Guided by visual effects supervisor John Knoll, ILM embraced continually evolving methodologies to craft breathtaking visual effects for the iconic space battles in First Contact and Rogue One. By Jay Stobie Visual effects supervisor John Knoll (right) confers with modelmakers Kim Smith and John Goodson with the miniature of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E during production of Star Trek: First Contact (Credit: ILM). Bolstered by visual effects from Industrial Light & Magic, Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) propelled their respective franchises to new heights. While Star Trek Generations (1994) welcomed Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s (Patrick Stewart) crew to the big screen, First Contact stood as the first Star Trek feature that did not focus on its original captain, the legendary James T. Kirk (William Shatner). Similarly, though Rogue One immediately preceded the events of Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), it was set apart from the episodic Star Wars films and launched an era of storytelling outside of the main Skywalker saga that has gone on to include Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), The Mandalorian (2019-23), Andor (2022-25), Ahsoka (2023), The Acolyte (2024), and more. The two films also shared a key ILM contributor, John Knoll, who served as visual effects supervisor on both projects, as well as an executive producer on Rogue One. Currently, ILM’s executive creative director and senior visual effects supervisor, Knoll – who also conceived the initial framework for Rogue One’s story – guided ILM as it brought its talents to bear on these sci-fi and fantasy epics. The work involved crafting two spectacular starship-packed space clashes – First Contact’s Battle of Sector 001 and Rogue One’s Battle of Scarif. Although these iconic installments were released roughly two decades apart, they represent a captivating case study of how ILM’s approach to visual effects has evolved over time. With this in mind, let’s examine the films’ unforgettable space battles through the lens of fascinating in-universe parallels and the ILM-produced fleets that face off near Earth and Scarif. A final frame from the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). A Context for Conflict In First Contact, the United Federation of Planets – a 200-year-old interstellar government consisting of more than 150 member worlds – braces itself for an invasion by the Borg – an overwhelmingly powerful collective composed of cybernetic beings who devastate entire planets by assimilating their biological populations and technological innovations. The Borg only send a single vessel, a massive cube containing thousands of hive-minded drones and their queen, pushing the Federation’s Starfleet defenders to Earth’s doorstep. Conversely, in Rogue One, the Rebel Alliance – a fledgling coalition of freedom fighters – seeks to undermine and overthrow the stalwart Galactic Empire – a totalitarian regime preparing to tighten its grip on the galaxy by revealing a horrifying superweapon. A rebel team infiltrates a top-secret vault on Scarif in a bid to steal plans to that battle station, the dreaded Death Star, with hopes of exploiting a vulnerability in its design. On the surface, the situations could not seem to be more disparate, particularly in terms of the Federation’s well-established prestige and the Rebel Alliance’s haphazardly organized factions. Yet, upon closer inspection, the spaceborne conflicts at Earth and Scarif are linked by a vital commonality. The threat posed by the Borg is well-known to the Federation, but the sudden intrusion upon their space takes its defenses by surprise. Starfleet assembles any vessel within range – including antiquated Oberth-class science ships – to intercept the Borg cube in the Typhon Sector, only to be forced back to Earth on the edge of defeat. The unsanctioned mission to Scarif with Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and the sudden need to take down the planet’s shield gate propels the Rebel Alliance fleet into rushing to their rescue with everything from their flagship Profundity to GR-75 medium transports. Whether Federation or Rebel Alliance, these fleets gather in last-ditch efforts to oppose enemies who would embrace their eradication – the Battles of Sector 001 and Scarif are fights for survival. From Physical to Digital By the time Jonathan Frakes was selected to direct First Contact, Star Trek’s reliance on constructing traditional physical models (many of which were built by ILM) for its features was gradually giving way to innovative computer graphics (CG) models, resulting in the film’s use of both techniques. “If one of the ships was to be seen full-screen and at length,” associate visual effects supervisor George Murphy told Cinefex’s Kevin H. Martin, “we knew it would be done as a stage model. Ships that would be doing a lot of elaborate maneuvers in space battle scenes would be created digitally.” In fact, physical and CG versions of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E appear in the film, with the latter being harnessed in shots involving the vessel’s entry into a temporal vortex at the conclusion of the Battle of Sector 001. Despite the technological leaps that ILM pioneered in the decades between First Contact and Rogue One, they considered filming physical miniatures for certain ship-related shots in the latter film. ILM considered filming physical miniatures for certain ship-related shots in Rogue One. The feature’s fleets were ultimately created digitally to allow for changes throughout post-production. “If it’s a photographed miniature element, it’s not possible to go back and make adjustments. So it’s the additional flexibility that comes with the computer graphics models that’s very attractive to many people,” John Knoll relayed to writer Jon Witmer at American Cinematographer’s TheASC.com. However, Knoll aimed to develop computer graphics that retained the same high-quality details as their physical counterparts, leading ILM to employ a modern approach to a time-honored modelmaking tactic. “I also wanted to emulate the kit-bashing aesthetic that had been part of Star Wars from the very beginning, where a lot of mechanical detail had been added onto the ships by using little pieces from plastic model kits,” explained Knoll in his chat with TheASC.com. For Rogue One, ILM replicated the process by obtaining such kits, scanning their parts, building a computer graphics library, and applying the CG parts to digitally modeled ships. “I’m very happy to say it was super-successful,” concluded Knoll. “I think a lot of our digital models look like they are motion-control models.” John Knoll (second from left) confers with Kim Smith and John Goodson with the miniature of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E during production of Star Trek: First Contact (Credit: ILM). Legendary Lineages In First Contact, Captain Picard commanded a brand-new vessel, the Sovereign-class U.S.S. Enterprise-E, continuing the celebrated starship’s legacy in terms of its famous name and design aesthetic. Designed by John Eaves and developed into blueprints by Rick Sternbach, the Enterprise-E was built into a 10-foot physical model by ILM model project supervisor John Goodson and his shop’s talented team. ILM infused the ship with extraordinary detail, including viewports equipped with backlit set images from the craft’s predecessor, the U.S.S. Enterprise-D. For the vessel’s larger windows, namely those associated with the observation lounge and arboretum, ILM took a painstakingly practical approach to match the interiors shown with the real-world set pieces. “We filled that area of the model with tiny, micro-scale furniture,” Goodson informed Cinefex, “including tables and chairs.” Rogue One’s rebel team initially traversed the galaxy in a U-wing transport/gunship, which, much like the Enterprise-E, was a unique vessel that nonetheless channeled a certain degree of inspiration from a classic design. Lucasfilm’s Doug Chiang, a co-production designer for Rogue One, referred to the U-wing as the film’s “Huey helicopter version of an X-wing” in the Designing Rogue One bonus featurette on Disney+ before revealing that, “Towards the end of the design cycle, we actually decided that maybe we should put in more X-wing features. And so we took the X-wing engines and literally mounted them onto the configuration that we had going.” Modeled by ILM digital artist Colie Wertz, the U-wing’s final computer graphics design subtly incorporated these X-wing influences to give the transport a distinctive feel without making the craft seem out of place within the rebel fleet. While ILM’s work on the Enterprise-E’s viewports offered a compelling view toward the ship’s interior, a breakthrough LED setup for Rogue One permitted ILM to obtain realistic lighting on actors as they looked out from their ships and into the space around them. “All of our major spaceship cockpit scenes were done that way, with the gimbal in this giant horseshoe of LED panels we got from [equipment vendor] VER, and we prepared graphics that went on the screens,” John Knoll shared with American Cinematographer’s Benjamin B and Jon D. Witmer. Furthermore, in Disney+’s Rogue One: Digital Storytelling bonus featurette, visual effects producer Janet Lewin noted, “For the actors, I think, in the space battle cockpits, for them to be able to see what was happening in the battle brought a higher level of accuracy to their performance.” The U.S.S. Enterprise-E in Star Trek: First Contact (Credit: Paramount). Familiar Foes To transport First Contact’s Borg invaders, John Goodson’s team at ILM resurrected the Borg cube design previously seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), creating a nearly three-foot physical model to replace the one from the series. Art consultant and ILM veteran Bill George proposed that the cube’s seemingly straightforward layout be augmented with a complex network of photo-etched brass, a suggestion which produced a jagged surface and offered a visual that was both intricate and menacing. ILM also developed a two-foot motion-control model for a Borg sphere, a brand-new auxiliary vessel that emerged from the cube. “We vacuformed about 15 different patterns that conformed to this spherical curve and covered those with a lot of molded and cast pieces. Then we added tons of acid-etched brass over it, just like we had on the cube,” Goodson outlined to Cinefex’s Kevin H. Martin. As for Rogue One’s villainous fleet, reproducing the original trilogy’s Death Star and Imperial Star Destroyers centered upon translating physical models into digital assets. Although ILM no longer possessed A New Hope’s three-foot Death Star shooting model, John Knoll recreated the station’s surface paneling by gathering archival images, and as he spelled out to writer Joe Fordham in Cinefex, “I pieced all the images together. I unwrapped them into texture space and projected them onto a sphere with a trench. By doing that with enough pictures, I got pretty complete coverage of the original model, and that became a template upon which to redraw very high-resolution texture maps. Every panel, every vertical striped line, I matched from a photograph. It was as accurate as it was possible to be as a reproduction of the original model.” Knoll’s investigative eye continued to pay dividends when analyzing the three-foot and eight-foot Star Destroyer motion-control models, which had been built for A New Hope and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), respectively. “Our general mantra was, ‘Match your memory of it more than the reality,’ because sometimes you go look at the actual prop in the archive building or you look back at the actual shot from the movie, and you go, ‘Oh, I remember it being a little better than that,’” Knoll conveyed to TheASC.com. This philosophy motivated ILM to combine elements from those two physical models into a single digital design. “Generally, we copied the three-footer for details like the superstructure on the top of the bridge, but then we copied the internal lighting plan from the eight-footer,” Knoll explained. “And then the upper surface of the three-footer was relatively undetailed because there were no shots that saw it closely, so we took a lot of the high-detail upper surface from the eight-footer. So it’s this amalgam of the two models, but the goal was to try to make it look like you remember it from A New Hope.” A final frame from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). Forming Up the Fleets In addition to the U.S.S. Enterprise-E, the Battle of Sector 001 debuted numerous vessels representing four new Starfleet ship classes – the Akira, Steamrunner, Saber, and Norway – all designed by ILM visual effects art director Alex Jaeger. “Since we figured a lot of the background action in the space battle would be done with computer graphics ships that needed to be built from scratch anyway, I realized that there was no reason not to do some new designs,” John Knoll told American Cinematographer writer Ron Magid. Used in previous Star Trek projects, older physical models for the Oberth and Nebula classes were mixed into the fleet for good measure, though the vast majority of the armada originated as computer graphics. Over at Scarif, ILM portrayed the Rebel Alliance forces with computer graphics models of fresh designs (the MC75 cruiser Profundity and U-wings), live-action versions of Star Wars Rebels’ VCX-100 light freighter Ghost and Hammerhead corvettes, and Star Wars staples (Nebulon-B frigates, X-wings, Y-wings, and more). These ships face off against two Imperial Star Destroyers and squadrons of TIE fighters, and – upon their late arrival to the battle – Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer and the Death Star. The Tantive IV, a CR90 corvette more popularly referred to as a blockade runner, made its own special cameo at the tail end of the fight. As Princess Leia Organa’s (Carrie Fisher and Ingvild Deila) personal ship, the Tantive IV received the Death Star plans and fled the scene, destined to be captured by Vader’s Star Destroyer at the beginning of A New Hope. And, while we’re on the subject of intricate starship maneuvers and space-based choreography… Although the First Contact team could plan visual effects shots with animated storyboards, ILM supplied Gareth Edwards with a next-level virtual viewfinder that allowed the director to select his shots by immersing himself among Rogue One’s ships in real time. “What we wanted to do is give Gareth the opportunity to shoot his space battles and other all-digital scenes the same way he shoots his live-action. Then he could go in with this sort of virtual viewfinder and view the space battle going on, and figure out what the best angle was to shoot those ships from,” senior animation supervisor Hal Hickel described in the Rogue One: Digital Storytelling featurette. Hickel divulged that the sequence involving the dish array docking with the Death Star was an example of the “spontaneous discovery of great angles,” as the scene was never storyboarded or previsualized. Visual effects supervisor John Knoll with director Gareth Edwards during production of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). Tough Little Ships The Federation and Rebel Alliance each deployed “tough little ships” (an endearing description Commander William T. Riker [Jonathan Frakes] bestowed upon the U.S.S. Defiant in First Contact) in their respective conflicts, namely the U.S.S. Defiant from Deep Space Nine and the Tantive IV from A New Hope. VisionArt had already built a CG Defiant for the Deep Space Nine series, but ILM upgraded the model with images gathered from the ship’s three-foot physical model. A similar tactic was taken to bring the Tantive IV into the digital realm for Rogue One. “This was the Blockade Runner. This was the most accurate 1:1 reproduction we could possibly have made,” model supervisor Russell Paul declared to Cinefex’s Joe Fordham. “We did an extensive photo reference shoot and photogrammetry re-creation of the miniature. From there, we built it out as accurately as possible.” Speaking of sturdy ships, if you look very closely, you can spot a model of the Millennium Falcon flashing across the background as the U.S.S. Defiant makes an attack run on the Borg cube at the Battle of Sector 001! Exploration and Hope The in-universe ramifications that materialize from the Battles of Sector 001 and Scarif are monumental. The destruction of the Borg cube compels the Borg Queen to travel back in time in an attempt to vanquish Earth before the Federation can even be formed, but Captain Picard and the Enterprise-E foil the plot and end up helping their 21st century ancestors make “first contact” with another species, the logic-revering Vulcans. The post-Scarif benefits take longer to play out for the Rebel Alliance, but the theft of the Death Star plans eventually leads to the superweapon’s destruction. The Galactic Civil War is far from over, but Scarif is a significant step in the Alliance’s effort to overthrow the Empire. The visual effects ILM provided for First Contact and Rogue One contributed significantly to the critical and commercial acclaim both pictures enjoyed, a victory reflecting the relentless dedication, tireless work ethic, and innovative spirit embodied by visual effects supervisor John Knoll and ILM’s entire staff. While being interviewed for The Making of Star Trek: First Contact, actor Patrick Stewart praised ILM’s invaluable influence, emphasizing, “ILM was with us, on this movie, almost every day on set. There is so much that they are involved in.” And, regardless of your personal preferences – phasers or lasers, photon torpedoes or proton torpedoes, warp speed or hyperspace – perhaps Industrial Light & Magic’s ability to infuse excitement into both franchises demonstrates that Star Trek and Star Wars encompass themes that are not competitive, but compatible. After all, what goes together better than exploration and hope? – Jay Stobie (he/him) is a writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to ILM.com, Skysound.com, Star Wars Insider, StarWars.com, Star Trek Explorer, Star Trek Magazine, and StarTrek.com. Jay loves sci-fi, fantasy, and film, and you can learn more about him by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

ILM teams with Ben Stiller and Apple TV+ to bring thousands of seamless visual effects shots to the hit drama’s second season. By Clayton Sandell There are mysterious and important secrets to be uncovered in the second season of the wildly popular Apple TV+ series Severance (2022-present). About 3,500 of them are hiding in plain sight. That’s roughly the number of visual effects shots helping tell the Severance story over 10 gripping episodes in the latest season, a collaborative effort led by Industrial Light & Magic. ILM’s Eric Leven served as the Severance season two production visual effects supervisor. We asked him to help pull back the curtain on some of the show’s impressive digital artistry that most viewers will probably never notice. “This is the first show I’ve ever done where it’s nothing but invisible effects,” Leven tells ILM.com. “It’s a really different calculus because nobody talks about them. And if you’ve done them well, they are invisible to the naked eye.” With so many season two shots to choose from, Leven helped us narrow down a list of his favorite visual effects sequences to five. (As a bonus, we’ll also dive into an iconic season finale shot featuring the Mr. Milchick-led marching band.) Before we dig in, a word of caution. This article contains plot spoilers for Severance. (And in case you’re already wondering: No, the goats are not computer-graphics.) Severance tells the story of Mark Scout (Adam Scott), department chief of the secretive Severed Floor located in the basement level of Lumon Industries, a multinational biotech corporation. Mark S., as he’s known to his co-workers, heads up Macrodata Refinement (MDR), a department where employees help categorize numbers without knowing the true purpose of their work.  Mark and his team – Helly R. (Britt Lower), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), and Irving B. (John Turturro), have all undergone a surgical procedure to “sever” their personal lives from their work lives. The chip embedded in their brains effectively creates two personalities that are sometimes at odds: an “Innie” during Lumon office hours and an “Outie” at home. “This is the first show I’ve ever done where it’s nothing but invisible effects. It’s a really different calculus because nobody talks about them. And if you’ve done them well, they are invisible to the naked eye.”Eric Leven 1. The Running Man (Episode 201: “Hello, Ms. Cobel”) The season one finale ends on a major cliffhanger. Mark S. learns that his Outie’s wife, Gemma – believed killed in a car crash years ago – is actually alive somewhere inside the Lumon complex. Season two opens with Mark S. arriving at the Severed Floor in a desperate search for Gemma, who he only knows as her Innie persona, Ms. Casey. The fast-paced sequence is designed to look like a single, two-minute shot. It begins with the camera making a series of rapid and elaborate moves around a frantic Mark S. as he steps out of the elevator, into the Severed Floor lobby, and begins running through the hallways. “The nice thing about that sequence was that everyone knew it was going to be difficult and challenging,” Leven says, adding that executive producer and Episode 201 director, Ben Stiller, began by mapping out the hallway run with his team. Leven recommended that a previsualization sequence – provided by The Third Floor – would help the filmmakers refine their plan before cameras rolled. “While prevising it, we didn’t worry about how we would actually photograph anything. It was just, ‘These are the visuals we want to capture,’” Leven says. “‘What does it look like for this guy to run down this hallway for two minutes? We’ll figure out how to shoot it later.’” The previs process helped determine how best to shoot the sequence, and also informed which parts of the soundstage set would have to be digitally replaced. The first shot was captured by a camera mounted on a Bolt X Cinebot motion-control arm provided by The Garage production company. The size of the motion-control setup, however, meant it could not fit in the confined space of an elevator or the existing hallways. “We couldn’t actually shoot in the elevator,” Leven says. “The whole elevator section of the set was removed and was replaced with computer graphics [CG].” In addition to the elevator, ILM artists replaced portions of the floor, furniture, and an entire lobby wall, even adding a reflection of Adam Scott into the elevator doors. As Scott begins running, he’s picked up by a second camera mounted on a more compact, stabilized gimbal that allows the operator to quickly run behind and sometimes in front of the actor as he darts down different hallways. ILM seamlessly combined the first two Mark S. plates in a 2D composite. “Part of that is the magic of the artists at ILM who are doing that blend. But I have to give credit to Adam Scott because he ran the same way in both cameras without really being instructed,” says Leven. “Lucky for us, he led with the same foot. He used the same arm. I remember seeing it on the set, and I did a quick-and-dirty blend right there and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to work.’ So it was really nice.” The action continues at a frenetic pace, ultimately combining ten different shots to complete the sequence. “We didn’t want the very standard sleight of hand that you’ve seen a lot where you do a wipe across the white hallway,” Leven explains. “We tried to vary that as much as possible because we didn’t want to give away the gag. So, there are times when the camera will wipe across a hallway, and it’s not a computer graphics wipe. We’d hide the wipe somewhere else.” A slightly more complicated illusion comes as the camera sweeps around Mark S. from back to front as he barrels down another long hallway. “There was no way to get the camera to spin around Mark while he is running because there’s physically not enough room for the camera there,” says Leven. To capture the shot, Adam Scott ran on a treadmill placed on a green screen stage as the camera maneuvered around him. At that point, the entire hallway environment is made with computer graphics. Artists even added a few extra frames of the actor to help connect one shot to the next, selling the illusion of a single continuous take. “We painted in a bit of Adam Scott running around the corner. So if you freeze and look through it, you’ll see a bit of his heel. He never completely clears the frame,” Leven points out. Leven says ILM also provided Ben Stiller with options when it came to digitally changing up the look of Lumon’s sterile hallways: sometimes adding extra doors, vents, or even switching door handles. “I think Ben was very excited about having this opportunity,” says Leven. “He had never had a complete, fully computer graphics version of these hallways before. And now he was able to do things that he was never able to do in season one.” (Credit: Apple TV+). 2. Let it Snow (Episode 204: “Woe’s Hollow”) The MDR team – Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving – unexpectedly find themselves in the snowy wilderness as part of a two-day Lumon Outdoor Retreat and Team-Building Occurrence, or ORTBO.  Exterior scenes were shot on location at Minnewaska State Park Preserve in New York. Throughout the ORTBO sequence, ILM performed substantial environment enhancements, making trees and landscapes appear far snowier than they were during the shoot. “It’s really nice to get the actors out there in the cold and see their breath,” Leven says. “It just wasn’t snowy during the shoot. Nearly every exterior shot was either replaced or enhanced with snow.” For a shot of Irving standing on a vast frozen lake, for example, virtually every element in the location plate – including an unfrozen lake, mountains, and trees behind actor John Turturro – was swapped out for a CG environment. Wide shots of a steep, rocky wall Irving must scale to reach his co-workers were also completely digital. Eventually, the MDR team discovers a waterfall that marks their arrival at a place called Woe’s Hollow. The location – the state park’s real-life Awosting Falls – also got extensive winter upgrades from ILM, including much more snow covering the ground and trees, an ice-covered pond, and hundreds of icicles clinging to the rocky walls. “To make it fit in the world of Severance, there’s a ton of work that has to happen,” Leven tells ILM.com. (Credit: Apple TV+). 3. Welcome to Lumon (Episode 202: “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig” & Episode 203: “Who is Alive?”) The historic Bell Labs office complex, now known as Bell Works in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, stands in as the fictional Lumon Industries headquarters building. Exterior shots often underwent a significant digital metamorphosis, with artists transforming areas of green grass into snow-covered terrain, inserting a CG water tower, and rendering hundreds of 1980s-era cars to fill the parking lot. “We’re always adding cars, we’re always adding snow. We’re changing, subtly, the shape and the layout of the design,” says Leven. “We’re seeing new angles that we’ve never seen before. On the roof of Lumon, for example, the air conditioning units are specifically designed and created with computer graphics.” In real life, the complex is surrounded by dozens of houses, requiring the digital erasure of entire neighborhoods. “All of that is taken out,” Leven explains. “CG trees are put in, and new mountains are put in the background.” Episodes 202 and 203 feature several night scenes shot from outside the building looking in. In one sequence, a camera drone flying outside captured a long tracking shot of Helena Eagan (Helly R.’s Outie) making her way down a glass-enclosed walkway. The building’s atrium can be seen behind her, complete with a massive wall sculpture depicting company founder Kier Eagan. “We had to put the Kier sculpture in with the special lighting,” Leven reveals. “The entire atrium was computer graphics.” Artists completed the shot by adding CG reflections of the snowy parking lot to the side of the highly reflective building. “We have to replace what’s in the reflections because the real reflection is a parking lot with no snow or a parking lot with no cars,” explains Leven. “We’re often replacing all kinds of stuff that you wouldn’t think would need to be replaced.” Another nighttime scene shot from outside the building features Helena in a conference room overlooking the Lumon parking lot, which sits empty except for Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) riding in on his motorcycle. “The top story, where she is standing, was practical,” says Leven, noting the shot was also captured using a drone hovering outside the window. “The second story below her was all computer graphics. Everything other than the building is computer graphics. They did shoot a motorcycle on location, getting as much practical reference as possible, but then it had to be digitally replaced after the fact to make it work with the rest of the shot.” (Credit: Apple TV+). 4. Time in Motion (Episode 207: “Chikhai Bardo”) Episode seven reveals that MDR’s progress is being monitored by four dopplegang-ish observers in a control room one floor below, revealed via a complex move that has the camera traveling downward through a mass of data cables. “They built an oversize cable run, and they shot with small probe lenses. Visual effects helped by blending several plates together,” explains Leven. “It was a collaboration between many different departments, which was really nice. Visual effects helped with stuff that just couldn’t be shot for real. For example, when the camera exits the thin holes of the metal grate at the bottom of the floor, that grate is computer graphics.” The sequence continues with a sweeping motion-control time-lapse shot that travels around the control-room observers in a spiral pattern, a feat pulled off with an ingenious mix of technical innovation and old-school sleight of hand. A previs sequence from The Third Floor laid out the camera move, but because the Bolt arm motion-control rig could only travel on a straight track and cover roughly one-quarter of the required distance, The Garage came up with a way to break the shot into multiple passes. The passes would later be stitched together into one seemingly uninterrupted movement. The symmetrical set design – including the four identical workstations – helped complete the illusion, along with a clever solution that kept the four actors in the correct position relative to the camera. “The camera would basically get to the end of the track,” Leven explains. “Then everybody would switch positions 90 degrees. Everyone would get out of their chairs and move. The camera would go back to one, and it would look like one continuous move around in a circle because the room is perfectly symmetrical, and everything in it is perfectly symmetrical. We were able to move the actors, and it looks like the camera was going all the way around the room.” The final motion-control move switches from time-lapse back to real time as the camera passes by a workstation and reveals Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson) standing behind it. Leven notes that each pass was completed with just one take. 5. Mark vs. Mark (Episode 210: “Cold Harbor”) The Severance season two finale begins with an increasingly tense conversation between Innie Mark and Outie Mark, as the two personas use a handheld video camera to send recorded messages back and forth. Their encounter takes place at night in a Lumon birthing cabin equipped with a severance threshold that allows Mark S. to become Mark Scout each time he steps outside and onto the balcony. The cabin set was built on a soundstage at York Studios in the Bronx, New York. The balcony section consisted of the snowy floor, two chairs, and a railing, all surrounded by a blue screen background. Everything else was up to ILM to create. “It was nice to have Ben’s trust that we could just do it,” Leven remembers. “He said, ‘Hey, you’re just going to make this look great, right?’ We said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’” Artists filled in the scene with CG water, mountains, and moonlight to match the on-set lighting and of course, more snow. As Mark Scout steps onto the balcony, the camera pulls back to a wide shot, revealing the cabin’s full exterior. “They built a part of the exterior of the set. But everything other than the windows, even the railing, was digitally replaced,” Leven says. “It was nice to have Ben [Stiller’s] trust that we could just do it. He said, ‘Hey, you’re just going to make this look great, right?’ We said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’”Eric Leven Bonus: Marching Band Magic (Episode 210: “Cold Harbor”) Finally, our bonus visual effects shot appears roughly halfway through the season finale. To celebrate Mark S. completing the Cold Harbor file, Mr. Milchick orders up a marching band from Lumon’s Choreography and Merriment department. Band members pour into MDR, but Leven says roughly 15 to 20 shots required adding a few more digital duplicates. “They wanted it to look like MDR was filled with band members. And for several of the shots there were holes in there. It just didn’t feel full enough,” he says. In a shot featuring a God’s-eye view of MDR, band members hold dozens of white cards above their heads, forming a giant illustration of a smiling Mark S. with text that reads “100%.” “For the top shot, we had to find a different stage because the MDR ceiling is only about eight feet tall,” recalls Leven. “And Ben really pushed to have it done practically, which I think was the right call because you’ve already got the band members, you’ve made the costumes, you’ve got the instruments. Let’s find a place to shoot it.” To get the high shot, the production team set up on an empty soundstage, placing signature MDR-green carpet on the floor. A simple foam core mock-up of the team’s desks occupied the center of the frame, with the finished CG versions added later. Even without the restraints of the practical MDR walls and ceiling, the camera could only get enough height to capture about 30 band members in the shot. So the scene was digitally expanded, with artists adding more green carpet, CG walls, and about 50 more band members. “We painted in new band members, extracting what we could from the practical plate,” Leven says. “We moved them around; we added more, just to make it look as full as Ben wanted.” Every single white card in the shot, Leven points out, is completely digital. (Credit: Apple TV+). A Mysterious and Important Collaboration With fans now fiercely debating the many twists and turns of Severance season two, Leven is quick to credit ILM’s two main visual effects collaborators: east side effects and Mango FX INC, as well as ILM studios and artists around the globe, including San Francisco, Vancouver, Singapore, Sydney, and Mumbai. Leven also believes Severance ultimately benefited from a successful creative partnership between ILM and Ben Stiller. “This one clicked so well, and it really made a difference on the show,” Leven says. “I think we both had the same sort of visual shorthand in terms of what we wanted things to look like. One of the things I love about working with Ben is that he’s obviously grounded in reality. He wants to shoot as much stuff real as possible, but then sometimes there’s a shot that will either come to him late or he just knows is impractical to shoot. And he knows that ILM can deliver it.” — Clayton Sandell is a Star Wars author and enthusiast, TV storyteller, and a longtime fan of the creative people who keep Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound on the leading edge of visual effects and sound design. Follow him on Instagram (@claytonsandell) Bluesky (@claytonsandell.com) or X (@Clayton_Sandell).

On this day in 1975, Industrial Light & Magic was officially signed into existence by George Lucas. By Lucas O. Seastrom ILM’s original crew for Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) poses in the front lot of their original studio (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). 50 years ago today on May 28, 1975, George Lucas signed a legal certificate issuing his formal shares of stock ownership in a new company: Industrial Light & Magic. It’s likely the founder affixed his signature without pomp or ceremony. There was too much to do. ILM, as it would come to be known for short, had less than two years to build a visual effects studio from scratch and create nearly 400 shots in a new space fantasy film called Star Wars. By that time in late May, Lucas had hired John Dykstra to supervise the film’s visual effects. The director had an audacious vision for creating dynamic images of spaceships dogfighting with each other. Lucas wanted the camera to move with the ships, as if the camera operators were up there to capture the action by hand. The idea broke many of the traditional rules in visual effects that typically required locked off cameras to allow for separate elements to be carefully blended together. Visual effects supervisor John Dykstra poses on the stage next to a TIE fighter miniature (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). John Dykstra was practically the only effects artist in Hollywood willing to buy into Lucas’s plans on the existing terms. He’d gained experience with the type of equipment that would be needed to realize the elaborate shots of custom-built miniatures. Dykstra was also a free thinker with a sense of adventure. There were only a handful of effects companies still operating, and none at a major studio. Most balked at the proposal, decrying its limited budget, tight schedule, and seemingly unattainable goals. So Dykstra was tasked with establishing a new operation. Lucas was a Northern Californian and planned to base the editorial side of post-production near his San Francisco Bay Area home. He wanted to do the same for visual effects. Dykstra argued otherwise, deciding to keep the new facility in Southern California where he had access to a network of talent and close proximity to third party film processing labs. So it was at some point in late May that Dykstra located and then leased a warehouse in Van Nuys, one of a number of towns that sprawled across the San Fernando Valley, a ways north of Hollywood proper, and conveniently removed from the overbearing presence of the established studios.  Located in an industrial park on Valjean Avenue, just a block from the south end of the Van Nuys Airport, ILM rented a building for $2,300 a month from owner Bill Hanna. It was two stories, made largely of stacked cinder blocks, with a large asphalt lot in front. Inside were a handful of unfurnished offices and open warehouse space with high ceilings ideal for hanging lights. Early on, Dykstra would drive his motorcycle through the building, leaving skid marks on the floor. It was often oppressively hot, even more so once the tungsten film lights were switched on, and Dykstra initially planned to construct a pool onsite, but later compromised with a cold tub that could hold multiple people. The exterior of ILM’s original studio in Van Nuys, CA. An explosion on the surface of the Death Star is photograped in the foreground (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). “It just popped into my head,” Lucas would recall about the name “Industrial Light & Magic.” “We were sitting in an industrial park and using light to create magic. That’s what they were going to do.” Initially, Dykstra worked out of Lucasfilm’s offices in a bungalow on the Universal Studios lot, a few minutes drive from Van Nuys. Soon he’d moved to Valjean, working off the floor before furniture was acquired. He was busy recruiting. By early June, modelmakers Grant McCune and Bill and Jamie Shourt were hired, as were production manager Bob Shepherd, technician Jerry Greenwood, first cameraman Richard Edlund, electronics designer Al Miller, and machinists Richard Alexander and Don Trumbull.  As former Lucasfilm executive editor J.W. Rinzler would note in The Making of Star Wars, “They all knew one another and had worked together before.” They’d worked on feature films with Douglas Trumbull (son of Don), or on commercials and other projects with Robert Abel and Associates. A later group would come from another commercial house, Cascade Pictures. Others came straight from universities where they’d studied everything from animation to industrial design. They brought with them aspects of the culture and methodology from these other places, together making something new and unique. Optical composite photography supervisor Robert Blalack’s Praxis Printer is loaded into the new ILM space (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). A view of one of ILM’s shooting stages in the rear of the original Van Nuys studio (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). Before anything else could happen, the Valjean warehouse needed to be converted into production space and workshops. Over six weeks into the summer, they first taped out sections and then constructed the designated areas themselves. On the first floor would be the optical and rotoscope departments, a model shop, machine shop, wood shop, two shooting stages in the rear, and production offices in the front. Upstairs would be home to the animation department, editorial, a screening room, and the art department.By July, optical composite photography supervisor Robert Blalack and animation and rotoscope supervisor Adam Beckett had been hired, as had a sound recordist and designer who would use ILM’s space as a sometime home base, Ben Burtt. By early August, artist Joe Johnston was setting up the art department (concept artists Colin Cantwell and Ralph McQuarrie had started much earlier, but each worked from home). Within a few months, a dozen people were on board, many of them attracted to join the project out of admiration for George Lucas, whose American Graffiti (1973) had made waves upon its release two years before. The second floor art department, with storyboard and concept artist Joe Johnston working at a desk in the background as modelmaker Paul Huston looks on (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). Film control coordinator Mary Lind in the upstairs editorial department (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). The spaces were ready by mid-summer, but ILM’s work had only just begun. It would take them nearly a year to successfully design and construct an entire visual effects facility and workflow, including miniatures, motion-control camera systems, optical printers, animation cameras, and blue screens. “There’s a significant difference between coming up with a good idea and executing it,” Dykstra would say. ILM’s initial budget was roughly $1.2 million. Although time was of the essence to build the various equipment, distributor 20th Century Fox was slow to provide any initial funds ahead of the main shoot, which would commence in the spring of 1976. So for much of its first year, ILM operated with George Lucas’s personal finances, thanks to the momentous commercial success of American Graffiti. Former ILM general manager Thomas G. Smith would explain in his 1986 book, The Art of Special Effects, how “Outside, it looked like all the other industrial-style buildings in the valley. Inside, it was staffed with very young technicians, some barely out of college, few over 30, some even under 20 years old…. The doors at ILM were open 24 hours a day; technicians and artists worked without regard to time clocks or job classifications. They were children of the ’60s, and many rebelled against authority figures and traditional work rules. There were no dress codes and no specified work hours; designers built models, and modelmakers ran cameras. But there was a strong esprit de corps and feeling of purpose in the building…. The involvement was with the cause rather than with the money; somehow the group felt they were a part of something really important.” John Dykstra inspects miniatures of X-wings, TIE fighters, and Y-wings (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). The first floor model shop in ILM’s original Van Nuys, CA studio (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). What this group was about to accomplish in less than two years was anything but certain that late spring of 1975. If anything, it was “a long shot,” as Dykstra himself would admit. “It was very, very hard to say specifically what was and what wasn’t going to work before we built it,” he told Cinefantastique in 1977. “So we just had to take a shot at it and all I could do was bluff it and say, ‘Oh yeah, everything’s gonna be fine!’”As would become the defining element of ILM’s success and endurance, it was the people who made all the difference. “It would be very hard to do Star Wars just by setting up an independent facility unless you had the personnel to do it,” Dykstra said. “The people who designed the equipment and constructed it made it all happen. Not only was it independent of studios but the people who were doing it are the best people in the industry right now.” What began quietly with a handful of people in a hot, mostly empty warehouse would ultimately do the impossible, not just in the sense of its accomplishments on screen or the resulting accolades, but in its ability to grow, adapt, and continue innovating time and again. That story continues today at the company’s studios around the world. Though ILM has long since outgrown its original warehouse, it still attracts the same intrepid, curious people who bring their passion for image-making and problem-solving to multiple art forms. Watch ILM’s new celebratory reel in honor of the company’s 50th anniversary: — Lucas O. Seastrom is the editor of ILM.com and a contributing writer and historian for Lucasfilm. Read more on the ILM.com Newsroom. Watch Light & Magic on Disney+.

The second, and final, part of an extensive look behind the scenes of the visual effects production for Lucasfilm’s pirate-themed Star Wars adventure series. By Clayton Sandell (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) The Observatory Moon Still searching for At Attin’s coordinates, Jod (Jude Law) and the kids land the Onyx Cinder on the Observatory Moon, seeking help from an alien, owl-like astronomer named Kh’ymm (voiced by Alia Shawkat). The group treks from the ship to the observatory, a striking sequence that includes visuals of the characters silhouetted against a night sky dominated by a nearby planet. The scenes were all captured in camera on the StageCraft volume, with the actors walking across a practically built dirt mound and the background displayed on the LED screens. “That was another one of our more successful volume shoots,” ILM visual effects supervisor Eddie Pasquarello says. “Perfect use of that, in my opinion.” The volume also helped create the illusion of the observatory center rotating within the outer walls. “That one was the most technically challenging,” says ILM virtual production supervisor Chris Balog. “We had to figure out multiple ways of tracking the camera to make sure that the wall was moving in conjunction with it. For some shots they had a circular dolly moving around the set. So we had to make sure that the wall was moving correctly too.” The volume was used in 1,565 shots in all, Balog says, and 900 of those shots were in-camera finals. Like Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), Kh’ymm was also realized using a combination of digital and practical techniques, depending on the scene. In some shots, a practical puppet created by Legacy Effects captured her performance entirely in camera. In other scenes, ILM collaborator Important Looking Pirates created a full computer graphics head composited on top of the puppeteered body or utilized a fully digital replica carefully animated to closely match the movements of the puppet. The episode concludes with the arrival of a pair of familiar New Republic ships summoned by Kh’ymm. “Of course, we see our first X-wings,” Pasquarello smiles. “That was right in our wheelhouse and fun for everyone to do.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin The Onyx Cinder arrives at a world that initially looks a lot like At Attin but is actually the conflict-battered sister planet At Achrann, a place where children are trained as soldiers in a war between the Troik and Hattan clans. The kids hike through the decayed remains of a neighborhood and city that once looked like their own. Live-action scenes were shot with minimal sets against blue screen backgrounds and completed with extensive environments created by ILM partner DNEG, including dilapidated buildings and streets, a fully-digital armored assault tank, and a small herd of horned eopie creatures. The heroes are challenged by a Troik warlord named General Strix (Mathieu Kassovitz) to prove their strength in battle. In exchange, Strix’s daughter Hayna (Hala Finley) takes them to an abandoned tower that may have the coordinates they need to get home. Inside the tower – another set that utilized the StageCraft volume – SM-33 (voiced by Nick Frost) reveals that his previous captain ordered him to destroy the coordinates to At Attin. Fern attempts to override his memory, triggering a hostile response and transformation sequence that required significant digital work by ILM’s Sydney studio. “Whenever SM-33 goes into attack mode, he’s more CG versus the puppeteered, less-docile version of him,” Pasquarello explains. “When he has those armored plates on, or whenever he grows, that’s all CG.” The abandoned tower set utilized a mix of 3D elements and backgrounds in the volume along with practical columns, floor, and set dressing. “I thought it had a really amazing photographic feel to it,” says Balog. “Some of the biggest challenges are blending the volume with the real set. And that’s why the virtual art department is such a key factor, because they have to work hand-in-hand with the set department and the 3D content to make sure the textures on everything look the same.” “ILM had a really great content team led by [visual effects associate supervisor] Dan Lobl, creating content that is believable and looks real,” Balog says. “We’re not successful unless they’re successful.” The setting also provides subtle foreshadowing to events that unfold inside the At Attin Supervisor’s Tower in episode eight,” says Pasquarello. “The environment was unique and custom,” he explains. “There’s a deliberate tilt up to the ceiling, and you can see some cables hanging. Those are the remnants of their Supervisor, who’s been totally gutted and ripped out. I think it’ll be fun for people to watch the series again, and they’ll understand.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Lanupa’s Luxury and Peril Next stop is a mountain on the planet Lanupa, the site of an old pirate lair that SM-33 believes contains At Attin’s coordinates. It’s also the site of a lavish hotel and spa occupied by high-end patrons, including a Hutt who swallows a Troglof mud bath attendant and a massive, tentacled creature called Cthallops, both achieved digitally with the help of Important Looking Pirates. Jod is captured by the pirate horde and sentenced to death. He’s allowed a few remaining minutes for a final appeal, measured by an hourglass filled with churning blue plasma. “It wasn’t a fully fleshed-out idea on set. We knew we needed an hourglass, and we would be doing it, but it was just kind of a fun adventure to figure out,” Pasquarello says. “We were trying to do some fun ideas with how the plasma would show the passage of time.” Successfully navigating a series of booby traps, the children, Jod, and SM-33 enter the subterranean treasure lair of pirate captain Tak Rennod, another set that relied heavily on the StageCraft volume. “They built the big skull throne that the pirate king sat on,” says Balog. “They had all the treasure in the room, four big columns, and the stairs and the rock when they walked in. Everything else in the cave was created with the volume.” After finally discovering At Attin’s secret, as well as its location, Jod betrays the children, who escape the lair by sliding down a series of tunnels to the base of the mountain. As Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Neel, Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and KB (Kyriana Kratter) figure out how to get back to the Onyx Cinder, they encounter a cast of curious trash crabs. “They’re not droids,” explains Pasquarello. “They’re literally crabs with garbage on their backs. And that was a lot of work to make that understandable. They’re not synthetic. It’s one of those sequences that is very rich in detail, and there’s a lot going on.” While the baby crabs are digital, a massive mama crab was created as a detailed stop-motion puppet by Tippett Studio, the production company founded by original Star Wars animator and creature designer Phil Tippett. The beast’s jagged, rusty, junk-laden look prompted the Tippett crew to nickname it “Tet’niss.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) “We generally did the rough blocking of the shots at ILM first,” production visual effects supervisor John Knoll explains. “We figured out what the shots wanted to be, the pace, and how big the creature was going to be. Once we got all those layouts approved, it went to Tippett’s, including all the camera info so they could figure out where the camera was positioned relative to the set and the puppet.” A low-resolution, untextured 3D model of the mama crab also helped animators work out the creature’s speed and movement in advance of shooting on the stop-motion stage. “Since stop-motion is very labor intensive, you don’t want to have to go back and reshoot things,” Knoll says. “So we got approval on their preliminary animation, and then they would go in and do the detailed stop-motion. And that was a particularly complicated character because there are so many moving parts on it. Obviously, there are the eight legs, but then there are all kinds of little pieces on it that bounce and move when it starts to walk. I’m impressed that they were able to keep that all straight in their heads.” The mama crab puppet weighed in at about 15 pounds, requiring support from a mechanical harness that was digitally erased in post-production. (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Onyx Cinder Metamorphosis The kids reach the Onyx Cinder just as an enormous scrapper barge closes in, threatening to pulverize the ship and ingest the remains into its fiery maw. “There’s sort of a tug-of-war between the ship and this garbage muncher,” Knoll explains. When the ship is snagged by one of the muncher’s claw-like arms, Fern decides their only hope for an escape is by triggering the emergency hull demolition sequencer. A series of rapid explosions ripple down the hull, causing the Onyx Cinder to shed its worn outer shell. A smaller, silver-colored version of the ship is freed and rises out of the debris. “Our code was the ‘ironclad’ and the ‘sleek ship,’” Pasquarello says of the two Onyx Cinder variants. “We went around a lot with the shedding of the hull. We didn’t want it to all blow off and just be conveniently revealed. It had to come off like a snake’s skin. “And the effects are just dialed up to 11,” continues Pasquarello, who hopes that fans notice a key storytelling detail of the ship’s metamorphosis. “One cool thing that I don’t think everybody knows is that when you transition between the ships, we don’t share all the same engines, but the engines that we do share between the ships change from a warm color to blue. “One of our challenges was that the sleek Onyx Cinder is a cleaner-burning ship,” Pasquarello says. “The whole conceit was that the engines were that orange color because they were dirty and running bad oil. We kept debating: ‘When would it turn blue?’ The sequence is a very elegant transition shot where you see it sputtering away all of that oil and dirt to the cleaner burning blue that we got.” Knoll says the transformation was one of the more “complicated” scenes to pull off. “There are a lot of simulation layers that are in there, and the sleek ship doesn’t actually fit inside the armored hull, so there was some sleight of hand that had to happen to make that appear to work,” he explains. The end result is one of Pasquarello’s favorite sequences. “Every time I watch it, I still get chills,” he says. “It just speaks to the detail that the creators had about this show. They thought of everything. [Jon] Watts was very clear with us that this is why this is happening. And we just had to figure out how to execute that.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) The Return to At At Attin’s coordinates in hand, Wim, Fern, KB, and Neel arrive at their home planet aboard the transformed Onyx Cinder. A horde of pirates led by Captain Brutus (portrayed by Fred Tatasciore and performance artist Stephen Oyoung) are not far behind. But the pirates are stopped by the planet’s protective, nebula-like barrier. “Going through the barrier for us was a really big endeavor,” says Pasquarello. “It’s something that started early because it’s so effects-driven and heavy and large scale, and there’s a lot of story to be told in there.” An array of satellites protect At Attin, blasting deadly arcs of lightning toward unauthorized ships. SM-33 reveals the Onyx Cinder is an At Attin vessel, which allows it to pass safely. The design and function of the satellites – crafted by ILM’s digital modeling department – evolved over time, says Pasquarello. “At one point, the satellites were actually emitting atmosphere. There were versions where you could literally see atmosphere coming out of them to create that cloudy environment,” he explains. Pirate ships pursue the Onyx Cinder through a toxic swirl of greenish-blue gasses but are destroyed by the satellites. “There’s a lot of heavy, heavy sims [simulations] and work that went into that sequence, and then the landing on At Attin,” Pasquarello says, giving credit to ILM’s compositing and effects teams. One element featured in the return to At Attin came along late in the production process. With shot delivery deadlines approaching faster than a ship in hyperspace, John Knoll got an email from Jon Watts. “He said, ‘We’ve done animatronic creatures, we’ve done rubber monsters, we’ve done stop-motion creatures. We did miniature and motion control. The only thing we haven’t really done from the old days is a traditionally-painted matte painting. Is it too late to do one?’” Knoll recalls. With only two months to make it happen, Knoll reached out to former ILM artist Jett Green at her home in Hawaii and asked if she’d like to put her brushes to work creating a traditional oil matte painting of At Attin. Using paint instead of pixels to compose a matte image is something ILM hadn’t done in about 30 years, according to Knoll. Green – with a long list of credits as a traditional matte painter on films including Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Labyrinth (1986), and Willow (1988) – says she was honored to be asked. “I love being part of this history,” Green tells ILM.com. “John and I had this conversation about it being a planet. He had the references already, and he told me what he needed. I even built the Masonite panel for it, and it just felt really good.” Knoll now has the roughly six-by-two-foot painting displayed in his ILM office. At Attin matte painting created by Jett Green (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Posing as an emissary from the New Republic, Jod gains access to At Attin’s bountiful treasure: 1,139 subterranean, credit-filled vaults. The vault is an entirely digital environment that DNEG populated with security droids, industrial robotic arms, and a seemingly endless supply of golden computer graphics credits that line the walls and spill into Jod’s rapacious hands. Jod, Fern, and her mother, Fara (Kerry Condon), ascend the Supervisor’s Tower. The Supervisor is revealed to be a large, domed droid with a red eye. Only a small part of the Supervisor droid was constructed physically, with the StageCraft volume completing the illusion. “Virtual production is the future of visual effects,” says Chris Balog, a 20-year ILM veteran with a background as a digital compositing artist. “It’s where the next evolution is going. And if you can do it successfully, it’s an amazing tool.” Jod destroys the Supervisor with a lightsaber, triggering a citywide power outage and disabling the barrier satellites, clearing the way for the massive pirate frigate to reach the planet’s surface.  The enormous frigate survives the barrier and floats ominously over the city. “The great effects work done with the frigate coming through the clouds was Travis Harkleroad, our effects supervisor,” Pasquarello says. “Those explosions all come from him and his people.” The all-computer graphics frigate’s arrival is meant to evoke the alien-arrival feeling of films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Independence Day (1996). “There was no practical frigate,” Pasquarello says. “It’s a gorgeous ship. It’s a very complex-looking ship, and there’s a lower and upper deck that was built inside, and ships and skiffs that come out of that.” Wim, Neel, and KB devise a two-part plan to rescue Fern and call Kh’ymm for help. Jumping on speeder bikes and pursued by skiffs loaded with angry pirates, the kids – along with Wim’s dad, Wendel (Tunde Adebimpe), make their way across the city. For close-up shots, the actors were shot on a blue screen stage, with the more dangerous action – like a perilous jump across a canyon – requiring the use of digital doubles. “The speeder bikes on this show were a real challenge in the sense that we can’t put kids into a lot of heavy stunt work,” says Pasquarello. “So there was a lot of work done to help the dynamics and the physics of that chase.” The action continues through an all-computer graphics forest, through the city, to the school. Pasquarello praises ILM’s animation, layout, simulation, and environments teams for the extensive 3D build. “They’re going through an entirely CG environment, created by the environments team that you just don’t question,” he says. “Not one thing that they fly over or go through is real.” Summoned by Kh’ymm, New Republic forces arrive at At Attin, attacking the pirate frigate and saving the day. The squadron of X-wings is backed up by B-wings, another fan-favorite fighter that first appeared in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) and later in Star Wars: Rebels (2014-2018). “The B-wings were a favorite of mine as a kid, so I did my best to try to get them featured in some big, heroic moments,” says ILM animation supervisor Shawn Kelly. “Initially, we had them dropping bombs on the pirate ship, but [Lucasfilm chief creative officer] Dave Filoni had the great suggestion to try the ‘composite laser’ weapon. Honestly, I had no idea what that was at first. As soon as the meeting was over, I looked it up and realized it’s the ridiculously cool quadruple-beam attack seen in Rebels. I got so excited by the idea that I stayed up late and designed a new shot that could really show off that attack. I felt like I was 10 years old again, playing with my B-wing toy in the backyard!” Balog would composite the B-wing shot himself, working in collaboration with the FX team to evoke the feeling of the laser as seen in Rebels, but with a more realistic style appropriate for live-action. The battle-wounded pirate frigate makes a spectacular crash landing, a completely computer graphics sequence that Pasquarello says was carefully designed to depict minimal casualties. “The conceit is that everyone’s been rounded up to a specific space, so we know that everybody evacuated,” he explains. “You notice it doesn’t really tear into buildings as the frigate crashes; it’s just pulling up the street and abandoned cars. It crashes gently into the waterway.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) Galactic Global Effort Bringing Skeleton Crew to life with its creative mix of old and new took a tremendous amount of effort from artists around the globe. “I worked with a team of 50 animators that were in San Francisco, Vancouver, Singapore, Sydney, and Mumbai,” says Pasquarello. “A big team. We’re one big happy family; we’re all working together to bring these characters to life.” Knoll and veteran ILM modelmaker John Goodson say they feel lucky to still be bringing old-school ILM effects expertise to new productions. “You know, there’s only a few of us that still know how to do this stuff,” says Knoll. “And part of this for me was, I want to bring some younger people who are exposed to what we’re doing, who are trained up to use the gear so that when I’m not available to do this stuff there are people who know how to do it.” “We both came here because we wanted to shoot spaceship models,” Goodson adds. “And we’re still getting this opportunity. It’s a phenomenal experience to be able to do this, to take advantage of some of the newer technologies, and revisit this stuff from our past, which is the reason we got in the business to begin with.” For Shawn Kelly, a 28-year ILM veteran, working on Skeleton Crew was a career highlight. “Our review sessions on this project were by far the most enjoyable, fun, collaborative,” he says. “Watts and Ford are awesome. They have tons of great ideas. They’re really collaborative and open to ideas. It felt like a family just trying to make the best thing we can make all together.” (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) – Clayton Sandell is a Star Wars author and enthusiast, TV storyteller, and a longtime fan of the creative people who keep Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound on the leading edge of visual effects and sound design. Follow him on Instagram (@claytonsandell) Bluesky (@claytonsandell.com) or X (@Clayton_Sandell).

Muren celebrates ILM’s 50th anniversary at the place where it all began. By Clayton Sandell Dennis Muren was there at the beginning. As one of the first employees of George Lucas’s fledgling visual effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, Muren spent many long and intense hours working inside a nondescript industrial building in Van Nuys, California, helping bring the director’s Star Wars vision to life. Through their groundbreaking effects work on Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), Muren and his colleagues pioneered modern filmmaking from this former warehouse on Valjean Avenue, not far from a noisy airport. “It was a long time ago, but I remember everybody. All the people and making the film and the excitement of it not being a Hollywood movie – not a home movie – but it was a big movie,” Muren tells ILM.com. “And we were all on the same team working to get it done.” Dennis Muren at work on Star Wars: A New Hope at ILM’s original studio in Van Nuys, California (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm). For the first time in about 50 years, the nine-time Academy Award winner recently came back for a tour of ILM’s original home to help celebrate the company’s golden anniversary. A lot has changed. “There’s a wall here I don’t even remember being there, dividing the two parts,” Muren points as he looks around the warehouse floor, a few steps from where the ILM model shop was set up back in the day. The floor plan of the building today – now home to a commercial sign company – is roughly the same as it was in 1975. As Muren walks the halls with his wife Zara, one second-floor room in particular brings back a galaxy of emotions. “That’s very memorable. Going back to the screening room,” Muren says. “It just brought back a flood of memories of the dailies. George would often come to the dailies, and he’d be looking at the shots over and over and deciding what’s going to work and what needs to be redone.” Muren is also reminded of the stress that faced the ILM crew as they rushed to finish the visual effects shots on time. “‘Are we going to get the show done on time?’” he remembers being a frequent worry. “We’d go over the storyboards there too, and the schedule was on the wall of the dailies room. We would say, ‘Look, we’ve got to get these shots this week or else we’re in trouble.’” The interior of ILM’s original facility, now a commercial sign company (Credit: Clayton Sandell). After his tour, Muren signs autographs and poses for pictures with fans who gather to sing “Happy Birthday” to ILM. He blows out candles on a special Darth Vader cake before introducing a screening of A New Hope for an audience seated in the same parking lot where some of the film’s most iconic shots were filmed. “Right here, [ILM modelmaker] Steve Gawley’s pickup truck would race by as fast as it could go, with [miniature and optical effects cameraman] Richard Edlund on the back of it with a VistaVision camera shooting the [surface of the]  Death Star as pyro was blowing up,” Muren tells the crowd. “That was a typical day,” he smiles. Muren attended the celebration over Star Wars Day weekend as a guest of the event organizers, My Valley Pass and On Location with Jared Cowan, a podcast hosted by movie location expert Jared Cowan. Dennis Muren greets fans in the original ILM facility’s parking lot, where some effects shots were created (Credit: Clayton Sandell). For more on ILM’s early history and the creative geniuses that changed moviemaking forever, check out Light & Magic, a two-season, nine-part documentary series now streaming on Disney+. – Clayton Sandell is a Star Wars author and enthusiast, TV storyteller, and a longtime fan of the creative people who keep Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound on the leading edge of visual effects and sound design. Follow him on Instagram (@claytonsandell) Bluesky (@claytonsandell.com) or X (@Clayton_Sandell).

By Patrick Doyle Fans from all over the world gathered in Japan from April 18-20 for Star Wars Celebration 2025. In honor of this monumental event, ILM and Meta shared a special first look at their upcoming virtual and mixed reality experience Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset, currently in development for Meta Quest headsets. Additionally, demos for award-winning titles Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series and Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge were available at the booth. Here’s a recap of everything that went down at the ILM & Meta booth. The Booth: Step Inside the Star Wars Galaxy The ILM & Meta booth was a sensory playground inside the Makuhari Messe convention center. Massive screens played cinematic trailers, customized demo pods housed players during their sessions, and photo walls for each title were available for fans to snap a pic after going through the experience of their choice. With wait times of up to three hours, the booth also offered unique fixtures, like an interactive button wall, and a crew of knowledgeable staff were around to answer questions and help fans prepare for the adventures ahead. Creative director Joe Perez III and executive producer Alyssa Finley. To help set the tone, key representatives from the ILM team behind Star Wars: Beyond Victory, The Experiences: Three Unique Star Wars Adventures The ILM & Meta booth brought three unique experiences to Celebration, each telling their own story within the Star Wars galaxy: Connect with new and beloved Star Wars characters in a thrilling and creative experience. Through virtual and mixed reality, fans will get to adventure, race, and play in three modes. In development now. A three-part series that combines immersive cinematic storytelling with dramatic interactive play. Explore the world of Darth Vader and complete your journey to determine Mustafar’s fate. Available now. Experience action in the Batuu wilds with Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge and the Last Call add-on. Fight alongside classic characters like R2-D2 and C-3PO and take on unexpected alliances and deadly enemies. Available now. The Comic: An Original Story Written by Ethan Sacks As a special bonus to the fans at Celebration, an exclusive Marvel comic was available at the booth. Written by Ethan Sacks, it tells an original story about Volo Bolus before the events of Star Wars: Beyond Victory. Sacks and interior illustrators Steven Cummings & Shogo Aoki also stopped by the booth to meet fans and sign copies of the comic during the show. Beyond the Booth During Celebration, Alyssa and Jose were honored to go up on the Star Wars Celebration LIVE! Stage to talk about Star Wars: Beyond Victory, the ILM and Meta booth and, of course, to throw some t-shirts out to the audience.  The crew was also able to attend several incredible panels during the show including Light & Magic Season 2, Fifty Years of Magic: Celebrating the Legacy of Industrial Light & Magic, and Lucasfilm Publishing: Stories from a Galaxy Far, Far Away…The Force was Strong with this Booth With long lines, enthusiastic crowds and countless fans coming out thrilled/terrified to have seen Darth Vader up close or Sebulba atop a podracer after all these years, it’s clear that the virtual and mixed reality mediums offer completely new ways for fans to experience Star Wars storytelling. Whether you were honing your lightsaber skills in the dojo, tossing some repulsor darts at Seezelslak’s Cantina or testing your wits as a podracer, this booth offered exactly what we came to Celebration to do – showcase a different way to experience the galaxy we all love. We’ll have more information to share on Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset at a later date and, in honor of May the 4th, Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series and Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge are on sale for 66% off from now until 11:59PM PT on Monday, May 5 at the Meta Store and from Friday, May 2 until 11:59PM PT on Monday, May 5 on the PlayStation Store. We can’t thank all the fans enough for making this a Celebration to remember and we hope to see you all in Los Angeles in 2027! — Wishlist Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset now, and watch the ILM.com Newsroom for the latest updates. Visit ILM.com/Immersive to learn more. New apparel and a tumbler celebrating the 50th anniversary of Industrial Light & Magic are now available on Amazon.com.— Patrick Doyle is a senior publicity manager at Industrial Light & Magic.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power wins for Special, Visual & Graphic Effects in Season 2 of the Amazon MGM Studios series. This past weekend, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts hosted the 2025 BAFTA Television Craft Awards, where The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power won for Special, Visual & Graphic Effects. ILM’s Jason Smith, who served as production visual effects supervisor, received the award alongside his collaborators Richard Bain, Ryan Conder, and Chris Rodgers. Watch their acceptance speech below: ILM teams in London, Sydney, and the former studio in Singapore delivered over 500 visual effects shots to Rings of Power Season 2. Hubbed in London, the effort was led by ILM visual effects supervisor Daniele Bigi, visual effects producer Christine Lemon, and visual effects executive producer Lee Briggs.  Congratulations to Jason and our ILM crew! Read more about ILM’s work on Rings of Power Season 2 right here on ILM.com. —

Clothing and accessories featuring a new commemorative logo designed by Hoodzpah are available for purchase on Amazon.com. By Mark Newbold Actor Sam Witwer sports a new ILM 50th t-shirt at Star Wars Celebration Japan (Credit: Wes Ellis). In a world of innovation, skill, and ingenuity, no company has shone as bright or lasted as long in its field as Industrial Light & Magic. First incorporated in May 1975, ILM has led the way in the realm of visual effects for half a century. This iconic brand is as much a marque of quality as “Music by John Williams,” “Conceptual Design by Ralph McQuarrie,” or “Directed by George Lucas.” To celebrate the 50th anniversary (a first for any visual effects company) Hoodzpah — the team behind the ILM logo redesigns in 2023 — were asked to adapt their work for a fresh new ILM 50th logo, which is featured in a line of new merchandise recently unveiled at Star Wars Celebration Japan and now available on Amazon.com. ILM.com had the opportunity to chat with the team about this exciting new project and how they decided on the tone for the 50th anniversary logo. “When you work with a storied company like ILM, there is a wealth of visual inspiration and history to reference,” explains the Hoodzpah team, “so the hard part is narrowing in on one vision when there are so many ways you could take it. We cast a wide net and tried many different directions before landing on this retro-modern celebration that feels quintessentially ILM.” ILM has an incredible history, not only with its groundbreaking work on-screen but also its branding, going back to the classic Michael Pangrazio-designed magician logo painted by Drew Struzan and through a variety of changes to today. Given that lineage, Hoozpah decided on the mix between the 2023 redesign and the ’70s-style piping in the new logo, a blend that marries ILM’s ’70s vintage with the modernity of the current logo. “With an anniversary logo, you’re trying to balance two things: celebrating the history and accomplishments and legacy, but also reminding folks that there’s always more horizon to conquer,” Hoodzpah says. “This is just the first 50 years, and there’s so much more to come. Since the execution of the primary logo icon feels modern and intrepid, we wanted to embrace a ’70s vibe from the early ILM days. It felt so right as a nod to where it all started.” In the world of marketing, there are numerous rules and tricks to designing a great logo that catches the eye and sits in the memory. With ILM and all the history that goes with it, there remains a need to find the right focus for such an emblem. “When a logo really resonates, it’s because it feels true to the brand,” notes the Hoodzpah team. “There are so many styles and means of execution, but the question should always be, ‘What feels right for this brand?’ People love to look at trademark logo books with hundreds of logo icons shown on a white page. It’s inspiring to see all the styles of execution. But we’re always left wondering, ‘What’s the context?’ It’s not about a logo looking good in isolation because one is rarely used that way. It’s about a logo feeling perfect in context. It was the same for this project. We tested the 50th anniversary logo in key applications and then used it in a suite of anniversary merch designs as well.” Collaboration is key in everything ILM does, from the core team pulling together on new projects to working hand-in-glove with vendors and creatives behind the films, TV shows, and immersive entertainment projects ILM works with. Given that, it was important for Hoodzpah to spitball ideas with the ILM team themselves because clearly they revel in the spirit of collaboration in the same way that ILM does. “There’s a reason we didn’t end up choosing fine arts as a career path, even though we really loved it,” Hoodzpah explains. “We like working within the limitations of a prompt and pushing and flexing boundaries to see how far we can take it. Design is a team sport. We all get together and try to push this idea up the field. When we work with ILM, we are keenly aware that everyone we work with is a creative powerhouse in their own right. We’d be fools not to tap into that ‘creative brain trust,’ as [director of PR and communications] Greg Grusby calls it, and gather as many ideas and as much feedback as we can to make this logo as true to the ILM legacy as possible. After all, the people of ILM make ILM what it is. It’s like, why would we want just one violin when we could work with a full symphony orchestra?” The work on the logo continued with the creation of distinct products now available in the new merchandise line. “Taking the logo and spinning it off into 50th anniversary merch was so much fun,” Hoodzpah says. “The ILM crew were so game to dream big and really have fun with it. Each piece leans into a different vein of the ILM personality. We have a retro ’70s poster of a magician conjuring new worlds, which is what ILMers do every day. We celebrated all the innovation and milestones ILM has accomplished over 50 years in an infographic T-shirt. We even made custom-scented candles to celebrate the different departments and locations over the years. Our favorite is the Model Shop candle which has notes of sawdust and cedar. There’s truly something for everyone.” With their work on the ILM logo, Hoozpah has become a key part of ILM’s identity and history, which makes the team proud. “Getting to work with a cultural icon like ILM once was incredible,” they conclude. “Being trusted by such talented creatives to work with them again was even better. It’s great to be able to pick up where we left off, having already become embedded with the team and learning so much about the brand in our last project. Working on the rebrand was one of those bucket list jobs you continually remind yourself, ‘Wow, we really got to be a part of that.’ It felt like getting the band back together for the sequel.”See the new ILM 50th anniversary merchandise now available at Amazon.com. — Mark Newbold has contributed to Star Wars Insider magazine since 2006, is a 4-time Star Wars Celebration stage host, avid podcaster, and the Editor-in-Chief of FanthaTracks.com. Online since 1996. You can find this Hoopy frood online @Prefect_Timing.

Industrial Light & Magic: 50 Years of Innovation by Ian Failes will be released November 5, 2025 by Lucasfilm Publishing and Abrams. By Lucas O. Seastrom It all began in May of 1975 with a handshake between director George Lucas and visual effects supervisor John Dykstra. Industrial Light & Magic formed as Lucasfilm’s visual effects division to work specifically on one project: Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). 50 years later, ILM now spans the globe with offices in five countries and hundreds of productions to its credit. Now in 2025, the 50th anniversary festivities have kicked off at an appropriate venue: Star Wars Celebration. ILM leadership and artists gathered at the beloved fan event near Tokyo, Japan to reflect on the storied occasion, as well as announce a new book: Industrial Light & Magic: 50 Years of Innovation, written by Ian Failes and coming November 5, 2025 from Lucasfilm Publishing and Abrams.A New Book Charting ILM’s Continuing Legacy Industrial Light & Magic: 50 Years of Innovation takes readers from day one at ILM in 1975 up to some of the latest projects and innovations at the company today. Packed with hundreds of rare archival images, author Ian Failes – the noted visual effects journalist at befores & afters – weaves insightful technical history with the beloved stories of ILM’s people.  “ILM has been part of my visual effects life for a long time,” Failes tells ILM.com. “I first ‘discovered’ so much about visual effects just as I left high school when I happened upon two things…. One was the industry magazine Cinefex, and the other was the incredible book, Industrial Light & Magic: Into the Digital Realm, by Mark Cotta Vaz and Patricia Rose Duignan. I read that ILM book from cover to cover multiple times. It really was one of the things that inspired me to become a visual effects journalist. “So, getting the opportunity to go deeper into ILM’s history with this new book, but now with all the knowledge I’ve gained from time spent covering the industry, is just so rewarding—and fun,” Failes adds. Readers can look forward to many untold stories in 50 Years of Innovation. Failes identifies the transition from photochemical optical compositing to digital methods as a particularly fascinating era in the company’s history. “In the book there are some great details shared by key ILMers who were there at the time about many different aspects of the move to digital in terms of other areas like film scanning and digital compositing,” the author says. “Also, readers have never been able to explore so many exclusive behind-the-scenes photos from ILM’s history before,” Failes continues. “Having images from all different fields that highlight what is essentially the history of visual effects like modelmaking, optical effects, puppets, stop-motion, matte paintings, hand-animation, CG animation, virtual production, etc., all in one place, is something very special. I especially love some of the photographs that showcase the various VistaVision and motion control camera systems that ILM developed.” At the heart of ILM’s story is the spirit of creativity and innovation which has been defined by the company’s people over the decades. “Even back to its beginnings, George Lucas started ILM after identifying that no existing facility could deliver what he imagined for Star Wars,” Failes concludes. “It feels to me that a unique innovative spirit was born during the making of that first film, and never left the company. I think that goes both for technological developments and also cultural ones. ILM helped establish modern workflows inside a visual effects facility, and I think, really importantly, further set the standard for how to collaborate with filmmakers and other creatives.”Industrial Light & Magic: 50 Years of Innovation by Ian Failes is coming November 5, 2025 from Lucasfilm Publishing and Abrams. On the Stage at Star Wars Celebration As a special live recording of Lighter Darker: The ILM Podcast, the Star Wars Celebration panel included president and general manager of Lucasfilm business, Lynwen Brennan; head of ILM and general manager Janet Lewin; ILM executive creative director and senior visual effects supervisor John Knoll, ILM Sydney creative director and senior animation supervisor Rob Coleman; ILM lead CG modeler Masa Narita; and former ILM modelmaker Fon Davis. Lucasfilm’s senior vice president of creative innovation, digital production & technology Rob Bredow moderated. Lynwen Brennan came to ILM 27 years ago as the company ramped up for production of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). Like many, she’d been inspired to join ILM after seeing Jurassic Park (1993) a few years earlier. “The minute I walked through the door, I just fell in love,” Brennan told the audience. “I knew I’d found my people…. It’s an incredibly spirited place. We have a lot of fun. There’s something so special about a place that attracts these mavericks who are not scared of doing anything new…. Sometimes when you find people who are real risk-takers, they’re not necessarily great team players, right? But this…is a place where you’ve got people who love taking those risks but do it in such a collaborative way. That’s a thing that really got me.” Janet Lewin started her ILM career some 30 years ago and has had a front row seat to the continuing changes and evolutions in the visual effects industry, much of it driven by ILM. “Back then, we were one studio in San Rafael, just a couple of hundred people, mostly working in the Model Shop and on the stage,” Lewin explained. “It was an exciting time right at that digital revolution. It was a big deal for us to juggle four shows at one time, and a big show was a couple hundred shots. And over my 30-year trajectory, the company has massively grown. We now have 3,500 employees, five global studios, and…we do visual effects work across every possible medium.” For Masa Narita, appearing onstage at Celebration in his native Japan was a full circle moment. A lifelong visual effects fan, he’d watched Star Wars as a teenager during its original Japanese release in 1978. But as he reached adulthood, Narita first chose a career in finance.  “I used to be a businessman, worked for a Japanese brokerage firm for over 20 years,” Narita said. “But I always loved movies and visual effects because I grew up with special effects pioneers like Ultraman and Godzilla. So my first childhood dream was to wear a kaiju suit and to smash miniature towns. Actually, I still want to do that. [laughs] As I got older, I realized that I wanted to create something special like spaceships and characters [that] I saw in the movies. So at the age of 45, I decided to follow my passion. I quit my financial job and moved to Hollywood and started at a CG school. So that was my biggest gamble in my life, taken with my loving wife and two children. Fortunately, one year later…I got [my] very first CG job, and eventually I came to my dream company, ILM.” Narita has since worked at the company for over a decade, contributing to productions like Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), The Mandalorian (2019-23), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024). “ILM puts a lot of focus on innovation that makes the impossible possible,” Narita added. “So I feel inspired every day walking in a place with so much creativity and skill. I love what I’m doing and I feel I really achieved my dream. People say life is short, but I don’t think so. We have plenty of time to start over. It’s never too late to chase something new.”You can hear these stories and many more on Episode 17 of Lighter Darker: The ILM Podcast, coming soon to ILM.com. Watch the ILM.com Newsroom for the latest information about how you can purchase a copy of Industrial Light & Magic: 50 Years of Innovation, coming to bookstores everywhere on November 5, 2025. Light & Magic Season 2 is streaming now on Disney+. New merchandise celebrating the 50th anniversary of Industrial Light & Magic is now available on Amazon.com. — Lucas O. Seastrom is the editor of ILM.com and a contributing writer and historian for Lucasfilm.

The ILM veteran and accomplished feature filmmaker enters the documentary space to tell the story of ILM and Lucasfilm’s digital filmmaking odyssey. By Lucas O. Seastrom Warning: This article contains spoilers from Light & Magic Season 2 Among the first group hired at Industrial Light & Magic in 1975, Joe Johnston began his career as a storyboard artist and concept designer. After 10 years with ILM on three Star Wars and two Indiana Jones films, among others, he went to the University of Southern California film school under George Lucas’ sponsorship. He’d go on to direct classics as varied as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), October Sky (1999), and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).  Johnston’s directorial debut in the documentary medium, however, comes today, with the Season 2 premiere of Light & Magic on Disney+. The non-fiction series charts the storied legacy of Industrial Light & Magic, now celebrating its 50th anniversary, an unprecedented achievement in the history of visual effects. “I don’t have any experience in documentary or non-fiction filmmaking,” Johnston tells ILM.com. “When I was at Cal State Long Beach, I worked on a documentary that was directed by Tony Brennan called Hitler’s Secret Weapon. It was about the V2 rocket. Basically, my job was to do illustrations that explained some of the ideas he was trying to get across. That was my entire experience with documentary filmmaking, almost nil.” But Johnston does have experience as a storyteller. “While I had never worked on a documentary, I had a pretty good idea of how to tell a story, whether it’s real or fictional,” he says. “And you have to remember, especially with a project like this, though it’s true of all filmmaking, I had so much help. I had a supervising producer [Nicole Pusateri], story producer [Carly Baggett], a line producer [Andrew Hafnor], three great editors [Mike Long, Jennifer McGarrity, and Robinson Eng], and an archivist [Eugen Bräunig] whose job it was to go through thousands of hours of footage from ILM. It was more like a steering process, and I steered that process toward an ultimate goal. It was a real team effort all the way through.” Finding the Story After a successful first season directed by veteran screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, Lucasfilm and Imagine Entertainment agreed to produce a second. It was then that Imagine producer Christopher St. John gave Johnston a call. The latter was surprised by the inquiry, thinking they wanted him to appear in Season 2 as an interview subject. “I said, ‘Guys, I’ve said everything I have to say about it in Season 1.’ And Chris said, ‘No, no, we want you to direct it.’ Well, okay. I had to think about that for a while. It sort of came out of nowhere. I wasn’t expecting it.” Johnston’s relatively distinct point-of-view helped motivate him to accept the offer. “Having been an insider for the first 10 years during the original Star Wars trilogy, maybe I could have a unique perspective on what Season 2 might look like, having not been around for any of that. I left in 1985, came back for a couple of projects afterwards, but the whole shift toward digital was all new to me. Once I was onboard, it was a matter of guiding it in the direction I thought it should, one goal of which was to tell George Lucas’ story as much as possible.” That story emerged as Johnston and team reviewed thousands of hours of archival footage preserved in ILM’s collection. “I recognized that one of the stories that needed to be told was how George Lucas had basically steered the entire motion picture industry – in a way he sort of dragged it kicking and screaming – into the digital age,” the director explains. “That was a story that I didn’t think had really been told before. Here was a chance to feature that aspect of ILM and Lucasfilm.”  This would chiefly center around the production of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, released between 1999 and 2005. The first entry, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), was the most ambitious visual effects project ever undertaken up to that time, counting more than 2,000 shots produced entirely within ILM. The middle entry, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002), was the first blockbuster feature film made in a completely digital format and workflow. Surrounding these Lucasfilm productions were a bevy of groundbreaking achievements for client productions as varied as environmental effects in Twister (1996) and The Perfect Storm (2000) to performance capture in The Pirates of Caribbean trilogy (2003-07) and a fully-animated feature with Rango (2011). Master Yoda first appeared as an all-digital character in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (Credit: Lucasfilm & ILM). Always a Student “What also appealed to me was the chance to interview these people, a lot of whom I’d known over the years, but hadn’t worked with,” Johnston adds. “Hearing their personal stories…. It was an education for me. I don’t know that much about visual effects, so it was interesting to learn how effects had evolved since my involvement in the 1980s.” Indeed, Johnston is keen to note that, although he’s had a reputation “as a visual effects person, I have to always remind people that I’m not at all. I was a designer, storyboard artist, sequence director, and stuff like that,” as he explains, “but I never really got involved in the visual effects. I was surrounded by people who could do that. My designs were used in those sequences, but once I was happy with the design, I’d hand it off to people like Richard Edlund and Dennis Muren to make it work.” As a feature film director, Johnston collaborated with ILM on The Rocketeer (1991), Jumanji (1995), and Jurassic Park III (2001), providing him with first-person, client-side experience during the era covered in Light & Magic Season 2. He describes how Jumanji, for example, took place during a transitional moment “where it wasn’t always cheaper to do it digitally, or it wasn’t necessarily cheaper to do something with an analog solution. We had to figure out which method was the best to achieve a certain effect.” Johnston worked alongside visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston on that film, a former colleague from the original trilogy.  “I am a proponent of the idea that any film should not have one more visual effect than it needs,” Johnston comments. “You have the minimal number to help you tell the story and move on. I don’t like films that are all about the visual effects; spectacle for the sake of spectacle. It’s such a waste. You’re not telling the story; you’re just trying to impress people.” Effects progression from The Perfect Storm (Credit: Warner Bros. & ILM). The People Come First Working across three one-hour episodes, each with its own editor, Johnston followed a number of the precedents established by Kasdan in Season 1, not least of which was the emphasis on individual stories of the artists, filmmakers, and other talent involved in ILM’s work.  “I hope the audience will recognize that these people at ILM who are revered by visual effects fans are basically just like anybody else,” Johnston says. “They grew up making models or loving technology or whatever it was, and they found a way to make their dreams come true by coming to ILM. It’s interesting because that’s not the way it was on the original trilogy. Nobody knew what they were doing. They didn’t know what they would do when they got hired. That in itself was a voyage of discovery for people. ‘Why am I here, what am I doing? Oh you want me to do that – I guess I better figure it out and learn how.’” But despite the generational distinction, Johnston does identify the central constant in ILM’s story. “There is an attitude of ‘I know you can do it because it’s impossible.’ That was the spirit in the original trilogy, analog days, and it was during the start of the digital era as well. ‘How are we going to do this? Let’s jump in and figure it out.’ I find that story appealing and interesting. Several of the interviewees talk about it. ‘We didn’t know how we were going to do it. We were running out of time. We’ve got this deadline, we’re working seven days a week, but somehow, we figured it out.’ I think that’s a great story to tell. It’s fun. It’s scary. Scary is good.” Visual effects supervisor John Knoll with high definition monitors on the set of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (Credit: Lucasfilm & ILM). Piecing the Story Together “Like a lot of feature films, this project was definitely made in the cutting room. You’re assembling so much footage from the last 20 years and beyond,” says Johnston. Documentary filmmakers often have very distinct processes in terms of assembling their narrative elements. For Johnston, this meant close collaboration with the editors to help realize the story he wanted to tell. “I can’t give the editors enough credit. A lot of the ideas came up in the cutting room. They did a fantastic job. They’re semi-sung heroes.” Johnston also found ways to collaborate more directly with his interview subjects. “At one point, we decided that we needed someone to help tie all of these loose ends together. So we did a second interview with [former ILM general manager] Jim Morris and explained the story we were trying to tell. He got it, of course, being who he is, and he really helped us to cement some of these ideas into a story. It’s always like that in my limited experience. You don’t write a script beforehand like a feature; you write a script in the making of the film itself.” Johnston was adamant about leaning into the drama of the story, including the challenges that ILM, Lucasfilm, and Jar Jar Binks actor Ahmed Best faced during the release of The Phantom Menace. In Jar Jar, the creative team had pioneered what was the first all-digital main character in a feature film using performance capture technology, which later became industry standard. But some in the press and the audience struggled to accept Jar Jar’s role in the film’s story. “The whole Jar Jar Binks thing was probably the most controversial feature of the prequels,” Johnston says. “As with any filmmaking project, without conflict there is no drama. I wanted to highlight that.” It was important to be honest about the creative process, which is full of discussion and compromise.  “Interviewing [Star Wars producer] Rick McCallum was a similar choice,” Johnston adds. “Rick played a huge role in getting the prequels produced. Most people had a problem with Rick McCallum at some point because he was trying to get everything done as cheaply as he possibly could. He’s an interesting character. I wanted to hear his story.” Animation Rob Coleman (second from left) and actor Ahmed Best (third from right) with the ILM crew while shooting performance capture for Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Credit: Lucasfilm & ILM). In addition to interviewing George Lucas, Johnston chose director Gore Verbinski as one of Light & Magic Season 2’s other filmmaker interview subjects. Verbinski collaborated with ILM on a watershed string of features, including three Pirates films and Rango. “The Pirates films that he directed were interesting because ILM had to keep besting themselves, and Gore tells that story quite well. “I wanted to feature Rango for the very reasons that Gore says in the interview, which is that ILM always had the ability but never the opportunity to be part of a project where they’re actually telling the whole story,” Johnston continues. “That was unique to ILM, and unique to that project. I came away, personally, hoping that ILM gets more opportunities to do things like that. Having experienced the situation that Gore explains where ILM does a shot, and they don’t know exactly where it’s going to cut in, they’re basically working on something in isolation. For them to be able to not think that way and tell the whole story was groundbreaking for ILM. That’s another story that was important to tell.” Animator Maia Kayser during production of Rango (Credit: ILM). Concept art of Rango by Christian Alzmann (Credit: Paramount & ILM). Finding Inspiration With the open mind of an artist, Johnston reiterates that he “never walked into an interview or the cutting room knowing exactly what something was going to be. It was a process. There were tons of surprises, things I didn’t know. It was refreshing, in a way. It made me have a newfound love of documentary filmmaking.” As Johnston looks ahead to future non-fiction stories of his own, he shares his hopes that Light & Magic Season 2 will help to inspire the coming generation of storytellers. “I would hope that a lot of young, potential filmmakers or visual effects artists would watch this series and say, ‘That person who I really admire had no idea how they were going to get to ILM. They did this thing that they were good at, it was recognized, and they got a call.’ If this is something that people want to pursue, they should recognize that it’s possible. There’s a route to success. There might not necessarily be a formula for success, but there’s a way to find your path if that’s your dream.” Effects progression from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest with actor Bill Nighy as Davy Jones (Credit: Disney & ILM). Light & Magic Season 2 is streaming now on Disney+. Visit Lucasfilm.com to learn more about the stories told in the series’ latest installment. New merchandise celebrating the 50th anniversary of Industrial Light & Magic is now available on Amazon.com. – Lucas O. Seastrom is the editor of ILM.com and a contributing writer and historian for Lucasfilm.

ILM and Lucasfilm reveal new information about the virtual and mixed reality Meta Quest experience while Celebration Japan attendees get an exclusive first look. There’s a new kind of adventure in development for the galaxy far, far away. Industrial Light & Magic and Lucasfilm have revealed more details about Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset for Meta Quest headsets. Fans attending Star Wars Celebration in Japan this weekend will be able to experience a special hands-on first look at the title. “Star Wars Celebration has always been a place where fandom meets passion and we wanted to bring something to the show this year that our team is over the moon about,” said Alyssa Finley, executive producer of Beyond Victory. “We’re calling this a Playset because it isn’t just a game; it’s an entirely new way to experience the Star Wars galaxy and the worlds we create at ILM. This new mixed reality [MR] experience blends the physical and digital worlds in a way that’s unlike anything we’ve done before and we’re so excited to share a special first look with our incredible Star Wars community.” Beyond Victory will take fans into a story rooted in the fastest sport in the galaxy: podracing. “We started by asking ourselves some questions,” explains director Jose Perez III. “What kind of toys would be amazing in mixed reality? What toys don’t or can’t exist in real life? Podracing zipped straight to the top.” “One word: Sebulba,” Finley adds. “Sometimes you just wanna go fast and win races. Sometimes you want to learn from (or about) the greatest racer ever to throw a wrench into an engine. In Beyond Victory, we see firsthand the gritty underbelly of the podracing world. We dig into what happens around the racing circuit, and we get to try our hand at MR podracing along the way. If that’s not ideal what is?” Set around the timeline of Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Beyond Victory centers on up-and-coming racer Volo Bolus who joins forces with the unforgettable Sebulba, originally seen in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). Fans will be able to experience this new story in three distinct modes: Adventure: Using a combination of virtual and mixed reality, the story Arcade: Experience the thrill of podracing in mixed reality on a virtual holotable that brings players right into the heart of the action like never before. Playset: Transform the physical world around you and create your very own incredible Star Wars moments in mixed reality with a collection of unlockable virtual action figures and vehicles.  “I genuinely love our story in Adventure mode,” explains Perez III. “It feels like a proper little MR journey. That’s a big one for me, personally. But honestly, the coolest thing for me is that all these different modes will co-exist. We’re working on this super cool playset with all these different kinds of experimental MR features. It’s interesting to see how we can push these kinds of technologies and stories in MR. We are taking some big swings on Beyond Victory. It’s really different from what we have made before.” The ILM and Meta Quest experience at Star Wars Celebration features over a dozen playable Quest stations equipped with the first ever hands-on look at Beyond Victory. This first look experience offers a glimpse into the tale of Volo and leads into a thrilling top-down Arcade podrace that plays out on a virtual holotable. Additionally, demos for award-winning titles Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series and Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge are available for those in attendance at Celebration. “Being in VR can feel like being in a whole different world,” says Finley. “What we’ve added for Beyond Victory is the ability to bring the story worlds and the real world together a little more in MR – so you can be playing, you can be interacting with the story world or playing a race – and you can also see what’s happening around you, integrated together with your play.” “We’ve definitely leveled up as a team since Vader Immortal and Galaxy’s Edge,” Perez III adds. “We’re bringing forward a lot of the tech we cooked up back then into Beyond Victory, so the nuts and bolts and how you move around in VR will feel pretty familiar if you’ve played our other titles. But the thing about ILM is we’re always innovating. So, even with that foundation, we’re building a ton of new systems and approaching the design in some pretty different ways for this one.” Star Wars Celebration Wishlist Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset now, and watch the ILM.com Newsroom for the latest updates. Visit ILM.com/Immersive to learn more.

The first part of an extensive look behind-the-scenes of the visual effects process for Lucasfilm’s pirate-themed Star Wars adventure series. By Clayton Sandell (Credit: ILM & Lucasfilm) The sprawling, live-action series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (2024-25) is like a map leading to a visual effects treasure chest. Open it, and you’ll find a trove of 3,200 visual effects shots that seamlessly blend the latest digital artistry along with traditional techniques that both innovate and honor the unique legacy of Industrial Light & Magic. In creating a new adventure story set in our favorite galaxy far, far away, Skeleton Crew creators and executive producers Jon Watts and Christopher Ford set a delightfully retro tone for the series, which directly informed ILM’s approach to the visual effects. “Very early on, it was apparent that a big part of the intended charm of the show was that it was going to have this sort of Amblin, 80’s movie sort of vibe to it,” Skeleton Crew Pulling it off would involve hundreds of talented artists at ILM studios around the globe, including San Francisco, Sydney, Mumbai, and Vancouver, along with a few outside visual effects partners.  Over eight episodes, Skeleton Crew follows the adventures of Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers), Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and KB (Kyriana Kratter)—four kids living a peaceful, if mundane, life on their home world of At Attin. After discovering a mysterious buried space cruiser, the four friends unintentionally launch themselves into hyperspace and must find their way home by navigating a dangerous galaxy of allies, enemies, pirates, and monsters. Early in preproduction on Skeleton Crew, Knoll says the ILM team had to determine the best way to approach the show’s varied visual effects needs. “It just read like an expensive show because of all of the different planets we go to, all the different types of creatures, and the different environments,” explains Knoll, who also serves as ILM’s executive creative director and senior visual effects supervisor. “Trying to figure out how to make that affordable was one of the first things that faced the visual effects team.” Following a methodology first established during The Mandalorian (2019-2023), Knoll says Skeleton Crew production was divided roughly into thirds. “About one-third of it was shot in our StageCraft LED volume, one-third was shot on soundstages with conventional sets, and then one-third was shot on a backlot,” Knoll reports. Galactic Planet-hopping Skeleton Crew unfolds across multiple worlds that are brand new to Star Wars, beginning with At Attin. The planet’s suburban-like residential neighborhoods utilized a minimal exterior set located near the California State University Dominguez Hills campus in Carson, California. “There was an undeveloped lot that was just adjacent to the campus that was available. So we shot on that,” Knoll says. The practical parts of the set consisted of only the street, a sidewalk, parts of a few houses, and a small patch of grass surrounded by a large blue screen background, says ILM visual effects supervisor Eddie Pasquarello. “We added all the trees, houses, skies, and trams,” Pasquarello reveals. Even the street was narrowed. “Some things are not seen, and those are the ones that are the most impressive in my opinion, because you’re not saying, ‘Oh, that’s visual effects.’ We’re hoping people watch the actors and enjoy the story versus worrying about the environment.”  Wim and Neel board a tram for the ride to school, a sequence that introduces the more urban areas of At Attin. Artists digitally extended the school’s exterior—shot on another minimal set—and helped create an expansive cityscape designed to suggest At Attin’s backstory. “[Jon] Watts wanted it to feel like a place that was built some time ago, but it’s been mostly kept up pretty well. And it’s a place where everyone more or less follows the rules,” says ILM animation supervisor Shawn Kelly. On the ride to school, Wim stares out the tram’s back window as the vehicle drops into an underground tunnel. After the scene was shot, artists were asked to enhance the movement of both the tram and the camera, requiring complex digital layering work to achieve the right perspective. “We had to split apart all the kids inside the bus to get the proper parallax,” Pasquarello explains. “There’s a ton of artists that helped in layout, and comp and environment—all across the board—that made the shot work.” Pasquarello says a number of ILM teams also worked throughout the production to develop the right look for At Attin’s city architecture. “This was a really Herculean effort,” he notes. “This is a huge environment build from the team. But it also takes the disciplines of animation and lighting.” In one shot where a malfunctioning hoverbike leaves Fern and KB stranded on the side of the road, Jon Watts asked ILM to enhance the background with a custom building. “He sent us a photo of a mall,” Pasquarello says. “He said, ‘I kind of want it to look like the mall that I remember as a kid.’ And that’s what that is inspired by. We basically took that photo and ‘Star Wars-ified’ it.” Neel Nation One of the earliest discussions among the Skeleton Crew creative team was how to bring Wim’s best friend Neel to the screen. “Neel was a fun and interesting challenge,” Kelly tells ILM.com, noting that the blue elephant-like character is a three-way creative partnership combining Smith’s voice and performance, the work of performance artist Kacie Borrowman, and extensive digital creativity. “The production was feeling like Neel probably needed to be CG throughout,” Knoll says, explaining that the hours spent applying makeup or prosthetics to Smith would have cut into the child performer’s limited shooting window. “Just seeing how often Neel was going to be on screen—he’s on every other page of every script—he was potentially going to be the most expensive part of the entire show,” recounts Knoll, who set a goal of reducing the all-CG Neel shots by half. “I thought, ‘there’s got to be some practical version of Neel that we can do, at least for over-the-shoulder and wide shots.’” For that mission, ILM turned to Legacy Effects, a frequent collaborator on Star Wars projects including Ahsoka (2023 – present) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022). “Neel’s head was built by Legacy as a fully animatronic puppet and was meant to do a lot of the heavy lifting of the performance,” says Pasquarello. Credit: (ILM & Lucasfilm) Neel’s many facial expressions developed from an innovative fusion between the Legacy puppet and considerable digital augmentation. “As they started filming the show, everyone fell in love with how the practical puppet face works,” Kelly recalls. “It’s very charming.” Digital animation took over in scenes where the story called for subtle emotional expressions that were beyond the capability of the puppet, Kelly says, noting that roughly half of Neel’s shots are either digitally augmented or completely CG. “We came up with a bunch of facial expressions,” he explains. “There’s ‘worried.’ We’ve got ‘scared.’ We’ve got ‘sad’ Neel and ‘happy’ Neel, the Neel that we love. Sometimes we just really need to scrunch up his face and we could scrunch it up with or without his ears, things like that.” Even in shots where the practical puppet head was used on-set, artists digitally-erased a small mesh screen on Neel’s trunk that had allowed the performers inside to see and breathe more easily. ILM lead creature modeler Jonathan Sabella also helped digitally sculpt the CG version of Neel to make sure it was identical to the puppet. “That might just be adjusting neck wrinkles or the trunk, and he can shape it back and make it just right or push the emotion even a little further than our out-of-the-box controls could do. Jonathan was a really key part of bringing this together,” says Kelly. During shooting, facial capture technology created by ILM Technoprops was used to record Smith’s performance. “In the end, we didn’t use the facial capture directly,” Kelly says, explaining that Neel’s expressions were instead crafted by animators in order to more closely match the style of the puppet. “We could have gone with a bigger performance,” Pasquarello adds, “but a lot of it was really leaning in and matching the aesthetic that was established. If we were to do something beyond that, it felt wrong because we were losing that kind of simple on-set practical aesthetic, which is a very Star Wars aesthetic. It’s always best to have this mix of different techniques happening at once. It creates the best illusion for the audience. It’s hard to pin down what’s going on if some of it’s real and some of it’s not.” Rise of the Onyx Cinder At the bottom of a forest ravine, the kids discover the entrance to a long-buried, hidden starship called the Onyx Cinder. Wim unwittingly activates the dormant vessel, causing it to lurch skyward with the four kids still on board. As massive layers of soil, rocks and trees cascade off the rising ship, the kids try unsuccessfully to escape. “This was a sequence that went on for a while for us,” says Pasquarello. “Just moving all that earth and lifting that ship and having it turn over was a big challenge.” Live action plates of the four young actors standing on a small set were completed with an entirely digital environment. “The hatch and the four kids. That’s all we had to work with,” Pasquarello remembers. “They were just standing on a small practical piece of the ship, and then everything else was added around them.” Digital doubles were also created for all the characters and used throughout the sequence, especially useful for shots that might have been perilous for the young actors. “Sometimes when they’re hanging out of the open porthole, they’re animated,” Kelly says. “The animated Wim is waving to his dad.” Various simulations—from tree leaves, to swirling embers, dust, and engine vortices kicking up dirt—help complete the sequence. “I think this really shows off the world-class effects team and environment team. I’m just always blown away by this sequence,” says Kelly, noting that many of the forest scenes were created with the help of artists in ILM’s Vancouver studio. Once in space, the kids discover the ship’s first mate, a droid named SM-33 (voiced by Nick Frost). The character was realized using a Bunraku-style puppet (operated by performance artist Rob Ramsdell) and fully-CG versions, depending on the scene. The Onyx Cinder first came to life as a 3D computer model built by Rene Garcia and Jay Machado and textured by Kim Vongbunyong. Veteran ILM modelmaker John Goodson then crafted a practical version that included rotating sections and flickering LED lights in the engines. “It’s very old school. It’s all handmade. There are a handful of model kit parts on it for detail. But even a lot of those are handmade,” Goodson says. “It’s styrene and acrylic with an aluminum armature inside of it.” Modelmaker Dan Patrascu also helped build the Onyx Cinder chassis and mounted motors inside the model. “It gets designed in the art department,” Knoll says. “Then you validate the design, so everybody’s happy with it. John builds his version of it. And then we true up our CG model to match what John did. Something I really liked about the model John built was that the paint finish was beautiful on it. And so that was very extensively photographed and then we re-textured the CG model, based on what John had done.” The practical model was then mounted on a motion-control rig at ILM’s San Francisco studio, reminiscent of the original Dykstraflex system first pioneered during production of Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). “[Executive producer] Jon Favreau was pretty enthusiastic about wanting to do this back for season one of The Mandalorian, and I was one of the few people still left at the company that used to do motion-control,” says Knoll. “And we figured, ‘We can make this work.’ Probably the biggest obstacle was budget. The reason that we don’t do this as often as we used to is that it’s more expensive than computer graphics. And the best way that I could figure out how to make this affordable for the show was if this was being done as a garage operation.” Credit: (ILM & Lucasfilm) Knoll repurposed the motion-control rig he built in his garage for The Mandalorian, adding the capability to drive more motors on the Onyx Cinder. “The system that I built for season one and two of Mando could drive eight motors,” Knoll recalls. “That gave me track, pan, tilt, and focus, and yaw-pitch-roll on the model. That was sufficient for everything we needed to do with the Razor Crest. But all the engines pivot on the Onyx Cinder, so there are four motorized axes built into the ship. Eight axes isn’t enough to drive all of that. So I expanded the electronics to drive 16 channels.” Camera moves were first plotted out in Autodesk Maya, approved by the filmmakers, then translated to the motion-control system with a goal of matching a long-established Star Wars aesthetic. “Our approach for the shots that were going to be a miniature is, first—we animate it in the computer, and we figure out, ‘what’s the best way to tell this story?’” says Shawn Kelly. “’What’s the coolest camera move that still feels like an original trilogy camera move that tells the story and has the mood that we want, and the ship has the motion that we need, in the path that we need?’” The motion-control system was operated by Lindsay Oikawa Pflum and utilized Canon DSLR camera technology. Each shot required a dozen or so passes to capture varieties in exposure and lighting to give compositing teams more options when layering the final image. And in another throwback to ILM’s early days, converters allowed the use of older Nikon lenses that were used to film models for Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983). The final result is a flawless collaboration between the real-world model and digital model, all paying homage to ILM’s legacy. First Stop: Starport Borgo The Onyx Cinder docks at a nefarious pirate hideaway, a wretched hive called Starport Borgo where the kids hope to find directions back to At Attin. Built into an Outer Rim asteroid overlooking a sea-blue nebula, Borgo is filled with a host of untrustworthy pirates, creatures, and scoundrels. “It’s just a really beautiful, new place for Star Wars,” says Pasquarello. Port Borgo scenes relied heavily on ILM’s StageCraft LED volume—located at the MBS Media Campus in Southern California. The environment came to life using a combination of practical set pieces along with 3D elements laid out in Unreal Engine and rendered in real-time onto the LED screens. “Creating the content for the volume walls happens nearer to the beginning of our production,” Shawn Kelly says. “There’s a team of generalists, or gen artists, who are talented in a lot of different aspects of computer graphics. And while they are working on the environments, me and a few other people are working on populating those environments.” “Everything outside is CG,” Pasquarello adds. “When we’re inside in Port Borgo, it’s practical. There’s a lot of storytelling in a very small amount of space.”  Wim, Fern, KB, and Neel disembark the Onyx Cinder and hitch a ride on a bubble-like dinghy piloted by a furry Teek ferryman. Dockside, the Teek jumps on Fern’s shoulder to demand payment—a sequence that demonstrates an invisible combination of digital and practical methods. Credit: (ILM & Lucasfilm) “He’s mostly a practical puppet up on her shoulder, but his arm is animated. His arm is CG so we can do more delicate kinds of gestures with his fingers and hands,” explains Kelly, “but we still try to animate it in a way that feels like a puppet.” “We have a great paint team here,” adds Pasquarello. “It was not a big deal to remove that arm and replace it.” Once the Teek gets his money, he jumps down to leave—a shot that features a flawless “Texas Switch” between the practical and fully digital version of the character. “At the beginning, he’s a puppet. And once he goes behind Fern’s back, he’s animated,” Kelly reveals. The shot concludes with the ferryman scurrying away, mimicking the speedy movements of the original Teek that first appeared in Lucasfilm’s TV movie, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985). “He’s this little, very fast-moving kind of funny guy,” says Kelly. “It was really endearing and fun, especially when I was a kid. So we wanted to put a little bit of that fast movement into him. And this is a little example of how we kept that flavor.” Motion Capture Cameos Motion capture performers help populate the expansive setting with hundreds of pirates. “A place like Port Borgo needs to be a bustling port of pirates doing stuff,” says Kelly. “So we spent months at the beginning getting mocap performances and animating on top of those, and also key-framing guys selling stuff at stalls, or shopping at stalls. You’ll see guys in the background unloading a ship, and there’s a chain of guys throwing boxes to each other, stuff like that.” The children pass by a seedy nightclub where four-armed aliens are dancing in reddish silhouette through frosted windows. It was Kelly’s job to direct the scene’s motion capture performers, including two unexpected names: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as The Daniels. At the time, the directors were helming the fourth episode of Skeleton Crew and would soon win an Academy Award for Best Picture for their film Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). “The Daniels wanted to perform the dance,” Kelly laughs, recalling how it became his job to direct two of his cinematic heroes on how to be better exotic dancers. “I’d say, ‘I think they want it to be sexier.’ They’d just burst out laughing, and do it again,” Kelly says. “They were really fun and funny.” Credit: (ILM & Lucasfilm) Escape from Port Borgo Reluctantly teaming up with the mysterious Jod Na Nawood (Jude Law), the children escape from the pirate brig and navigate their way back to the Onyx Cinder. As the ship pulls away. it’s snagged by a refueling line connecting it to a floating buoy, snapping it back like a balloon on a string. Jod tries desperately to maneuver away, dragging several pirate vessels with it. “They’re creating havoc,” Pasquarello says. “The whole idea of the pile up and pulling those ships together was a really fun sequence, because even Jon Favreau chimed in. Everyone had some ideas about how to make that really successful.” The colliding ships are all-digital creations, with the action handled by a team of artists who are now part of ILM’s Sydney studio. “All of these ships are CG, and the environment itself as well,” Pasquarello says. “These didn’t exist as models from a practical standpoint.” As the pirates take aim at the Onyx Cinder with a tower cannon, Jod sends the ship into hyperspace. The fuel line snaps violently, whipping back and crashing into the crowded port. “You can see our animated pirates getting knocked down and running away,” Kelly says. Effects passes helped complete the shot with a variety of explosions, fire, and sparks. The pileup sequence also gives eagle-eyed viewers a chance to catch a special Easter egg—a Starspeeder 1000 transport, well known to fans of the Star Tours attraction at the Disney Parks. ILM.com’s behind-the-scenes journey through the creation of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew will continue in part two…. – Clayton Sandell is a Star Wars author and enthusiast, TV storyteller, and a longtime fan of the creative people who keep Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound on the leading edge of visual effects and sound design. Follow him on Instagram (@claytonsandell) Bluesky (@claytonsandell.com) or X (@Clayton_Sandell).