Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) with Jedi children on Coruscant in this shot that successfully combines digital work with live actors. © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved. Digital work by Industrial Light & Magic.

Rob Coleman is most proud of how the digital image of Yoda captures the personality of the original puppet character. © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved. Digital work by Industrial Light & Magic.

Post-production has to deal with what was actually recorded and Coleman reminds us that everything was shot with digital cameras -- no film was used in the making of Episode II. The directors' plans for a scene may have to change if an actor isn't looking where he or she was supposed to look. In post, changes occur when they drop in the digital actors and Lucas realizes the scene will play better if... Coleman says, "Shots can become more complicated or change completely based on the flow of the movie, editing decisions or how the story is being told."

While we didn't talk about Episode III, one brief comment suggests what we might see in the future. Coleman talked about Lucas adding additional scenes and animation after Episode II's live-action photography was supposedly completed. Lucas is accustomed to going back to the Skywalker art department and having them "design new characters, new vehicles, new costumes that we didn't think we needed, but now we do. Or George will write a new scene and it will be shot a year after we shot first unit photography. That happened. There was a whole room that was added about a month and a half ago. [Coleman was interviewed two weeks before the film opened.] A new scene was written and the actor was shot again. We had to quickly create a digital background and I had to put digital characters in with new lines of dialog. George said, 'If I had known you could turn a shot out so quickly I would have added more stuff.' Having all these great toys and great talented artists here, George certainly has fun working with us." I think we can expect even more of the impossible in the next film.

The biggest accomplishment of which Coleman is most proud? He replies without hesitation, "I'm most proud of what our team was able to do with Yoda. I think he's beautifully animated and I think we were able to remain faithful to what Frank Oz had established."

Karl Cohen is President of ASIFA-San Francisco. His first book, Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators, is published by McFarland Publishers. He also teaches animation history at San Francisco State University.