Including a new revelation about the Jar Jar practical suit and CG head test. Last week, befores & afters got access to Light & Magic season 2, with the three-part series on Industrial Light & Magic now streaming on Disney+. We also took part in a virtual press conference with season 2 director Joe Johnston and a host of interviewees featured this season: Janet Lewin, John Knoll, Doug Chiang, Rob Coleman and Ahmed Best. Season 2 is a wonderfully self-contained follow-up to Lawrence Kasdan’s season 1 of Light & Magic, and this time it focuses very strongly on the rise of digital in ILM’s history. That includes George Lucas’ impressive push to capture the prequels with high resolution digital cameras, and project them with digital projectors in cinemas (a task he successfully managed by the time of Attack of the Clones (2002), which required extensive consultation with camera and lens companies, projector manufacturers, and cinemas). It truly changed the way movies were made, and seen.  (L-R): George Lucas, Doug Chiang, and John Knoll in a scene from Lucasfilm’s LIGHT & MAGIC, Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. © 2025 Lucasfilm Ltd. & . All Rights Reserved. What this new season also highlights is the extent of ILM’s breakthroughs in digital visual effects that took place in the 90s and 2000s, as the industry transitioned from analog and optical to a new digital world. ILM was at the forefront of this transition, as is highlighted in Light & Magic season 2. What works so well in the series is how Johnston highlights a few key events in that period of ILM’s history. These include effects simulations in Twister (1996) and The Perfect Storm (2000), which are expertly broken down by Stefen Fangmeier and Habib Zargarpour on camera this season. And then, there’s also Jar Jar Binks. You can’t go past how groundbreaking having a fully digital main character on screen in 1999 in The Phantom Menace was. It simply had not occurred to this level previously. Jar Jar would be portrayed by Ahmed Best, who performed the role on set in a partial costume with a special Jar Jar ‘hat’ head-piece, and then also later on ILM’s motion capture volume in an optical motion capture suit. The final character was fully CG. Jar Jar Binks. Previously, in official Star Wars documentaries and in pieces on befores & afters, there’s always been some fun stories told about a test orchestrated by John Knoll (visual effects supervisor on The Phantom Menace) and Rob Coleman (animation supervisor) for Jar Jar. An initial idea was that the character could be performed on set in a suit, and the head done digitally, in the hope that this might save some money from doing it fully digitally. The test was aimed at crafting a side-by-side of Jar Jar—one where the head only would be digital, and one where the character was fully CG. In stories told so far, the conclusion was that matchmoving the CG head onto a live-action body was a complicated and time-consuming task, whereas a fully digital character was somewhat easier—and more inexpensive.  Well, without too many spoilers, a fun moment in season 2 of Light & Magic sees Dennis Muren suggest that maybe the test was a little…rigged (as in, weighted towards the fully CG character being the best outcome). John Knoll is presented with that piece of information on camera, and, well, the series is worth watching just for this little VFX-nerd moment alone. It’s just so fun to have these kinds of tidbits about groundbreaking visual effects history in the documentary. There’s other fantastic pieces of information about the Star Wars prequels–new revelations about the podrace in The Phantom Menace and the development of digital Yoda for Attack of the Clones comes to mind–and other films that I had never heard before in Season 2. It’s an absolute gem of a series.  From the press conference for ‘Light & Magic’ season 2: Joe Johnston, Ahmed Best, Janet Lewin, Doug Chiang, John Knoll, Rob Coleman and host Brandon Davis. Watch the trailer for Light & Magic season 2 below: The post In season 2 of ‘Light & Magic’, Joe Johnston has an incredible way of bringing out some of the geekiest ILM details appeared first on befores & afters.