aibrahim's Journal: Episode 2 DVD: A Filmmakers Review

Well, I've seen the thing and about the film itself, I can say it is in fact episode 2. I refuse to concern myself with Episode 2's relative merits as a film.

The transfer was done with reasonable quality, and there are not many noticeable compression artifacts. Overall it is technically a good DVD. Did anyone expect any less from Lucasfilm on a Star Wars release ?

It is the disc 2 contents that are of interest to me. Special features have the tantalizing potential to almost serve as a text for the filmmaking process. The Episode 2 DVD gives some of the best notions of how this could have been, but was not.

There is a documentary on character animation for Yoda and Jettster entitled From Puppets to Pixels. This covers things more from the artistic side than the technical. So, you won't learn any tricks about character rigging or lighting, stuff I would very much like to hear about. You will however get insight into what it takes to make Yoda move in the CG realm. What always surprises me, even when I am busy doing it, is how much acting an animator does in front of mirrors in order to get a CG character to move as they wish.

On the plus side technically, they do show a light ball. Basically this is a sphere with neutral gray on one side and chromed on the other side. Once elements for a shot are gathered, an animator will walk through the set with the light ball to gather reference data on the lighting set up on set that day. This helps to eventually integrate CG elements into a scene by givingg an animator or compositor information with which to match the lighting set up on set.

The other major documentary on disc 2, State of the Art: The Previsualization of Episode 2 is about the process of digital filmmaking from Lucas's perspective. One of the biggest changes is how movies can now step away from the notion of storyboards and into previsualization using 3D animation. I was rather happy to see this as I have been espousing this technique for two years, but people have been naysaying me. I know that by including this documentary Lucas has made my life easier, at least as far as pitching my notions for 21st century filmmaking processes goes.

The Third documentary, Films are not Released; They Escape is an insight into sound recording for the film. It really just shows people going out and collecting audio clips of interest. As usual the technical details are almost non-existent but you do get a great sense of enthusiasm for the sound collection process. What I really wanted to see more of is the in depth info on how they manipulated some of the sounds they collected to create the sounds for Episode 2. What parts of the original recording did they take, how did they process it ? What did they add ?

One of the web featurettes entitled Here We Go Again covers the use of 1080p HD Video as an acquisistion format. Still, it really adds little to the film vs. HD debate that often rages on USENET. It starts with august cinematographers commenting on how it wouldn't work. Episode 2 is a testament to the fact that they weren't quite right.

It also covers the idea of shooting elements rather than scenes. Essentially the entire film is meant to be an effects shot. Various production personnel talk about the benefits of HD. It just killed me to see an assistant editor hold up a small plastic bin with the days shooting. That is pretty much unheard of on a Hollywood production.

The benefits are obvious in terms of being able to review film immediately, on the set. The chemical film process, where you had to send film out for development at a lab, was, to my mind, a real impediment to free and fluid filmmaking. At best you'd see the results of your work (dailies) the next day. If you were on location you might not see dailies until after you were back in NYC or LA.

There is some complaint about not being able to move the camera freely with all the cables tethered to it, but what the documentary fails to mention is that these cables are only needed if you want to have a pile of monitors hooked up for on set review of footage. You can certainly unhook all the cables and run with the camera if you are so inclined. This still leaves you with an advantage. You can take the tape, drop it into a deck on set and still get everyone to look at the footage minutes after it is shot. While not as nice as having everyone looking at the scene as it is shot, this is still a vast improvement on the lab process. But I digress...

Overall this is definitely on of the best DVD's out there for content that a filmmaker could learn from, but it leaves a lot lacking. The 4 DVD edition of LOTR Fellowship, Episode 1 and Final Fantasy are the only DVD sets I would put in its league from this perspective.

Let me sound the clarion for a new idea in DVD packaging and production. I suggest a new DVD edition...the filmmaker's edition. Fill it chock full of nitty gritty technical process information about filmmaking as seen on the movie in question. Leave my filmmaker's mind swollen and bruised from cramming all that useful info into it.

While this may be a relatively niche market, I know it is a growing one with the current desktop digital video revolution. There are a lot of people out there spending a lot of money for this type of information in the subpar medium of the printed word. It can be very hard to understand film grammar, for examplee, in a text. It seems that the ideal medium for conveying this sort of very important information is being ignored.