On Star Wars day(May 4th), Disney has announced a brand new documentary series “Light & Magic”.
Granted unparalleled access, Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan takes viewers on an adventure behind the curtains of Industrial Light & Magic, the special visual effects, animation and virtual production division of Lucasfilm. Learn what inspired some of the most legendary filmmakers in Hollywood history, and follow their stories from their earliest personal films to bringing George Lucas’ vision to life. From Imagine Documentaries and Lucasfilm, and executive produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, the six-part documentary series premieres exclusively on Disney+ July 27.
On Friday, May 27, attendees of Star Wars Celebration will be among the first in the world to get a sneak peek at “Light & Magic” with an “illuminating” discussion panel featuring Lawrence Kasdan and Ron Howard, joined by VFX titans Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett, Joe Johnston and Rose Duignan, and Lynwen Brennan, Lucasfilm executive vice president and general manager.
George Lucas wanted his career making film Star Wars to include visual effects that had never been seen on film before. Lucas approached Douglas Trumbull(Douglas Trumbull Q&A), best known for the effects on 2001 : A Space Odyssey and Silent Running. Even though Trumbull declined as he was already committed to working on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, but he suggested his assistant John Dykstra. Dykstra brought together a small team of college students, artists, and engineers, and set them up in a warehouse in Van Nuys, California. After seeing the map for the location was named as Light Industrial, Lucas named the group Industrial Light and Magic, which became the Special Visual Effects department on Star Wars. Since their launch, ILM has worked on the films like, “Willo,” “The Abbys,” “Terminator 2 : Judgement Day,” “Jurassic Park,” “Forrest Gump,” “Jumaniji,” “The Mummy,” “Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest,” “Mandalorian.” Now, they have the subsidiaries companies in London, Singapore, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Sidney.
