June 15, 1999 - He worked on the first Star Wars film, and has been with every Star Wars film since. Dennis Muren, senior visual effects supervisor at the George Lucas special effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), has won eight Academy Awards for his work on these and other films. He, the crew at ILM, and the rest of Lucasfilm, have effectively changed the course of film-making. Beyond Lucas, ILM has opened its doors to directors like Ron Howard, James Cameron, and Steven Spielberg.
In tonight's chat session at Talk City (co-sponsored by Talk City and the official Star Wars website) Muren talked about working in visual effects, special challenges for Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The session started at around 6:00 PST.
Some tidbits from the chat...
Audience:
Mr. Muren, did you use some of the techinques you used in movies
such as Jurrasic Park in Episode I? Or did you have
to develop new ways of doing things?
Muren: It's a combination. Some of the stuff we've been working on for ten years sort of ends up in Phantom Menace, but we couldn't do it without a lot more advancement. So we did have to work on our software being easier and faster to use for our animators, and we had to find ways to simulate clothing, because it's just to hard to animate. There were months and months of development on the show, before we could actually get to do it.
Audience: What was the most complicated scene for you to create in The Phantom Menace?
Muren: It would have to be the end battle, the biggest and most complicated - to create the Gungan army and the droid army and have them fighting the way they are. It was like doing an all-artificial movie that looks real.
Audience: What was it like working with George Lucas?
Muren: George is wonderful! He knows what he wants visually, and he can explain it verbally. And he's open to ideas. He keeps the entire show moving forward. You don't get bogged down in details. There's probably no other director who could do 2000 shots in that amount of time - 18 months.
Audience: How much software actually had to be invented and developed for Episode I by ILM, Mr. Muren?
Muren: There was an awful lot that was written for cloth simulation, so that the clothing would not have to be animated all the time, and our data pipeline was streamlined so we could get hundreds of characters into the shot so it wouldn't freeze. We probably had 10 programmers working on it for months and months, throughout the show. We had some wonderful ways to do facial animation too, to get the impressions of Jar Jar.
Audience: What did you feel putting your hand on the walk of fame? P.S. Congratulations!
Muren: Oh thanks! It was sort of a dream! Like I was just dreaming or something. I never imagined it would happen to me. It was a real thrill. I'm in the same block as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and right next to Ray Bolger. It was like a yellow brick road there. George flew in, and C-3P0 and R2 were there.
Audience: What's the difference between doing the special effects for a dramatic film like Saving Private Ryan an doing it for a sci-fi like The Phantom Menace?
Muren: They are pretty different! In both cases they need to look real, but in a dramatic film they're based in the real world, but there are a lot of technical challenges. In fantasy films, that's where your imagination runs wild. Both are equally difficult. And equally challenging. Actually, dramatic films are a little harder to do, because if you don't do it just right, it'll look like a special effect. Fantasy films are more artificial; they can look not quite real, and maybe you don't mind, because who has ever actually seen it?
Audience: Dennis, what kind of special equptment did you use in the production?
Muren: The computer gear for the high-end 3D graphics were SGI's, and we animate with SoftImage, and we model mainly with Alias software, and we render with Renderman software. And we have just huge amounts of our own software that we use. We also use Flame and Inferno software for some compositing.
Audience: Dennis, was it fun to have a cameo in Raiders of the Lost Ark??? And who's idea was it??
Muren:
It was one of my biggest thrills that I'd ever had. Steven needed
someone in the film to be a spy, and they were filming up
near where we are, and he had some pictures taken of some
employees, and he picked me. I think it's because I have a
rather Germanic look, and look a little like one of the other
spies in the film. It was very strange being on the other
side of the camera, with everyone looking at you, and someone
directing you. Lights shining in your face. But it was really great!