What's Next for ILM on Star Wars: Episode III

The latest official Star Wars Homing Beacon newsletter included an update on what's next for Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) now that the first phase of principal photography is complete for Star Wars: Episode III.

Lucasfilm says that the artists at ILM are sparing no time in tackling the thousands of effects shots required to complete this final chapter of the Star Wars saga. While a trio of ILM crew observed the shooting in Sydney, Australia, a growing team back in Northern California has already been busy working on creating digital assets required for their work.

Visual Effects Supervisors John Knoll and Pablo Helman, and Matchmove Supervisor Jason Snell depart Australia this week for ILM's facilities. Both Knoll and Helman are scheduled to work the day after they arrive. "We'll be supervising model development and Viewpaint right away," says Knoll. "That's already been going on, so there's some catching up for us to do. George [Lucas] said he'd get us the first Yoda sequences to begin working on in a month or so."

Animation Supervisor Rob Coleman, who spent time on the set earlier in production, is beginning to assemble a team of animators to create the wide range of major digital characters in "Episode III". "Rob will start animating in October," says Helman. "He's got a list of who his team is going to be, but he's not going to be putting that together until next month."

Jason Snell will be delivering his accurate digital wireframe models of the sets that he's made during production based on photographs and measurements taken in person. The matchmovers at ILM will begin to create virtual additions and enhancements to the tangible sets.

"The first thing I'll do is take all the models that I've built and clean them up and color-code them, and submit them to the Sets/Creatures assets area," he says. "When the plates start coming in, the matchmovers will check out the set environments that I created to be able to work with them. That first week, I'll organize all my sets and put them into a database. The following week, I'll be working with model makers, specifically the hard surface modelmakers who are building the set extensions to make sure they are the proper scale and will work with the models that I work with, and I'll do that until we start getting plates."

Star Wars: Episode III is scheduled for a May, 2005 release date.