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George Lucas keynote at SIGGRAPH
05 - excerpts
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George
Lucas at Siggraph 05
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One
of the major highlights this year at SIGGRAPH was the keynote event
which featured George Lucas. More than 10,000 people squeezed in
to the inauguration hall to listen to Lucas.
"Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been
part of my quest for immaculate reality" said Lucas.
In a session that lasted 2 hrs, moderator Bruce Carse and Lucas
had an interaction similar to a late night talk show.
"Anybody who works in the arts eventually faces running into
that technological ceiling, whether you're doing cave paintings
on a wall and you want to add color - or you're painting the Sistine
Chapel... You're constantly pushing that technological envelope.
Art is technology. ..You need to know how to use technology..."
he said.
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"I'm
not afraid of risks as long as I think I can win. The problem with
the leading edge of technology is, the one thing you can be sure of
is you're never going to win." The first guys out of the box
- the ones who demonstrate their breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH - aren't
always the ones with solutions that are ready for the real world"
added Lucas.
The legendary film maker spoke at length on issues such as digital
cinema, pre visualisation and Artificial Intelligence.
He also spoke about his strong interest in Television saying,"My
life is too short to become a film studio," Lucas says. "TV
is an easier medium to work in. It's more fun. There's not as much
pressure. [It's] a good medium to experiment in, without as much downside
[as film]."
Talking
about his new facility at Singapore, Lucas expressed his interest
in Anime. "This is an opportunity to dip a toe into those waters,
and take advantage of the 'amazing talent' in Asia"
Lucas said that his companies were moving away from an 'assembly
line process' and toward trying to get everyone to work simultaneously
on the same thing with better tools for real time collaboration
and communication. "We are working on tools for pre viz that
can animate and enliven the storyboard process, making it look a
lot more like finished film. The system is going to be dumbed down
to the point where even I can use it" said Lucas.
"I think that a really simple pre-viz system is going to really
change a lot about the way people direct movies" he continued.
Carse
asked him how about how he looked at "the big blank canvas"
beyond 'Star Wars.'
Lucas
responded saying he didn't feel as if he were facing a blank canvas:
"I have hundreds of projects that I want to do, and I'm running
out of time - so they'll never get done, I'm afraid."
Taking
the flag up for digital Cinema, Lucas quipped "I know that
it's going to happen - but how long is it going to drag on before
we get to the digital world? The widespread arrival of digital cinema
will "democratize the entire system" of making and distributing
movies"
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