recently written to me by an artist/animator working to attend FullSail University.

I believe that her statement is 100% true. And it will get harder and harder because of the economic downturn and the fact that a hundred thousand new animators are learning to animate every year in all corners of the globe.

New Media literally means No Money (NM=NM) and many people laughed at me when I first proposed this idea in 2007. As a former teacher I've been called a lot of things in my life, but I suddenly found myself being called a "new media guru of sorts" (whatever that means) after seven years and 5000 blogs about independent film (www.myfilm.com) and publication of my "george" article in London during early 2008. More than anyone else, George unknowingly changed the way things work and what would follow in the 21st century!  http://what-hath-george-wrought.synthasite.com/

Everyone with a computer and a program is or can be a graphic artist today. Everyone with a computer and a connection today is a post office, a photographer, an encyclopedia, a news reporter, a publisher, an artist, a library, a filmmaker, a critic, an animator (If you just know how to type, you can make your own 3D movies with sound and dialogue on sites like: http://www.xtranormal.com/), a musician (on sites like www.PlayerPianoPlus.com), a translator, an entrepreneur, a band and everything else you can possibly imagine.

Everyone connected today has the ability to easily watch, listen, learn, attend "school" and become vocal. Everyone can suddenly give medical and legal advice and this becomes a large problem in our new society where what is true can easily be distorted and falsified. Identities can be stolen and the future makes it easier and easier to use the newer programs and computers to do whatever we want. And computers now go wherever we go held in our hands and stored in our pockets.

George had the $25 millions to purchase the first fifty 1080p cameras from Sony (Sony designed and produced the Cine Alta for him so he could shoot STAR WARS without having to wait to develop the film and then digitize the images in order to manipulate the pixels). A little over a decade later, there is no film, no videotape and 1080p camcorders can be had for less that a hundred dollars each. With a computer editing program, everyone today is a producer, a director and a DP and their films can be projected in any digital theaters in the world by pressing a button and uploading them.

People thought he did nothing a decade ago, but when asked what he did for a living a brilliant Internet-savy friend of mine replied, "I sit at my table and move electrons from one place to another." This is what's happening in the 21st century and those who still need a table to sit at and are well paid to perform this type of work are fewer and fewer as hundreds of millions rush to join the e-Renaissance every year.

NM=NM only because there are millions willing to do the jobs for the sake of the job and prestige of doing what a decade ago was impossible.

Stanley N. Lozowski, September 22, 2011

© 2011, Stanley N. Lozowski. All Rights Reserved.

When I lived in Connecticut, my neighbor in the town of Westport, decided to donate millions of dollars to charity after his son, Scott passed away. It never dawned on me that I could or should do something like this until I recently found myself in a similar position. It was easy to decide to make this my goal in life. I will spend the rest of my time producing my films and games and working with others to hopefully raise enough money so we might donate at least a hundred million dollars from the profits to children's charities.

I'm now honored to also do this in memory of my son, Michael.

http://stj.convio.net/goto/get-it-out-mike-wozowski 

And if you can spare seven-ten minutes, read About: THE DAY I TURNED MY NEIGHBOR INTO THE F.B.I.

http://what-hath-george-wrought.synthasite.com/paul.php

IT'S FREE...JOIN THE INTERNATIONAL PRODUCER'S ALLIANCE, Sam Heer, Founder/President

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/US_UK_EU_ProducersAlliance/

First published in 2008 on www.indiemoviesonline.com  - A GREAT SITE FOR FREE MOVIES!

CONTACT US: lylofilm@gmail.com     

©2008, Stanley N. Lozowski and Lylofilm Productions. All Rights Reserved.